411 words: 3-minute read
Maybe my mistake was watching an episode of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror the day before departure to the UK from Spain, but as our spanking new train slid past the sleek glass-fronted apartments that line the track between Stansted and London Liverpool Street, I kept expecting something sinister to happen.
It was all just too good to be true.
And the (infuriating) ‘See it, Say it, Sorted’ incantation that’s been running on London trains for what seems like forever didn’t help, hinting as it does at the dark Black Mirror underbelly that the government would like us to think lurks just beneath the civilised and civilising veneer of British society.
But what are we being asked to look out for? What are we being asked to report? What will be ‘sorted’? And how?
The answer came the day before our arrival in the UK.
On that day - 9th August - over 500 people were arrested in London for carrying placards displaying the words ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’. The Labour government proscribed Palestine Action in July under the Terrorism Act, making membership of or support for it a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. The arrests were the most made by the Metropolitan Police in a single day in the last 10 years.
The average age of those arrested was 54, and the most arrests - 147 of them - were of people aged between 60 and 69.
So now I know what needs to be seen, said and sorted in the UK in 2025.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children, are being murdered by the Israeli army, the UN has declared a famine in Gaza while Israelis BBQ just over the border, Keir Starmer and David Lammy wring their hands over the ‘intolerable’ situation in Gaza having glad-handed Netanyahu and his cronies for the past two years.
Given all this, you’d be forgiven for thinking that ‘see it, say it, sorted’ must be aimed at keeping a look-out for those in the UK complicit in the Gaza genocide.
But no. In Starmer’s Mad Hatter UK it’s those who protest the genocide who need to be ‘sorted’.
Maybe my mistake was watching an episode of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror the day before departure to the UK from Spain, but as our spanking new train slid past the sleek glass-fronted apartments that line the track between Stansted and London Liverpool Street, I kept expecting something sinister to happen.
It was all just too good to be true.
And the (infuriating) ‘See it, Say it, Sorted’ incantation that’s been running on London trains for what seems like forever didn’t help, hinting as it does at the dark Black Mirror underbelly that the government would like us to think lurks just beneath the civilised and civilising veneer of British society.
But what are we being asked to look out for? What are we being asked to report? What will be ‘sorted’? And how?
The answer came the day before our arrival in the UK.
On that day - 9th August - over 500 people were arrested in London for carrying placards displaying the words ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’. The Labour government proscribed Palestine Action in July under the Terrorism Act, making membership of or support for it a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. The arrests were the most made by the Metropolitan Police in a single day in the last 10 years.
The average age of those arrested was 54, and the most arrests - 147 of them - were of people aged between 60 and 69.
So now I know what needs to be seen, said and sorted in the UK in 2025.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children, are being murdered by the Israeli army, the UN has declared a famine in Gaza while Israelis BBQ just over the border, Keir Starmer and David Lammy wring their hands over the ‘intolerable’ situation in Gaza having glad-handed Netanyahu and his cronies for the past two years.
Given all this, you’d be forgiven for thinking that ‘see it, say it, sorted’ must be aimed at keeping a look-out for those in the UK complicit in the Gaza genocide.
But no. In Starmer’s Mad Hatter UK it’s those who protest the genocide who need to be ‘sorted’.
People like this old lady.
If you live in the UK today, save yourself a Netflix subscription. Black Mirror is coming to a street near you.
If you live in the UK today, save yourself a Netflix subscription. Black Mirror is coming to a street near you.
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