The parent you're replying to does not appear to have read the letter in question. Have you?

1. The letter was sent by the Select Committee responsible for overseeing the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

2. This Select Committee is not the government. It is in fact a bipartisan oversight committee comprised of Conservative, Labour, and SNP members of parliament.

3. The Select Committee has a responsibility to provide oversight for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, to influence its priorities, and to understand the people, communities, and entities (companies, sports teams, arts galleries) to whom the Department has a responsibility.

4. One way that Select Committees do this is to request testimony and insight from relevant people/communities/entities -- particularly where they are at the forefront of something new or newsworthy which is within the Department/Committee's wheelhouse.

5. The remit of the Department is highly relevant to the Brand allegations. Most directly, the Department is largely responsible for the government's relationship and enthusiasm for funding the BBC, where Brand was employed at the time one victim alleges he abused her.

6. It is specifically part of the job of departments like DCMS, and their oversight committees, to promote the positions of government in areas outside of policy and law.

7. Nobody here is sacrificing any rights. You do not need to acquiesce to a parliamentary request. Zuckerberg has refused multiple requests for testimony both live and via Zoom. X refused to provide any information beyond what is publicly available. Brand did not have a right to due process with YouTube before he was de-monetised. Zuckerberg, X, Rumble, Brand, etc. have experienced zero change in their rights and legal protection within the United Kingdom before, during, or after they were asked for testimony.

On to the rest:

> The UK is not a free society

I find myself writing this more and more frequently on HN: I know that you're just trying to be emphatic, but it's not generally helpful to make extremely exaggerated statements for effect. There is clearly a plurality of thought on what constitutes freedom and a free society, but it is utterly uncontroversial to say that the United Kingdom, like all modern developed nations operating something which looks and smells a bit like democratically-elected officials, is as free as it gets in the world.

What specifically is your special standard of "freedom" which is not being met by the UK at the moment?

> We long since sacrificed our civil rights

I must have missed this! Which rights in particular?

> at the altar of various boogiemen

Unless we forewent our civil rights because of a dance troupe I think you mean "bogeymen"!

> criminals, terrorists, immigrants, nonces, rapists

All intentional communities - companies, countries, camping trips, whatever - evolve and iterate on their values and protocols as time goes by. For example: prior to 9/11, it was perfectly logical that cockpit doors be open during flights and made of unremarkable materials. As soon as somebody decided to start flying planes into buildings, we began closing and locking cockpit doors, and reenforcing them.

So hopefully you agree that societies and their leaders get new information from time to time which requires them to change things?

I'd love to know, and I mean this in a spirit of genuine curiosity, which specific civil rights were afforded to you in your lifetime but which were then stripped due to your list of bogey/boogie-men.

For example, what are you legally prohibited from doing today which you once were not, as a result of pedophiles (nonces to non-UK readers)?

> The one thing that the two major parties have consistently agreed over the years is that our rights are a danger to ourselves.

Again I know this is a rhetorical device, but no major UK party or member of a major UK party has made the claim that "our rights are a danger to ourselves". For one thing it's such a facile thing to say that they would probably be mocked for saying it, but even if you pretend it isn't lowest common denominator conspiratorial nonsense, there are very few examples of orchestrated bipartisan efforts to curtail civil rights at all – let alone any which do not have widespread public support or a plausible public good as their intended outcome.

> This kind of thing is just par for the course in our performative democracy where the media holds the true power

Oh brother.

> and the politicians' only way to get ahead is to prostitute themselves to the media, particularly Murdoch.

Ah yes, of course! Who can forget Joe Biden's cozy relationship with FOX News in the run-up to the 2020 election? And of course Keir Starmer's seemingly-unassailable lead in the polls is black magic from Labour's propaganda arm, News International.

I'm being facetious but you see my point: say what you mean. I would consider the two examples I provided to be disproof of your claim that "the politicians' only way to get ahead is to prostitute themselves to the media", which is the kind of bubblegum thing people say unchallenged, but which really doesn't appear to be the case. Trump is the GOP frontrunner and he openly derides the entire mainstream media including FOX News.

tl;dr: if you understand the responsibility of this committee, then you understand that this is an entirely appropriate and necessary letter for them to write. If you read the letter, then you understand that it is benign. And finally, I'm guessing here, if you try to enumerate specific civil rights you have lost down the years, you'll fall some way short of what I, a reasonable person (hehe) would consider sufficient to say "the UK is not a free society".

But maybe!