To think my mum has fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole and I can't get her out

[Coffeesoon]

My mum has just sent me a video of Ant Middleton explaining how in 2027 the migrants / boat people who are seeking asylum and have already been made legal, will kick off and attack us all.
He says there will be a civil war, he knows because of army contacts and that we need to prepare.
What am I suppose to say to that?
She fully believes that an army is being formed and is constantly telling me or sending me videos about it.
I love my mum but since covid, which she thought wasn't real, she has been thinking the government is out to get us. We live in an area of increased immigrants and she absolutely hates them.
I've tried to talk to her but shes adamant and its really getting me down.

This struck a chord because in my case, my cousin just stopped asking me and the rest of the wider family how we are or to follow up on news in a family WhatsApp group that Steve has passed her driving test with a "congratulations" or to mark people' birthdays, ask after their pets/kids, wish Aunty Sue well ahead of her operation etc. All the normal sort of family communication.

All her communication just became like broadcasting her new views on Davos/cars/fiat currency to us. It wasn't two way communication any more or engagement with other people's lives. It was like she was running a solo podcast in her head.

It's really sad. She has pushed people away and dug deeper in. She must be very lonely now but that makes it harder for her to see a way out I suspect.

Yup. Wanting the opposition party to fail is an unfortunate feature of confrontational democratic systems. Likes of Farage and Trump play it well.

For Farage and Trump to get in, they need people to think things are really bad. So they try to do all they can to make things look bad.

While the UK government, Tories or Labour, are off doing negotiations to try to slow illegal immigration, for example by trying to get the message out " don't try to come to the UK illegally", Farage and the his ilk are out broadcasting " come to Britain, the doors are open and there is free 4 star hotels for all".

Same as Trump done. While Harris was in South America, doing radio interviews to say don't try and come, Trump and his pals at Fox were yelling " The doors are open".

Farage needs as many illegal folk as he can get, because his message is that only he can fix it.

He done the same at the EU. He yelled all the time about EU fisheries policy. So the EU put him on the fisheries committee, and he did not attend a single meeting.

Farage does not want to fix things. He is setting fires, while dangling his limp hosepipe, " Look here, see wot I got".

Its not mental illness it's brainwashing, sadly.

Sorry OP that you're going through this. It's cult like, this stuff. Guessing Ant Middleton makes a lot of money from people viewing his stuff.

Maybe the only thing you can do at this point is tell her you love to speak with her, and spend time with her, but ONLY if the Ant Middleton stuff is off the table and never mentioned. It might not work as he's peddling end of times, siege mentality stuff. But it's not something you should have to listen to.

My sister & I have started getting tougher with mum. We stay on safe topics of conversations and challenge her on the sources of her info. There is a new GGC who she adores and this has distracted her a bit lately. My sister told her straight she was visiting less as she can’t face the rants. I tend to call her out & show her alternative information though she quite often ignores or dismisses articles I show her.

You have made my point exactly.

Again - there is NO EVIDENCE that immigration is leading to increases in sexual crime in this country.

None.

We don't have robust enough data. The data we do have suggest that people born overseas are slightly more likely to commit sex crimes, but even that data is flawed, because it undercounts the total population size of foreign nationals in the UK.

If you follow the data - and data gaps - to their natural conclusion, the picture it paints is that foreign nationals are actually LESS likely to commit sexual crimes.

However, I wouldn't be putting that out there as 'fact' because we don't know.

And until we do know, we should stop filling the internet up with utter horseshit.

I want to pick up on your point about the increase in the number of rapes recorded in the UK between 2021 figures, and 2023/24 figures.

The jump between 8k-ish and 71k-ish sounds SCARY, right? And yes, you casually acknowledge the changes in the way they are recorded, but in a way that dismisses this as being the real reason, because we all know the real reason, right?

Me, I'm a woman that wants to know who my fucking enemy is, so the first thing I do when I see scary numbers like that is interrogate the data behind them. I don't invent a link in my head - it must be the brown men! - because then I might put myself at risk by being super suspicious of the wrong men and find myself shouting at hotels or something.

So this is what I do when I see numbers that look fucking alarming. If I'm in a rush, like today, I ask ChatGPT to explore the issue only using official government sources of data, not news sites or web articles. That bit's important as I don't want rhetoric or bias coming in. I just want to look at the data.

