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nebby
hey everyone,

feel free to move this around, i didn't know where to put this.

i have been given this phrase as my topic for a public speaking competition. (i have to argue 'for' it)

i wanted to know what everyone else though of this phrases, wheter they agree, diagree and their reasons.

thank you all.


You've lost already.
It's nonsense.
We still have freedom of speech.
We still have freedom of press.
We still have freedom to vote for whoever we wish.

We still have lots of freedoms no matter what the Daily Mail tells us.
Reply 21
Democracy gives the illusion of freedom.
What do you feel stops our society from being free?

We're hardly stopped from doing anything at all. Yeah, we're not allowed to walk around the streets with a pistol tucked into our pants, but apart from that, you can do pretty much anything you'd deem moral.

Surveillance-wise, I can see why people would have concerns, but it's not like somebody can see anything which you'd mind somebody seeing on a CCTV camera (unless of course you are actually committing a crime!), and it's not as if people are sitting there reading all of your TSR posts, not unless you're a suspected terrorist.

Amongst anything, if you're not happy with the current state of affairs, you're free to vote for another party or candidate.
Reply 23
nebby
hey everyone,

feel free to move this around, i didn't know where to put this.

i have been given this phrase as my topic for a public speaking competition. (i have to argue 'for' it)

i wanted to know what everyone else though of this phrases, wheter they agree, diagree and their reasons.

thank you all.


Or you could say this. We are not free without the ability to Explicit consent or dissent. And voting only allows us to choose the political parties we have no reign after they are chosen, if we don't like any of the political parties and still vote its not our consent we are simply forced in this system which preserves the "democratic" society.

Or you could speak about privacy and how much power does the police have.
Reply 24
DarkWhite
What do you feel stops our society from being free?

We're hardly stopped from doing anything at all. Yeah, we're not allowed to walk around the streets with a pistol tucked into our pants, but apart from that, you can do pretty much anything 1.you'd deem moral.

Surveillance-wise, I can see why people would have concerns, but it's not like somebody can see anything which you'd mind somebody seeing on a CCTV camera (unless of course you are actually committing a crime!), and it's not as if people are sitting there reading all of your TSR posts, not unless you're a suspected terrorist.

Amongst anything, if you're not happy with the current state of affairs, 2. you're free to vote for another party or candidate.


First of all we are not free as you clearly stated what one deems moral the other may not deem moral e.g. I find it moral to kill a rapist offender but I am not allowed to do so by the law.

Being free to vote is not freedom at all, in fact it contradicts freedom. Voting means that we are only allowed to choose within the limited system of parties who do not have the power to change the law at all.
E.G you do not accept your current government therefore decide to vote for a goverment which meets your needs obviously none do, and if there is a party which shares your interests BUT the supporters are in the minority, the party wont gain power and you are left with a government which you do not approve of where is your freedom by voting then? Voting is simply so that the majority feels justified morally although underhanded schemes such as corporate funding of campaigns and such is legal.
DarkWhite

Surveillance-wise, I can see why people would have concerns, but it's not like somebody can see anything which you'd mind somebody seeing on a CCTV camera (unless of course you are actually committing a crime!), and it's not as if people are sitting there reading all of your TSR posts, not unless you're a suspected terrorist.QUOTE]

Thats the problem. The government have curbed laws and made new terrorism laws, twisted around european conventions, in order to survey potential threats, the likes of which are extremely, disproportionately rare. Freedom of privacy has gone and the govt has reversed the principle that innocence is presumed before proven guilty, everybody is now presumed guilty until .. and they rely on people thinking that it is for their own good
Stratos
First of all we are not free as you clearly stated what one deems moral the other may not deem moral e.g. I find it moral to kill a rapist offender but I am not allowed to do so by the law.

Being free to vote is not freedom at all, in fact it contradicts freedom. Voting means that we are only allowed to choose within the limited system of parties who do not have the power to change the law at all.
E.G you do not accept your current government therefore decide to vote for a goverment which meets your needs obviously none do, and if there is a party which shares your interests BUT the supporters are in the minority, the party wont gain power and you are left with a government which you do not approve of where is your freedom by voting then? Voting is simply so that the majority feels justified morally although underhanded schemes such as corporate funding of campaigns and such is legal.


