I get you, I wasn't being totally serious. It's just that me being an atheist, I find myself uncomfortable with any form of religion in the political sphere, the Middle-East and elsewhere show what happens when religion weasles it's way into the political sphere. I wouldn't be happy with a governing party calling itself the Islamic Union or Hindu Union either.

Australia has problems in this regard, there's non-secular practices like religious chaplains existing in schools, though I don't think that is that big a problem - I went through Catholic private schools and never once encountered any form of religious proselytising by teachers or anyone else (even the mandatory religion classes let you choose which religion you studied, and the chaplains were just social conselors who never touched religion).

Just read article about: "Ban social media trolls from voting, election watchdog suggests "
and it seems they (UK) want to change freedom of speech in away cause they really seem serious to ban 10000's of people from voting because of their freedom of speech.

Sad thing is that this way they might create 'voting cattle' and same parties will always win.

I'm not sure what to make of that, to be honest. It's true that these "trolls" are trying to undermine the democratic process by intimidating political representatives, but I'm not sure removing the right to vote is a legitimate response. Perhaps a ban on the right to stand as a candidate for public office would be more appropriate.

However, I am somewhat in favour of criminalising political slander for the purpose of influencing an election (for instance this case, or any number of Trump's claims against Hillary Clinton).

There's no easy answer, but the democratic process is on shaky legs right now with the widespread manipulation of the US election and Brexit referendum through misinformation and propaganda. Something needs to be done, and whatever the solution is, it won't be easy to swallow. If anything has become apparent these past few years, it's that the democratic process and freedom of speech cannot be absolute, otherwise both just end up undermining themselves. The only thing that absolute freedom of speech does is confer the right to intimidate political opponents into submission.

Each and every person is or should be allowed to think what he or she wants but aparently they are no longer allowed to speak freely according to the so called democracy, cause it seems democracy added the letter k to the word so it would be : demockcracy ..... cause when progressing through the decades the world should evolve forward but as it is now it looks like its going back to the medieval ages and maybe even to prehistoric era.

Anyway since every one is allowed to like, dislike or be neutral on the subject of liking some people like H. Clinton you mentioned, they cannot force people to like someone just because he or she is some important person.

Merkel will win : 37.5% - 39% maybe 41% , who knows, cause the others will have to divide the rest between the parties.

Around 13% of 3rd Reich nostalgics, in a country that bans swastikas from videogames about shooting nazis. Amusing on so many levels.

Just for your interest - we don't really have the concept of "Freedom of speech" in the UK. There are certain laws from the European Court of Human Rights that must be observed, and there is a general acceptance of "freedom of expression", but there's not really any enshrined principle that people have the right to say anything they want. Personally I'm fine with that, we're not Americans, we don't have this whole "I'm given the divine right to spout shit at you" concept.

With regard to voting rights, there was recently a spat between the UK and the ECHR about whether prisoners could vote. It's always been the attitude of the UK that a vote was not an irrevocable right, and acts such as those resulting in long term imprisonment can mean you forfeit your "right" to vote (I put "right" in quotes because to me it seems that if it's revokable it's not a "right", it's a priviledge). This further push would be in keeping with that attitude that if you behave irresponsibly then you lose your voting priviledges.

Yes, there's potential for abuse, there's the ability to suppress legitimate complaint. Not saying it's right or wrong, just helping provide a perspective from a UK point of view.

Well let's refer to freedom of press in that case: unless a miracle happend: UK was pretty low in the world index of freedom of press last year (2016)

Freedom of Press

UK at 40 in 2017
at 38 in 2016
at 34 in 2015

The Netherlands : at 4 in 2015
at nr 2 in 2016 and at nr 5 in 2017

The good news is that Italy was even lower in 2016: somewhere in the 70s, and USA was also 40 plus or something


Eventhough we are quite small with about 17 million people, and a government that looks like a mix between UK and germany(liberals and democrats) , the Dutch are doing ok compared to the other larger members :D ( with the exclusion of big brother UK and Germany cause they rule)

Merkel won (which is obvious but she lost some % , just like the VVD lost some % and the 2nd partner PVDA was reduced from to 38 to 9 seats...............
Germany might get the same result in 4 years

About the number of members of the parties: VVD has 26.000 or so left, cause D66 took some, the FVD seems to have 10K members (maybe even more) so VV lost members to fvd and d66.

I think you have misunderstood what I was trying to say. You said " it seems they (UK) want to change freedom of speech", I was pointing out that we don't actually have it at all, thus we aren't really changing anything. It is unrelated to press freedom.

Ah you don't have it ? my mistake : sorry about that, i thought you were allowed to say things about the leaders like the Dutch are, they also made thousands of photoshops of our politicians.

Anyway it seems some people were not amused with afd entering according to latest news ....

Atheist is also a religion. You firmly BELIEVE (albeit without proof) that no omnipotent being exists. I'm agnostic :-)
Problem is not religions, it's the act of harassing someone with it who clearly has stated that he's fine and don't want to be converted. But is property of some religions, sadly.
Yes, a few years ago they forbid to demonstrate without telling the police about it and it getting allowed.
This means we have no free speech to the public anymore.
You can speak freely on other platforms e.g. TV, but you have to live with the consequences, which increasingly turn out to be draconian (see "Boehmermann").
Also we're getting monitored (see face recognition in berlin pedestrian district) just like Americans after 9/11 now, which means the state is spying on citizen without suspicion, which means we effectively have a police state.
Another interesting thing is in some cities like Frankfurt the muslim foreigners hold the majority of population, so more people vote for parties who recognize this fact in their political speeches (AFD), which a lot of the major ones did not even do for fear of backlash.

Well, no great surprises. Nothing to be spectacularly happy or sad about. Four more years of the same inaction and a nominally "competent" government, but at least we'll have another election in four years without political interference in our electoral system (unlike Poland and Hungary).

If anything, this day has illustrated to me that Germany's single biggest mistake in its post-war history was German "reunification". Politicians love to boast about how it was one of the crowning achievements of the country, but it was hastily enacted, nobody was asked and it had a more devastating effect on the economy than the so-called "refugee crisis" ever will. The East Germans to this day are an entirely different culture and have an entirely different political philosophy to the West. They're very authoritarian-minded, and to this day almost every single East German I've met either holds far left views and rationalises the GDR, or holds far right views and despises it (and foreigners). I have the misfortune of having to take semi-regular trips to Saxony-Anhalt, and it shocked me to see swastika flags being openly flown in nearby villages.

Anyway, I'm going to start pulling my business interests out of the East, starting with my web hosting, and I'll only be paying my "solidarity surcharge" (the unfortunately named tax surcharge that we pay to prop up the East as a failed region) under protest. I'm done with the place.

That's the establishment view not the will of the people.

Otherwise known as the typical UKIP/FN/AfD/PiS/Fidesz/ÖVP bullshit argument "anything we disagree with is the establishment view".

Such a lovely hero term isn't it: "The will of the people!". As easy to corrupt as any government. Easier to subvert, virtually vapour as a concept. It can be deployed to strengthen any argument you like with the simple purity of its foundation without any need for substantiation. Who can dispute it without actually knowing the will of all the people.