I've copied the response verbatim, it should include links:

Short version – those two numbers are not like-for-like. Between March 2001 and March 2024 there were big changes in:

• how “rape” is defined in law
• how the police are required to record rape
• how many reports get turned into crime records at all

All of that massively inflates the modern figures relative to 2001, even if the underlying level of rape had stayed the same.

1. The legal definition of rape changed
The 2001 figure of 8,593 is based on the pre-2003 law, which had a narrower definition of rape. Hansard

From 1 May 2004, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 came into force. It:

• redefined rape as penile penetration of the vagina, anus or mouth, where the victim does not consent and the defendant does not reasonably believe they consent
• made the victim gender-neutral (rape can be of a woman or a man)
• created new specific offences such as rape of a child under 13

Legislation.gov.uk+2Wikipedia+2

That means some acts that would have been charged (and recorded) under different sexual-offence categories in 2001 now sit inside the “rape” category.
So the modern “rape” category is broader than the 2001 “rape” category.

2. Crime recording standards and counting rules were tightened
There have been several waves of change in the Home Office crime recording rules and how forces apply them.

a) General move to better recording
Inspections in 2014 found that forces were under-recording crime, especially sexual offences – around 19 percent of notifiable crime overall and about 26 percent of sexual offences were not being recorded at all. HMICFRS+1
After that, forces were told to tighten up. The UK statistics regulator later reported that recording accuracy had improved over the next decade. Office for Statistics Regulation

In practice, this means many incidents that might have been logged only as an “incident” or not at all in 2001 are now required to be recorded as a rape crime if they meet the definition and the victim appears to be telling the truth.

b) Rape now recorded on a per-offender basis
From July 2016, the Home Office counting rules for rape changed so that rape is recorded on a per-offender basis, not just per incident. Office for National Statistics+1

Example:

• Old approach – one victim raped by three offenders might have produced one recorded rape.
• New approach – the same scenario must be recorded as three rapes.

That change alone pushes the recorded rape count up without any change in how many rapes occurred.

c) Third-party and safeguarding reports
Guidance has been tightened so that reports coming via third parties, safeguarding referrals or Sexual Assault Referral Centres often now have to be recorded as a rape crime (or at least as a specific “reported incident of rape” code) even if the victim is not yet engaging directly with police. Amazon Web Services, Inc.+1

In 2001 many of those situations would not have become a counted rape offence at all.

3. ONS explicitly says rape figures are not a good long-term trend measure
The Office for National Statistics now repeatedly warns that police recorded sexual offences – including rape – are not a reliable way to track trends over long periods, because:

• recording practices have improved
• new offences have been created and moved into different categories
• more victims are coming forward

Office for National Statistics+1

Instead, they recommend using the Crime Survey for England and Wales to look at long-term trends in victimisation rather than raw police counts.

4. The specific numbers you quote

• 8,593 rapes recorded in the year ending March 2001 is a Home Office figure reported in Parliament at the time. Hansard
• 71,227 rapes recorded in 2024 is taken from ONS police recorded crime and widely reproduced by Rape Crisis as the number of rape offences recorded by police in 2024. Rape Crisis England & Wales+1

Those two numbers sit on very different bases:

• different legal definition of rape
• different counting rules (per offender vs per incident, more third-party and historic cases included)
• much stricter expectations that police actually record what is reported

So the 71,227 vs 8,593 comparison mostly tells you that law and recording have changed and more victims are being recorded, not that rape has suddenly become roughly eight times more prevalent.

If you want to stick very closely to verified sources and not overclaim, you can summarise like this:

• Police-recorded rapes are up around eight-fold between 2001 and 2024, but
• the ONS crime survey shows that:
• the overall prevalence of sexual assault has moved between about 1.5% and 3% over the last 20 years Office for National Statistics
• the prevalence of rape or assault by penetration has been “relatively stable over the last 15 years” Office for National Statistics

From that, the cautious, evidence-based line is:
the eight-fold rise in recorded rapes is overwhelmingly a product of changes in law, recording rules and reporting, not an eight-fold rise in the underlying incidence of rape. The best available survey data suggest that the true risk of being raped or otherwise sexually assaulted each year has probably changed by tens of percent at most, not by a factor of eight, over the last 15–20 years – and for rape or penetration specifically, official statistics describe the trend as broadly stable.

