AIBU to ask what is happening in Middlesbrough at the moment?

When an ID card is just a stand-alone ID (similar to our passports), it's OK.

The problem is the push to unify citizen information through centralized, interconnected Digital ID system - which is the bit Labour are keeping.

That allows them far more surveillance and control over citizens - which frankly I don't trust them with.

I also don't particularly trust the government's competence in keeping that data safe and out of the hands of criminals.

ID cards could actually be valuable at the moment. Europe manages with them and it would be much better to have a state produced ID than constantly requiring ID which not everyone can afford to get - I’ve recently had to produce a load and I’m grateful I had it, there’s been times when I wouldn’t have had it due to expense. But I agree about the ‘hurty words’ rubbish.

But there is a worrying trend towards increasing government control including ID cards (the U-turn is just for the physical cards, not the information centralisation), more arrests for 'hurty words' and controlling information to manage the population.

In that context, I do find it unsettling.

Perhaps we should take note of the current suggestion to disarm farmers in the UK

Strawberry why does the government want to disarm farmers? Is it because in the case of civil war they are worried that farmer might be on the ‘wrong’ side?

Good point!

Perhaps we should take note of the current suggestion to disarm farmers in the UK (despite the recognised need for farmers to have guns for pest-control)

www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5e652a5b110098ca

Probably a lot more quickly in countries where the population tends to be armed, at a guess!

I think that's how it starts: with people grouping together around a common identity and providing for themselves the services the state no longer provides.

I suppose the question is: at what point does the interest group become (militarily?) powerful enough to stop the state from taking significant amounts despite providing no benefit to the group?

If you look at South Africa that's a good example of where it's already happening - there are special interest groups that are building their own towns, universities etc now.
One rung below, there is a massive private security industry, private healthcare etc. Basically, as more and more of the state fails, it's propped up by the vastly more efficient private businesses.

The state's role is now predominantly to provide very basic, failing services to people too poor to pay for anything privately, give these people tiny amounts of welfare payments, hinder private business with bizarre racial quotas, tax what they can, and loot most of the tax takings. They're also currently trying to hijack the private health provision.

Agreed.

Nothing will ever be enough.

Just as the low living standards (to the point of population starvation) were the proof that communism structurally doesn't work... I'm rather afraid that this is the unravelling of the democratic socialism we've had for the past 70 years.

I can see actually see a route to the type of future written about in dystopian novels like Neal Stephenson's, where nation states cease to be a unifying power, and instead specific interest groups create their own collectives - managing taxes, security etc.

It's a far less efficient structure than high-trust nation states, but if national cohesion fails to the point that a high-trust social contract is no longer viable, then it's a natural progression.

What I don't get is why so many of these groups are such nasty little cunts. I mean they burned a child in her home?
Even the younger ones, I've soon footage of them swaggering down a street smashing windows and cars. An ordinary, working-class street as well.

I come from a country that is ranked Least Developed, there is serious, absolute poverty there and I have NEVER witnessed that kind of antisocial behaviour - if a group of teens walzed around destroying people's meagre possessions, they'd get beaten in the street by the men.

Whereas here, schools, medical care, homes and food are all provided and they just act like total psychopaths?

They’ve discounted a connection with the house fire.

What I don't get is why so many of these groups are such nasty little cunts. I mean they burned a child in her home?
Even the younger ones, I've soon footage of them swaggering down a street smashing windows and cars. An ordinary, working-class street as well.

I come from a country that is ranked Least Developed, there is serious, absolute poverty there and I have NEVER witnessed that kind of antisocial behaviour - if a group of teens walzed around destroying people's meagre possessions, they'd get beaten in the street by the men.

Whereas here, schools, medical care, homes and food are all provided and they just act like total psychopaths?

I believe they will just go after the better off and not the rich. A levelling down.

I won't vote Green whilst they have this unholy alliance with Islamists, plus an open door migrant policy. They are the only party suggesting anything close to what PP have suggested. Plus I think they will tax the old out of their homes and take their state pension away, replacing it with UBI, which would mean we have worked for nothing.

As I said there is plenty of money in this country. Neoliberalism has enabled it all to accrue in a few places. The number of billionaires has gone through the roof.

There’s only one answer - tax the rich. Get the Royal Family to pay their taxes, and take it from the aristos. Contrary to one recent report which all started as marketing from a wealth management agency, that kind of wealth does not pick up and leave, you can’t pack up hundreds of acres.

Alternatively we need to rethink the globalised financial system entirely and refound it on resources. Either way the right wing and super rich won’t like it. They’ve had everything their own way for 50 odd years and their grip will be hard to unpick as they have used it to buy power. But that is where the money is, it has been systematically removed from the public coffers for 50 odd years, and now we need it back. It exists. Take it back in the way it was taken from us in the first place. Nationalise services, give housing back into the control of local government, and the money will recirculate to the public purse instead of the billionaires.

Where will the money come from?

The first stop is law. Effective law. Policing and law is under-invested - like everything else in this rundown country. It has been very deliberately done. And prisons. No more crying that there is no money in a country with so much of it.

The second and bigger problem is to present an alternative way of life. A real, genuinely real alternative. For people on the bottom who have nothing, so many people in power live in a very different world. Everything has to be genuinely accessible to those who have nothing, who now own nothing more than the clothes on their back thanks to Landlording. And this is problematic, tying into questions of how we are going to live in future in an age of globalism, of computers, of over production. I can’t give you a simple quick answer on Mumsnet in 3 short words!

You can look at simpler starting methods, which again involve investment - training needs to be free again, wages need to pay again, we need to rebuild an economy where ordinary working people can buy goods produced locally. Trades too, as others say.

But wider economic change is a challenge in the technological age. We may need lower populations with more living on the land as we did in the 1930s and accept that ‘economics of scale’ are often directly harmful to societies. I’d like to see a reversal of the whole principles of globalisation and more emphasis once again on local production and local resilience. People have written entire libraries on this topic so I’m not going to be able to provide a road map here, but it would now take some unpicking after 30 years of shifts the other way. Accept national boundaries developed for a reason and the one world system is doomed to failure for various reasons both economic and cultural.

Cultural change is more problematic still than economic. We also need to stop the influx of American-led shit culture, violent movies films and music which glorify gangsta culture. Accept that that is a problem. Somehow reduce the impact of the internet - fortunately it does seem to be its own downfall in a lot of ways.

Unpick the ridiculous system that has led to all the wealth of the world tied up in a very few men and leaves the rest of us trading debt. As I said no more crying that there is no money. There’s loads. It’s the distribution that is the problem.

Rebuild the economy, unpick culture and completely change the global trading system. Oh and reinvigorate local democracy. Simple, no?? Pick somewhere and start sweeping. Britain always says nothing can be done because problems are too large.

They only get larger when they’re left. As we see.