The Times reports on the zealous policing in Scotland:

Marion Calder, spokeswoman for [For Women Scotland], said Millar had been overwhelmed by the support she had received.

“Marion still has no idea of what she is being accused of and won’t know until she attends the police station on Thursday,” she said. “This is exactly why we raised concerns about the new hate crime legislation.

“It was obvious that if complaints were made they would be followed through — no matter how vexatious or politically motivated. Serious questions have to be raised about how Police Scotland has handled this.

“The public are finally waking up and getting worried about what is happening to freedom of speech. Police Scotland appear determined to follow through complaints about women expressing views or posting stickers, yet we can see thousands of football supporters being able to congregate and vandalise a city centre with apparent impunity. It’s nonsensical.”

Nonsensical and repressive, sexist, bullying, and grotesquely unjust.

A spokeswoman for Police Scotland said: “We received two complaints regarding comments made on social media, enquiries into this are ongoing.”

How is it only two? If people are aware that Police Scotland react this way to two complaints, how is it that there aren’t 70 billion complaints?

And can Police Scotland not simply look at the “comments made on social media” and decide they’re not a police matter? Given that people post blood-dripping physical threats on Twitter all the damn time, I’m very skeptical that Marion’s tweets are in fact a police matter.

Police Scotland has been accused of a “chilling” attack on free speech after officers in Kirkcaldy urged people to contact them if they saw “controversial stickers” promoting For Women Scotland.

That’s not what they said though. They didn’t mention For Women Scotland. They didn’t mention anything, they just said “controversial stickers.” They said to let them know if we saw the stickers, without saying what they were.

It opposes plans which would allow individuals to self identify as women without medical checks, claiming this infringes on women’s rights. The stickers featured the hashtag #womensrightsarenotahatecrime.

But the police left all of that out of the tweet. All of it.

Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservative shadow community safety minister, said: “It seems absurd but also chilling to issue a public warning about stickers.” Joanna Cherry QC, the SNP MP, said: “The deletion of their tweet would indicate this was not an appropriate use of police time.”

Or that they needed to include the relevant information, or both.