Anything more precise than that would be going beyond what the verified sources can support.

If we are genuinely serious about women's safety, this is the kind of rigour that needs applying to any claims about rape/sexual assault. And I would like us to be genuinely serious about women's safety.

Demographics is destiny.

A lot of people on this thread clearly don't know what has happened to Lebanon. There's an assumption, I think, that all Middle Eastern countries, barring Israel, are and always have been Islamic.

This is not true. It was once a majority Christian country that, like us, allowed a small number of Muslims in.

The Muslim population kept growing through birth rate and more immigration. That, coupled with Christian emigration, meant that the current Christian population in Lebanon is 41%.

They're now a Muslim-majority country with Sharia Law. They do, from what I've read, have a dual legal system in place, but Sharia Law is there, all the same, when it wasn't.

Iran, Afghanistan are other examples where Islam has taken over previously non-Islamic countries and there are more. It is not outside the realm of possibility that Britain could become an Islamic State, if we continue on the trajectory that we are on.

I don't think we can afford to write off those concerns are nonsense or fearmongering or batshit. Unless you want to sleepwalk us into Sharia Law and doom your children's futures.

I'm not conflating the two, you are. The grooming gangs aren't refugees.

Your ramped up hysteria over your own conflation shows who you are, to use your rather ridiculous phrase.

You are going to love this.

LOVE it.

The ECHR explicitly protects us from a Sharia takeover. As does the 2010 Equality Act.

Again, my personal way of exploring issues that worry or scare me is to do some research. Again, in this instance I did use ChatGPT for speed, because I save more rigorous research for things I actually believe might be a problem.

I asked:
Are there any mechanics in place to prevent Muslims taking over seats of power in the UK and implementing Sharia law, or are we at risk of becoming a Muslim state?

There are no special mechanics in UK law designed to stop “Muslims taking over” anything – that kind of religious gatekeeping would itself be unlawful discrimination. What does exist are constitutional and legal safeguards that limit what any group in power can do, whether they are Muslim, Christian, atheist, or anything else.

I’ll break it into two bits:

1. can Muslims hold power at all
2. could any government just “implement sharia law”

1. Can Muslims be blocked from “seats of power”?

In short: no – and that is intentional.

• Freedom of religion is protected by the Human Rights Act 1998 (article 9, reflecting the European Convention on Human Rights). The state is not allowed to punish or exclude you from public life because of your faith, as long as you respect the rights of others. Legislation.gov.uk+1
• Religion is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Direct discrimination against someone because they are Muslim (or of any religion or no religion) is generally unlawful in jobs, services and public functions. Legislation.gov.uk+2Acas+2

So the system is deliberately set up so that Muslims, like anyone else, can stand for parliament, be councillors, ministers, judges, civil servants and so on, if voters or appointing bodies choose them. That’s how a liberal democracy is supposed to work.

For context, Muslims are about 6–7 percent of the population in England and Wales, according to the 2021 census. Office for National Statistics+2Factually+2

2. Could a group in power “implement sharia law” in the UK?
Here the relevant safeguards are not about Islam specifically, but about how law is made and constrained.

a) How law is actually changed
To change UK law in a big way, including introducing religious rules, you need an act of parliament:

• A bill must be introduced
• It goes through multiple readings, committee stages and votes in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords
• Only after both houses agree in the same form and the bill receives royal assent does it become law Institute for Government+3Parliament News+3GOV.UK+3

This process makes it very hard for any single party or faction to ram through extreme, unpopular or unconstitutional changes, especially if they obviously conflict with basic rights.

