Not very Great Britain

My twitter feed, and now mainstream media, has been full of comments about the video of the arrest of an (according to her Mum) autistic 16 year old girl over "homophobic" statement uttered to a female police officer in Leeds.

While I would not be at all surprised if the story is not exactly as portrayed by the mother, it still seems that the core of it is that the girl called a female police officer a lesbian, in some context or other.  From the BBC report:

West Yorkshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Oz Khan said: "West Yorkshire Police takes its responsibilities around the welfare of young people taken into custody and around neurodiversity very seriously.

"We also maintain that our officers and staff should not have to face abuse while working to keep our communities safe.

"We are fully reviewing the circumstances of this incident and ask that people avoid reaching any conclusions about it solely on the basis of the social media video."

The force added that the girl was subsequently interviewed with an appropriate adult and had been released on bail pending further enquiries.

Okay.   Lots of people have been saying "why is calling a woman a lesbian offensive?"   And they might have a point.  Depends on the context, I guess.  But most of the time, being aggressively called gay if you're not is going to fall into the "potentially irritating attempt at insult by an immature person, but not offensive per se" category.   

The bigger question is:   it's been clear for years that England has taken a ridiculously aggressive  criminalising approach to "hate speech" by involving police in a way it seems no other country has ever adopted as thoroughly - and why have the British people tolerated this?    There have so many stories over the years where you think - "really?  The police got involved in that?"  

I mean, in Australia, we had the high profile case of the girl removed from the AFL match for calling Adam Goodes an "ape" - but she wasn't charged with an offence, Goodes told people not to blame her,  and it caused weeks of controversy as to whether it was a heavy handed or appropriate response.   

Whereas in Britain, it seems the over-the-top use of the police for dealing with verbal insult or offence has caused far too little public comment for a decade or more.  

Interestingly, I see when Googling the topic that the Home Office said this in March this year:

New statutory guidance on the recording of so-called non-crime hate incidents will ensure police prioritise freedom of expression, the Home Secretary has announced.

Under a new draft code of practice laid before Parliament today, the police will only record non-crime hate incidents when it is absolutely necessary and proportionate and not simply because someone is offended. The measure will better protect people’s fundamental right to freedom of expression as well as their personal data.

The draft code follows concerns around police involvement in reports of ‘hate incidents’ which are trivial or irrational and do not amount to a criminal offence.

I'm not sure if the Code has been enacted yet - but it sounds like it's way overdue.  

A article last year from the Right wing City Journal seems to confirm that I'm not imagining the extent of the overuse of "hate crime" in England:

The U.K now has some of the most authoritarian restrictions on free speech in Europe. The basis for much of Britain’s censorious legislation is the concept of protected characteristics—identities deemed vulnerable and enshrined in the Equality Act of 2010. Initially, that law had a noble intention: to fight prejudice and discrimination against minority groups. Unfortunately, the protection of a select group of people in the name of “equality” has made equality under the law no longer tenable, and the Equality Act itself has wound up chilling freedom of speech. Engaging in whatever authorities may deem hate speech can bring police to your door.

This threat is not theoretical. According to official statistics, the police in England and Wales recorded 124,000 hate crimes between March 2020 to March 2021—a 9 percent increase from the year before and more than double that of five years ago. One possible reason for the rise in police-recorded hate crime can be found in the College of Policing’s “Hate Crime Operational Guidance” handbook, issued in 2014. It defines hate crime as “any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person’s race [or religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender status].” Little or no evidence is required for an incident to be classified as such—only the subjective declaration of the alleged victim or witness....

Proliferating identity groups continue to seek protection from offense under the law. Last December, the Law Commission published recommendations on the reform of hate-crime law. It suggests expanding the concept of hate crime to include prejudice against the disabled and LGBT people. Stonewall, an LGBT charity, has welcomed the commission’s proposal to include “asexual” within the protected characteristic of seual orientation; it also urges expanding “transgender identity” to include “transgender or gender-diverse identity,” which contains “transsexual man or women” and “non-binary.” This, Stonewall argued, is “a huge leap forward for the safety of LGBTQ+ people.”

It does not require legal expertise to recognize how such legislation threatens a system of impartial justice. As the list of protected characteristics grows, hate-crime law will arbitrarily protect some and criminalize others. The concept is ultimately subjective. Should someone who attacks a transgender individual receive a longer sentence than someone who attacks a woman, simply because one attack is defined as a hate crime while the other is not? What makes one attack more hateful than another?

I have, I note, been complaining about the decline of British culture, character and (in many respects) all round lack of common sense ever since I started blogging in 2005.  (Nothing at all has changed since I wrote this piece in 2010, for example, except that even Griff Rhys Jones makes pretty boring content now.)   It has become a very weird country in so many ways...