Merseyside Police is watching YOU
Speaking of the police…
There’s a lot to notice about that. First there’s the fact that women are excluded from the list, I guess because women are never the target of hatred or violence. Then there’s the muddle of starting with a set of people and then instantly switching to a list of categories. Then there’s the fact that pimps are sex workers so what kind of “crime against” pimps do Merseyside Police have in mind? Then there’s belief – what is a “crime against” belief?
The other side isn’t great either. “BEING OFFENSIVE IS AN OFFENCE.” Really? All “being offensive” is a police matter? Have they thought this through?
I don’t know. The cops have never cared this much about women or immigrants or poor people or workers or brown people…they’ve never gone parading around town towing billboards saying “touch not mine anointed.” It’s only pimps and men who claim to be women who really get their zeal for policing going, I guess.
I find that billboard offensive. I would report it but I have a feeling that Merseyside Police would be offended, then I’d be offended by them accusing me of being offended and then….
Set themselves up for an infinite spiral of offence there, methinks.
But they’re the ones with the power so hahaha sucks to be you.
Maybe they think the pretty colours make it seem less…Orwellian. If they paint their nightsticks with pink and baby blue stripes, we’ll know their intentions are completely benign.
That poster looks like what you get if you teach a class of 13-year-olds about the Equality Act and then tell them to get together in groups to make poster using everything they have learned… and then used the one made by the least capable kids. They remembered there were like, eight or nine items? They remembered sexual orientation, disability, race.. umm… throw in ethnicity and nationality, because they are related… gender identity (the distinction between gender identity and gender reassignment is lost on them), religion-faith-belief-it’s-all-the-same-thing, and something else with sex? But they keep being hammered with gender, plus, they are thirteen, so sex is a thing people do, so… sex workers! That must be it. Now, let’s get the rainbow colours out.
It’s that, or the nearest thing Merseyside Police could think of to “women” (=people most likely to be targeted with hate because of their sex) was “sex workers”. Which says it all.
The relentlessness of this assault depresses me. I’m not even cheered up by the prospect of the cheap kitchens advertised on the sign in the background.
I’m well known for my contumacy so I’ve been in a constant state of alarm over the UK police’s submission to Stonewall for years. What I can’t understand is why even non-eye-twitchingly-paranoid normal people aren’t instantly peaked by posters like this. The “offence is an offence” one, in particular; it’s (ironically) the less offensive of the two but it’s the more frightening and requires no decoding (and less reading). Why aren’t people careering off the road when they see these posters? Why aren’t they standing there exaggeratedly rubbing their eyes in disbelief? What has us so collectively deranged that we’re not throwing chairs at the moon at the very idea of being policed on the police’s own mutable-as-required definition of “offensiveness”?
My first thought on seeing that poster was “oh, you want offence, do you? I’ll give you fucking offence….” I realise that I seem to be unusual in that regard, but I don’t for the life of me understand why I’m unusual.
I’ve been told twice recently that I’ve been reported to the police for hate crime (oh please bring that the fuck on. Please) but nothing has (yet) come of it. I don’t actually believe it happened. The sources were… uh… unreliable and I feel sure that I’d have been delightedly contacted by the police by now for a stern talking to.
Can’t we just go back to the days when people were all the time trying to get me fired for my opinions on religion/elevators/ethics in video games journalism? I mean, I got death threats, sure, but at least the police weren’t complicit
An update:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-56154542?at_custom2=twitter&at_custom4=D62834E0-750C-11EB-85F3-BD150EDC252D&at_custom3=%40BBCNews&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_medium=custom7&at_campaign=64
The police have found out that they can’t just make up new laws willy-nilly after all and offense isn’t an offence.
I see they still managed to forget “sex” a.k.a. women in the list.
Ha! “Merseyside Police has apologised” – so can we charge them with the crime of being offensive? I know I for one was very offended indeed.
Of course they didn’t include an apology for leaving women off the long list of people who can be targets of the crime of being offensive.
I’m currently reading a book about logical fallacies; one of the fallacies he mentioned was “appeal to indignation”, which he says is rarely used. I do think “appeal to offense” is commonly used now…and that is essentially the same thing.
I am offended by men beating up 60-year-old women, by men being allowed in women’s shelters, and by female victims being ordered to refer to the man who assaulted them as “she”. I’m guessing the police would not consider any of those offendings an “offence”.