Even governments with big majorities face resistance in the Lords, the courts, the media, civil society and at elections if they push something that looks like theocratic rule. You can see how contentious much narrower issues – like assisted dying or abortion reform – already are. The Guardian+2Reuters+2

b) Human rights and equality law act as brakes
Even if a government wanted to make UK law closely mirror one religious code, they would run into hard limits:

• Human Rights Act / ECHR – any law must respect rights such as equality between men and women, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, fair trial and protection from inhuman or degrading treatment. Courts can issue a “declaration of incompatibility” if an act breaches these rights, putting massive political pressure on parliament to change it. Legislation.gov.uk+2equalityhumanrights.com+2
• Equality Act 2010 – public bodies must not discriminate on grounds like sex, religion or sexual orientation. A legal system that openly favoured one faith or one gender would collide head-on with this duty. GOV.UK+1

Many interpretations of sharia commonly invoked in scare stories – for example, unequal evidence rules for women, hudud corporal punishments, criminalising apostasy – would be flatly incompatible with those rights. They could not simply be written into UK law without dismantling the UK’s wider human-rights framework for everyone, not just non-Muslims.

c) What does exist now – sharia councils etc
What you do see in the UK are:

• sharia councils or tribunals that offer religious guidance or handle things like Islamic divorces for people who choose to use them
• They operate only in civil / religious matters, not criminal law, and they cannot override UK law – their decisions are ultimately subject to the ordinary courts and must comply with equality and human-rights standards

In that sense they are similar to Jewish Beth Din courts in family and commercial law, or to churches applying canon law internally. They are not parallel legal systems that can replace the state. UK courts remain the final authority.

3. So what “prevents a takeover”?
If you strip the religious label off, the real “mechanics” are just the normal pillars of a liberal democracy:

• Elections – no group can govern without winning and then retaining broad support from voters
• Two-chamber parliament and royal assent – laws need sustained majorities in both houses in the face of public scrutiny
• Courts and human rights law – legislation that violates basic rights can be challenged and politically delegitimised
• Equality law – you cannot lawfully sideline or persecute people based on their religion or lack of it
• Plural society – the UK is religiously mixed, with no single faith anywhere near a demographic majority Office for National Statistics+2House of Commons Library+2

Those safeguards apply whether the people in power are mostly secular, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or anything else. The system is designed to stop any group turning the UK into a theocracy, not to keep particular minorities “out” of power.

If you want, we can look at specific worries you have (for example sharia courts, blasphemy laws, women’s rights) and map them one by one against what UK law currently allows or blocks.

Your point about other countries being seized by religious extremists is accidentally a good one, but not for the reasons you think.

The threat to our safeguards doesn't come from immigrants - it comes from electing a government that seeks to remove our human rights. I've looked at Iran as example, as you've mentioned it twice now. It was always a Muslim country, incidentally. You're wrong about that - the shift was from an authoritarian Muslim monarchy to a theocratic Muslim supreme political authority, it was never the land of milk and honey for citizens.

I asked:
Iran was a more liberal country until the revolution in 1979. What stops that happening in the UK?

ChatGPT said:
Nothing in politics is literally impossible forever – but the route Iran took in 1979 depended on a mix of conditions that just don’t exist in the UK, and there are some pretty chunky guardrails in the way.

It helps to separate two questions:
what went wrong in Iran
what is structurally different in the UK today

1. What actually happened in Iran
Before 1979 Iran already wasn’t a liberal democracy in the way we’d use that term for the UK.

Some key features of pre-revolution Iran:
It was an authoritarian monarchy. After the 1953 coup that overthrew the elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, the Shah ruled with very limited real checks and heavy foreign backing. Wikipedia+2Cambridge University Press & Assessment+2

Political opposition was heavily repressed by the secret police SAVAK, which used torture and surveillance to keep people in line. Explaining History Podcast+2Brussels Morning Newspaper+2

There were elections and a parliament, but they took place inside a tightly controlled system with little trust or legitimacy.

Over time you had economic strain, inequality, corruption and very visible Western influence, which fed the sense that the regime wasn’t just authoritarian but also alien and un-Islamic. Encyclopedia Britannica+2OUP Academic+2

Crucially, Iran had a large, centralised Shia clerical establishment that was both religious authority and political opposition network. When the Shah’s regime started to crumble, that network could mobilise millions, and Khomeini could turn a broad anti-Shah coalition into a theocratic state. Wikipedia+2Encyclopedia Britannica+2

So the revolution replaced one highly concentrated, personalised power (the Shah) with another (Khomeini and the new clerical state) in a context where democratic institutions were already weak and widely distrusted.

