Well, I don't know if you are or not, I guess. I do know that we have the First Amendment; you have one day a week at Speaker's Corner.
We have Article 9 (FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, CONSCIENCE AND RELIGION) and 10 (FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION) and 11 FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY AND ASSOCIATION, of the Human Rights Act.
We have the Second Amendment; you have a greater chance of being mugged in London than in New York.
And more chance of being murdered in the USA than in the UK. I'm not sure what the relationship you are trying to show here
Incidentally - New York is one of the
strictest States when it comes to gun control (And New York City is apparently moreso), and consequently I believe it has low gun ownership.
We have a Fourth Amendment right against warrentless search and seizure; you live in a country where every city and town is under 24-hour video surveillance.
And we have Article 8 (RIGHT TO RESPECT FOR PRIVATE AND FAMILY LIFE ) whereas you have the PATRIOT act and so on.
The government runs most of your channels on broadcast TV.
We have BBC 1, 2, 3, 4, cbeebies, cbbc, news and parliament (I think that's all of them).
That's not most of our channels. (compare: Sky 1, Sky 2, Sky Atlantic, Sky Poker, Sky Living, Sky Arts1, Sky Arts2 Sky Living it, Sky News, a couple dozen Sky Movies channels, Sky Sports 1-4, Sky Sports News, Sky Sports F1)
And the BBC is a corporation, and is not run by the government. It is merely funded by the people via government taxes. And that isn't written in stone - there are movements to altering the manner in which the BBC is funded.
They install missile batteries on your apartment buildings.
Yes they did. And your government has done some pretty shady things, too.
There aren't a lot of people who look at your country as "the home of the free."
We have, as any country, limited freedom. But it's hardly despotic. And if it is, so too is the US.
But there's a great deal of bullshit you guys put up with from your government - all in the name of "public safety" of course - that you just couldn't do in the US, literally because of what guys like this would do
The US government has done plenty of bullshit in the name of 'national security', literally with the full support of plenty of gun wielding folk.
When I go to London, where you literally can't walk around the corner without being videotapped and facially-recognized
I don't that's literally true at all. But we both agree that there are some valid privacy concerns at stake. Let's hope your security services don't perform any intrusive acts of surveillance (I'm sure they'd never cite
'public safety' out of fear of the gun wielding folk of the USA)!
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.