It's generally not great form as a 2 day old account on HN to be copying and pasting the same stuff all over. Some of your language also looks a bit unusual: you're replying to threads where people want software engineers saying technologies are irrelevant and you're using "latent space acupuncture". o.O
This isn't really surprising from the UK. If you go back 15-20 years, taxing a vehicle to drive on public roads used to involve displaying a "Tax Disc" in your windscreen, on the off-side of the vehicle.
They abolished this system in 2014 [1] because they'd long since reached saturation of permanent Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) readers [2] from >11000 cameras on UK roads, and scanning over 50 million vehicles per day.
It's also common to have 'Average Speed' systems on major roads and even country roads where the accident rate exceeds a threshold defined by the local councils. Those will issue you a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) and points on your licence for a moving violation if you exceed the speed limit. Beyond the 'Average Speed' infrastructure is a giant number of fixed cameras which measure speed and capture imagery of your vehicle, number plate, and the driver and automatically issue the PCN for speeding, and mobile vans operated by the authorities and deployed anywhere they consider a "hotspot".
All of this costs you money immediately to pay the PCN, costs you money over time because insurers hike their rates, and after 2-4 violations in 36 months, can result in you losing your ability to drive and trigger an extended "retake driving test" (after your disqualification period).
This is much more draconian than the United States where in many states a moving violation (like a speeding infraction) will only be processed by a policeman pulling you over for a chat.
A fair number of sites hosted and operated outside the European Union reacted to GDPR by instituting blocks of EU users, many returning HTTP 451. Regardless of whether you believe GDPR is a good idea or not (that's beyond the scope of this comment), the disparity in statutory and regulatory approaches plus widely varying (often poor) levels of 'plain language' clarity in obligations, and inconsistent enforcement, it all leads to entirely understandable decisions like this and more of a divided internet.
Thank you to those who have tirelessly run these online communities for decades, I'm sorry we can't collectively elect lawmakers who are more educated about the real challenges online, and thoughtful on real ways to solve them.
Would definitely recommend reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html