Andrew Tettenborn in The Spectator last July:

Sex offences, violence and fraud have spiked, according to the latest crime figures. Meanwhile, the number of convictions remains staggeringly low: in England and Wales, more than 99 per cent of rapes reported to police do not end in a conviction.

And yet the police still have ample time to punish us for knowing that men are not women.

The College of Policing, the national standards body for police, has said that officers need to focus on cutting crime, take a common sense approach and ‘not get involved in debates on Twitter’. Police have been told to avoid recording trivial incidents and reduce the number of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHI). In short, this means anything said or done by anyone which the victim (or anyone else) saw as being motivated by hostility or prejudice based on race or a protected characteristic, even if it didn’t amount to a crime. Of course, this comes too late for the 120,000 people in the past five years who were recorded by police even though their behaviour did not meet the criminal threshold. An enhanced CRB check could still flag up exiting non-crime hate incidents, meaning that these people could find their hopes of obtaining sensitive employment jeopardised. 

It also comes too late for Harry Miller, a retired policeman. Back in 2019, someone complained that his tweets on gender recognition went too far; he was visited by police, who told him that although he had committed no offence, they had to ‘check your thinking’. Refreshingly bloody-minded, he sued. Just before Christmas last year, the Court of Appeal said the police guidance behind the practice was unlawful, as it was disproportionate and an undue fetter on freedom of expression.

Not to mention just plain crazy. Punishing people for thinking, saying, writing that men are not women is grotesque.