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British Civil Liberties Film Released
An anonymous reader sends us to a BBC article about a British film likely to attract the attention of civil liberties supporters. The film, Taking Liberties , is a documentary about eroding civil liberties in present-day Britain. It will be showing in cinemas in major cities across the UK starting next weekend. From the article: "Director Chris Atkins wants Taking Liberties to shake the British public out of their apathy over what he sees as the dangerous erosion of traditional rights and freedoms. 'This film uses shock tactics. We needed to be unashamedly populist... Once you give up traditional liberties such as free speech and the right to protest you are not going to easily get them back,' says Atkins."
Even better. Here in Birmingham (central England) we have Policeman and Traffic Wardens equipped with cameras in their hats/ helmets. Seriously.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
"If by "never" you mean "in the last 100 years" and by "arms" you mean "guns", I think you'll find that the restrictions were very different pre-WW2, definitely pre-WW1."
You're pretty much correct. The first British gun licensing laws were enacted in 1870, but they were essentially a revenue generation tool. You had to pay ten shillings for the right to carry guns around in public places, but could keep as many at home as you wanted without one, and the licenses were handed out at post offices to anyone who could pay for them. The first actual control legislation was in 1903, when certain classes of pistol could only be sold to people who produced a valid game or gun license, although once again such licenses were extremely easy to obtain, and any other sort of gun could be bought without them. True gun control didn't happen until 1920, and was largely a reaction to the 1917 Russian Revolution, where private gun ownership played a significant role in overthrowing the Czar, and the British government feared that the millions of recently demobbed (and therefore extremely cheap) weapons from WWI would be used to start a massive armed revolt.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Free speech: a) "free speech zones" so that he needn't be bothered with people confronting his policies. Anyone wanting to protest (a freedom of speech issue) can only do so some blocks away in a cordoned off area. b) muzzling the heads of NASA, EPA, etc and telling them all publications have to be proofed by the White House so they can limit any voices that present information counter to the Bush mandates. c) monitoring phone calls and internet traffic which puts the brakes on many people expressing their views. Monitoring: a) illegal wiretaps with no court oversight. (the wiretapping has not been found to be legal - in fact, the FBI was crawled on the carpet for not following even the laws that do still exist) b) wholesale monitoring of internet traffic. c) requiring ISPs to keep records on what websites their customers visit, what they post, etc. Hiring: a) litmus tests for all key positions Imprisonment: a) Gitmo b) Gitmo c) Gitmo It's obvious you would kiss Bush's butt were he to bare it for you...