2. The UK’s structure is very different
To get an Iran-style theocratic revolution in the UK you would need not just demographic change, but failure across almost every major institution at once. The main differences:

a) Long-standing democratic habits

The UK has had:
regular, competitive elections for over a century
peaceful changes of government as the norm
opposition parties, pressure groups, unions, NGOs and courts that can realistically challenge governments

The constitution is uncodified and parliament is sovereign, which sounds fragile, but in practice the system has evolved checks and balances between government, parliament, courts and the monarch to stop power being entirely unchecked. British Institute of Human Rights+2Research Briefings+2

Those norms matter. Iran in the 1970s simply didn’t have the same depth of lived experience with governments losing power peacefully and everyone accepting the result.

b) A plural – and increasingly non-religious – society
Religiously, Iran in 1979 was overwhelmingly Shia Muslim, with a single clerical hierarchy that could plausibly speak for “the nation”.
England and Wales today look nothing like that:
46.2 percent identify as Christian
37.2 percent say they have no religion
around 6.5 percent identify as Muslim
with the rest spread among other faiths. Office for National Statistics+2Northumberland Modern Gov+2

That means:
there is no single religious bloc anywhere near a majority
there is no unified religious hierarchy that could claim to speak for the country as a whole

So even if a very religious movement of any kind grew, it would be operating in a landscape where most people are either a different religion or not religious at all, and where political identity doesn’t cleanly map onto religious identity.

c) Civilian control of a non-political military
In Iran the army’s loyalty to the Shah and its eventual demoralisation and collapse were key moments in the revolution. Once the armed forces stopped defending the regime, power was up for grabs. Wikipedia+1

In the UK:
the armed forces are under firm civilian control and are deeply socialised to stay out of party politics
the British model is widely cited as an example of balanced civilian–military relations and professional non-intervention in domestic politics Cambridge University Press & Assessment+1
For any revolutionary movement to seize power, it would either need the armed forces to back it or at least stand aside. That would run against everything about how the forces are recruited, trained and commanded.

d) Legal and international constraints
The UK is tied into a web of rights protections and international commitments that make an abrupt, theocratic turn much harder:
the European Convention on Human Rights, which the UK is still bound by, guarantees core democratic rights – free elections, free speech, freedom of religion, equality before the law – and is enforced by the Strasbourg court. House of Commons Library+1
the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporates those rights into domestic law and lets UK courts scrutinise legislation and government actions against them. House of Commons Library+1
Even if future governments tinkered with or repealed some of that, they’d face heavy political, legal and diplomatic cost, and they’d still be operating in a political culture that treats things like free elections, free speech and equality before the law as basic expectations.

e) Dispersed power, noisy public sphere
Power in the UK is spread out more than it looks:
devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
strong local government in some areas
a loud, adversarial media and a huge NGO / civil-society sector
That doesn’t make democratic backsliding impossible, but it means you need to capture lots of different institutions and publics, not just a palace and a state broadcaster.

3. So what actually “stops” an Iran-style revolution?
In practice, it’s not a secret mechanism aimed at any particular religion. It’s the combination of:
habitual democracy – people are used to voting parties in and out rather than looking for saviours
pluralism – religious, cultural and political diversity with no single group capable of dominating everyone else
civilian-controlled military – no tradition of coups or armed “guardians of the revolution”
rule-of-law culture – courts, lawyers and rights language that give people tools to push back
international embedding – human-rights treaties and alliances that raise the cost of going full theocracy

For a 1979-Iran scenario here you would need, roughly:
a severe, prolonged crisis that destroys trust in elections and parties
a government or movement willing to tear up rights protections and crush opposition
a single ideological or religious leadership able to unify a majority behind replacing democratic institutions
security forces either captured by that movement or collapsing

That’s not how the UK looks today. The real risks to watch are often gradual – erosion of rule of law, normalising discrimination, weakening independent institutions. Those can and should be worried about, but they are very different from “we wake up one day and discover we’ve had an Iranian-style religious revolution”.

I don't know about you, but I read all of that, understand the differences between the UK and a country like Iran and think, you know what, we're not sleepwalking into Sharia Law.

What we ARE doing, however, is sleepwalking into casually spreading fear as fact online.

Incidentally, ChatGPT is free - so is Google. You can all 'do your own research' into any issue that scares you. Just frame your question neutrally and ask it only to use official sources of information, not news outlets or web articles.