I never said that anything in my post argued that we live in a free society.

We can't be "free". It would mean being able to do anything, having anything we want and it wouldn't work.

Having said that, we're about as free as we're going to get.
captainobviousahoy
Thats the problem. The government have curbed laws and made new terrorism laws, twisted around european conventions, in order to survey potential threats, the likes of which are extremely, disproportionately rare. Freedom of privacy has gone and the govt has reversed the principle that innocence is presumed before proven guilty, everybody is now presumed guilty until .. and they rely on people thinking that it is for their own good


Whoah, hang on. The intelligence services, through the application of recent laws have prevented terrorism attacks, so they're obviously working rather well.

We're all still innocent until proven guilty. Just because you've been spotted visiting bomb-making sites and buy dubious amounts of suspicious chemicals, and been put under temporary surveillance as a result, doesn't mean you've been convicted of a crime, not does it mean you receive a punishment.

Are you telling me you don't think we should put suspected terrorists under surveillance? Of course I'm all up for privacy, but I think it's highly unlikely that without me Google gelignite, I'm going to be put under security service surveillance. Some laws could do with refinement, such as the Interception of Communications Act so that councils don't sit there watching out for "potential fly-tippers", but on the whole, they work well.
Police State, look it up.

You could also talk about political correctness supressing free speech (in some cases)
Surveillance is an issue, as well as the DNA database. Cameras that are supposedly placed to protect us from security threats have been used to prosecute people for trivial matters such as littering. The government uses terrorism as a justification, to play on people's fears to get what they want.
Similarly with the DNA, they can take it of anyone under suspicion of an offence, and can hold on to it regardless of whether you are guilty or not.
We were never free. However, I believe that recent technological advances and changes in gov't policy have rendered us 'less free' if that is possible. Centralised databases mean anyone in authority can find information and although we are currently governed by a so-called deomocratic gov't, it is unlikely that it will always be so. 'Security' policy now is just ammunition for a future dictatorship or police state.
Freedom to me means freedom from authority, total autonomy, and that has never, nor will ever, be because power is too attractive and greed too addictive.

As far as your speech is concerned, you could discuss civil liberties and the 'surveillance state', media influence, the increasing power being granted to individuals and relativeley small groups, increased restrictions on travel, spending, borrowing...
Surveillance culture inherently undermines the principle of being presumed innocent before proven guilty. The police have badly misused stop and search powers under the 2000 Terrorism Act (which has recently been declared illegal by the ECHR), whereby I think only 5% of suspects had done something the rest had their rights infringed by the state. Only one crime per year is solved in London for every 1,000 CCTV cameras. Only 0.7% of crime is solved using the DNA database.
DJ AgnieszkaA
yeah, thank god for these laws and our big brother state.
if im paying someone to do a job and i want to stop paying them to do the job, what the **** right have i to stop? no, of course i should have to explain myself to everyone else, its their money and business as much as it is mine.

if my kid gets out of line and steals a car, its the states duty, of course, to make sure i use the naughty step technique like everyone else! that will fix it, and will mean we dont have to overly tax our brains to make these decisions ourselves!

after all, slavery is freedom, right?

...


You've failed to understand my point, so let me explain it to you. Firstly, this thread is trying to advise someone on rhetoric. They will be trying to win an argument, not discover the truth. The person in the debate doesn't have to agree with the point they are making, they just have to make it as well as they can.

Personally, I think that employers being able to sack people for trivial reasons unrelated to their performance (such as sacking a woman when she gets married, or sacking someone for being five minutes late because of a traffic jam as an excuse for not having to make a redundancy payment) is a freedom they shouldn't have.

The limiting of the freedom of parents to smack children (by public opinion) and of child-minders an schools (by law) could also be argued for on the basis of study-after-study that shows corporal punishment to be less effective than the naughty step. To take it a step further, the freedom to smack children could be said to limit the freedom of people in the future to live with the lower crime rate that would result from non-violent parenting.

As you can see, much of it is just semantics, which is probably why they chose it. This is a topic where the skill of the debater is more important than the truth of the point they are making. I apologise for the long post, clearly following an argument is not your forte.
Reply 33
thanks to everyone for their points,

im sure that i can include most of them into my speech.

although obviously not the ones that are irrelevant to my point.

nebby