Kit Knightly – Off-Guardian July 14, 2026
Just hours ago, it was reported that UK’s Labour government plans to announce a new social media curfew, adding yet another wrinkle to the country’s increasingly labyrinthine and totally meaningless rules for social media.
We already have the outright ban for under 16s, and the auto-enabled device-side nudity detection, and now they’re adding a midnight social media curfew for 16 and 17-year-olds.
Will it work?
Well, not to to keep teenagers off social media after midnight, they will get around it easily. That’s what VPNs are for (for now, anyway).
Will it work to sucker a large number of people into proving they’re over 17 by scanning their faces or IDs? Absolutely. Many people will do it without even thinking about it.
That’s all any of these rules are about. Getting you to verify your age and, almost more importantly, getting you used to being asked to verify your age. That’s why every measure has the same enforcement.
Nudity filter? Please verify your age.
Social media ban? Please verify your age.
Midnight internet curfew? Please verify your age.
It’s fifty different questions with the same answer, fifty roads to the same place. Each variation intended to sweep up some stragglers who – intentionally or otherwise – managed to avoid the last one.
Why this one right now?
Well, we’re in the dying embers of the legendary era that historians will doubtless label The Starmer Era (he wishes), and Sir Keir is busily passing all the rules that will cement his legacy as “the guy that was Prime Minister that one time and did the same things every other leader in every other country was already doing”.
“If you seek his monument, look around you, it looks just like all the others.”
Of course, this has nothing to do with Starmer’s legacy, and everything to do with giving the new guy as long a honeymoon period as possible.
You see, the out-going guy forcing through unpopular rules at the fag-end of his reign is better PR than the shiny new hopeful guy doing it at the beginning of his own.
The less ineffective, controlling and hated legislation Burnham has to pass in his first few months in office, the the more you extend the time before the majority of people realise he’s just like all the others and get sick of him.
There’s a law of diminishing returns on that, naturally, and it works for less and less time the more often they do it. That’s why we’ve had seven PMs in ten years, and why Burnham will be lucky to last 18 months.
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Burnham will survive and Labour will probably win the next election albeit with a reduced majority, despite that fact that Burnhams hints about introducing Proportional Representation will, like all his other promises, quickly go out the window. The simple fact is that the Tories – sunk in chaos and corruption – have collapsed , and Reform will be kept out by a rigged system. The ‘Greens’ will probably do well, but that hardly matters as they are simply the extreme left of the Labour Party.
If the SATT ( scum at the top ) actually wanted to protect the people from porn then they would ban it outright.
> Burnham will be lucky to last 18 months
Now it’s 18 months is it? What a surprise. Before it was “an election within months”. Not that that would do anything anyway.
Make a list of what you hate about “britain”. It’s “therapeutic”. Here’s mine:
1. Everything.
@Anonymous.
Not sure whether you’re a stooge or just completely failing to grasp the reality of the situation:
The endgame is almost upon us.
No amount of voting for anyone or anything will make the slightest difference. I’m not sure it ever did.
The entire purpose of the ‘voting’ charade is to stop ordinary folks lynching the criminals at the top, by conning them into believing they have some sort of say in the running things.
Spoiler alert: you don’t