If you're worried, you can ask the supplementary question, 'Can you interrogate what you've just told me and adjust it for any bias'?

I would just like to draw this bit out of my long post about Iran above:

That’s not how the UK looks today. The real risks to watch are often gradual – erosion of rule of law, normalising discrimination, weakening independent institutions.

There are currently political voices seeking to erode the rule of law, normalise discrimination and weaken independent institutions. They are telling us we need to leave the European Court of Human Rights, and tear up the 2010 Equalities Act. Discrimination in the form of open racism is already normalised.

If anyone wants to avoid sleepwalking into anything, they should vote to protect the rights of all people, accepting that this will include the rights of people they don't like or agree with - just in case one day, they themselves become part of the group that society has decided not to agree with or like.

The threat to our safeguards doesn't come from immigrants - it comes from electing a government that seeks to remove our human rights.

Isn't this just spreading fear though?

Neither the conservatives or reform "seek to remove our human rights" do they. Both have explained that at length haven't they?

The UK Conservative Party's official policy, announced in October 2025, is to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) if they win the next general election. This stance is primarily driven by immigration policy and aims to give the UK government greater control over border security by ending legal challenges based on human rights law.
Key Details of the Conservative Party Position
Repeal of the Human Rights Act: The Conservatives plan to scrap the HRA, which currently gives effect to ECHR rights in UK domestic law, and replace it with a British Bill of Rights.
Withdrawal from the ECHR: The party leader, Kemi Badenoch, has stated that leaving the ECHR is a "necessary step" to protect borders and national security, making it a firm manifesto commitment. This would make the UK one of only a few nations outside the Convention, alongside Russia and Belarus.
Focus on Immigration: The central goal is to stop what the party describes as "spurious" human rights arguments from blocking the deportation of illegal migrants and foreign criminals, particularly in relation to the Rwanda removal scheme.
Reassertion of Parliamentary Sovereignty: The goal is to make the UK Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter of human rights matters in the UK, rather than the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, allowing UK courts to diverge from ECtHR case law.
Wider Implications
Critics, including the Law Society and human rights organisations like Amnesty International UK, argue that repealing the HRA and leaving the ECHR would weaken fundamental protections for all UK citizens, not just migrants. They contend that the HRA has been vital in cases involving:
Justice for victims of crimes
Ensuring proper care for elderly couples
Holding the state accountable for actions like the Hillsborough disaster
The move also has potential constitutional implications for the devolved nations (Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), where the ECHR is embedded in their founding legislation, and could potentially jeopardise the Good Friday Agreement.
In the 2024 general election manifesto, the Conservative party stated: "If we are forced to choose between our security and the jurisdiction of a foreign court, including the ECtHR, we will always choose our security". This indicates a willingness to prioritize national policy over compliance with the ECHR if necessary.

Reform UK is seeking to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998, withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and replace the HRA with a new "British Bill of Rights". The party argues these changes are necessary to control immigration and prioritise the rights of "law-abiding people".
Key Proposals and Implications
Repeal of the Human Rights Act (HRA) and withdrawal from the ECHR: The HRA incorporates the rights and freedoms guaranteed under the ECHR into UK domestic law, allowing people to defend their rights in UK courts. Withdrawing from the ECHR would make the UK one of the only European states not signed up to the convention (alongside Russia and Belarus) and could have significant implications for the UK's international standing and existing agreements, such as the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement.
A New "British Bill of Rights": Reform UK's proposed bill would aim to put the rights of "law-abiding people first" and be based on common law traditions. Critics argue this could lead to a lower level of human rights protection and make it harder to hold the government accountable for violations.
Disapplication of International Conventions: As part of its plan to tackle "illegal immigration", Reform UK has expressed a desire to "disapply" or temporarily suspend the application of other international agreements, including the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against Torture, and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention. Legal experts note that the prohibition against torture is an absolute, non-derogable right under international law and cannot be set aside.
Scrapping the Equality Act 2010: Reform UK also pledges to replace the Equality Act, which it claims "requires discrimination in the name of 'positive action'". This move could impact a wide range of protections against discrimination based on characteristics such as age, sex, race, and disability.
In essence, Reform UK proposes a significant restructuring of the current human rights framework in the UK, a move that its proponents frame as restoring common sense and sovereignty, while critics describe it as a move that would significantly weaken fundamental legal protections for everyone in the UK.

1. How would you feel if tomorrow morning, you walked outside your house to head to work, and found 600+ men of unknown origin wandering around your streets? I can answer this from experience. I live near an asylum hotel - 4 miles away, to be precise. I can tell you that in an online public consultation that included door to door consultation with very local residents - the immediate neighbours, on the street, because it is a residential street - there were 18 complaints, and only 1 was about the behaviour of a resident of the hotel. The rest were people worried that it would attract protests. It since has. The residents of the hotel recently did a big litter pick at a local nature reserve, and they've formed a football team and go into town to play on a Sunday. Criminality hasn't increased. They use the same bus services as local residents but otherwise keep themselves to themselves. The actual people that live here aren't happy that the hotel is being used in this way - because who is? - but not because they are afraid of the men (and it is all men). They were scared at first, because the men hang around outside the hotel a lot smoking, on their phones and eating apples - they seem to eat a LOT of apples - but that's because they can't work and there's nothing else for them to do. The hotel has been in use for about 3 years now and as nothing has happened, the concerns are mostly about what the fear of asylum hotels does to house prices, the state of disrepair the hotel is falling into now the owners aren't investing in its upkeep because they don't give a shit about the residents, and latterly the fucking great big cage that's been put up around it to protect the hotel from bussed in morons that shout at hotels.
2. How would you feel to learn that, without consultation, they'd been housed in a hotel or barracks close to your community? They were. I had no feelings about it beyond why the fuck aren't we clearing the backlog rather than paying for people to live in cramped conditions in a hotel?
3. How would you feel knowing they were allowed to roam freely, without any controls or supervision? This is a ridiculous question and I'm not going to bother answering it. I'm really pleased they are involving themselves in the community, as it goes. They're people, not animals.
4. How would you feel to learn that they were loitering around children's schools and parks?* Parks and schools your own children go to. The residents at the local asylum hotel attend some free classes at my son's college. So they catch the same bus as him, and are on the same campus as him. They use the same playing field as him and kids younger than him on a Sunday. I feel nothing. Loitering is ridiculously loaded, loitering around children is also ridiculously loaded, this is another competely ridiculous question.*

Lol! Well reasoned debate!? I miss the laughing reaction emoji.

Does 'prioritising the rights of law-abiding people' not concern you?

Because say, the law could change to erode the rights of gay people... What then? Do we accept that there are no universal human rights? Are we happy for there to be no protections for UK citizens if their government abuses their rights? Do we think the Supreme Court is strong enough protection when both the Conservative party and Reform also seek to politically appoint judges, like America?

And are we happy to live in a country where prisoners and criminals don't have rights? Currently, we are rightly angry when the police beat up suspects held in custody, or leave them without clothes. What if those people had no rights?

Anyone using chat GPT for research. Do the following: add this to your prompt for better information:

Provide sources with date and time and link to source. Do not make up answers, use factual information only. Adjust for bias. Do not interpret information. Provide factual confirmed information from reputable sources only.

For example, I once asked it to write me an article about a seaside town I was researching. I knew once I read the response it wasnit accurate. Added this prompt and it changed my whole answer. Chat gpt is not an encyclopedia. It just pulls stuff from the internet, so if the information it is using is incorrect, your answer will be incorrect. You should always ask for sources and links to verify. And never rely on the output verbatim.

Nah @Birthdaysocks is right. The fact that you blankety call people who come here illegally refugees is proving her point. And ironic in a way

How do we know some of these refugees aren’t the perpetrators of conflicts? We do not know who these people are.

And putting forward a slightly different view. I’m the child of a 1st gen migrant. I’m sick of hearing the horrifying stories coming from my country and others in the region. By allowing any Tom, Dick and Harry here, we’re denying the people who truly deserve to be here a chance at life and would be so grateful to be here

The judges and the members of the public who defend criminals even when they show us who they are!

I’m so sick of the suicidal empathy.

My mums sister is now like this, we know the number of children losing their lives to illnesses that can be vaccinated against has increased in the US, any time an unvaccinated child dies and it is reported in the press she goes on a tirade on facebook about how big pharma are kidnapping these children and using them in medical experiments and making vaccines from their skin.

She doesn’t believe white people can be rapists, as white people are superior, with white men being the most superior so it’s only right that we all let white men do whatever they want. When a white man is in the press for rape or sexual assault there is yet another rant on facebook about the victim being a liar, hating men, betraying women etc.

She believes things like thresholds for UC, child benefit etc only apply to white british people, apparently all non-white british people are all on full benefits, including Sadiq Khan.

You know how things like sensor taps etc aren’t as effective for people with darker skin, this is because they aren’t sensors, they’re cameras, and only white people are being watched and arrested, they don’t record if the person isn’t white.

Her newest one is that if you say christmas in Tesco you lose your job and any stock with the work christmas on is banned, which is quite odd as during her little facebook video of her walking round tesco the word christmas was everywhere.

She believes only white children are in care, white children are taken away from their families so they can be raised by non-white people. If you’re not white you can buy children from care and councils have regular auctions. Non-white children who are in, or have been in care are paid actors by the state. Fertility problems don’t exist either, white people are secrectly being given drugs so they can’t have children.

Then we can’t forget halloumi, it never used to squeak, the squeak has been added and the sensors can hear it. Cheese is now a spy employed by the state:

From my experience in my community where the hotel was 1.3 miles from the town centre, where the high school is 0,6 miles & residential houses opposite on the same road. According to the Facebook group which went off like a firework when the hotel changed to house migrants. A girl in school uniform was offered £70 whilst waiting for the bus to sleep with him. A bystander heard & even took photos & posted the offender & because we live in a community where people will help a kid being bullied was chased all the way back to the hotel where the police where called. A lady defending them on another occasion spoke about how friendly they were & even helped her do a bit of gardening, later transpired she was harassed for payment with said helper just walking into her house uninvited. A note from the school saying men had been taking photos of school girls & to be vigilant one of which was a daughter of my friend. The local shop again hired a security guard & implemented a strict 2 people at a time into the shop at 1 time. I was in the shop where one was spitting on floor, clearly his throat & proper phlegm spit. I told the shopkeeper who said she’s used to it now! And we were never consulted either.

Aye.

This is what happens when folk don't do forced singing of traditional hymns.

And all that bad parenting stuff has an impact. Not wanting kids to do nativity and the like. Tut tut.

Anyway, I always find the word " brainwashed" a trifle strong.

It's a word conspiracists use a lot. It invokes images of a spinning helix and confusing white noise, eyelids pried open with matchsticks.

But some muslim groups are ?
Look on Brit assoc f mulims

@Simonjt the Tesco bit me laugh the Halloumi squeak is deranged.
I used to get weird ideas years ago but that was down to amphetamine psychosis,part of the Northern soul lifestyle

Too much BBC and Guardian

No. I said, put your counterarguments rather than simply stating you have them, that's all. No need for drama.

If you'd like to scroll back a bit, you'll see I already discussed your point about the 'context' of the rape statistics - maybe start there? It seems like it's something worth discussing, as the (perceived or real) increased risk of rape and sexual violence is one of the key things that worries people about mass/illegal immigration.

Why does the fact that Sweden changed their definition of rape make the UK's statistic less worrying? It means Sweden's rape stats have gone up, but we're still beating them. Doesn't that make it worse rather than better?

How should we understand the increase in rapes and assaults, then? Are these stats just worthless, in your opinion? Or do they tell us anything?

What about the fact that immigrants from Somalia and other places are committing more of such crimes, proportionally, compared to their population here? Does that tell us anything? Why or why not?

I don't think anyone is saying 'all immigrants are rapists' or 'all immigrants are a threat'. It's more complex than that. We are importing thousands of young men from countries where they are steeped in a misogynistic and homophobic culture and ideology, and we're not giving them any boundaries about how they need to behave if they want to live here. Of course not all of those men are rapists - but many of them don't even know that we don't tolerate women being sexually assaulted here, or that it's against the law. Do you agree this is a problem? If it's not a problem to you, why not? What would you say to a woman with daughters living near an asylum hotel where there had already been arrests and convictions of men for sexual assaults? What would you say to put her mind at rest and make her feel safe?