Let’s surprise her
If it’s a non-crime why are you banging on my door on a Sunday morning?
A Telegraph journalist is facing a “Kafkaesque” investigation for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in a social media post last year.
Allison Pearson, an award-winning writer, has described how two police officers called at her home at 9.40am on Remembrance Sunday to tell her she was being investigated over the post on X, formerly Twitter, from a year ago.
Oh come on. Two cops. Unexpected. 9 fucking 40 in the morning on a weekend. Over a tweet from a year ago. Why on earth could that not have been a phone call or email or just plain mail? Even if the tweet deserved investigating, which I doubt.
When Pearson asked what she had allegedly said in the tweet, the officer said he was not allowed to disclose it.
Then what the hell did he and his colleague bang on the door for?
However, at this time last year, she was frequently tweeting about the October 7 attacks on Israel and controversial pro-Palestinian protests on the streets of London.
The officer also refused to reveal the accuser’s name. Pearson recalled: “‘It’s not the accuser,’ the PC said, looking down at his notes. ‘They’re called the victim.’”
Unless they’re women, of course. Women are always the perps.
Last year, Suella Braverman, then the home secretary, raised the threshold for police recording non-crime hate incidents over a perceived threat that laws posed to freedom of expression.
It was amended following a Court of Appeal ruling in favour of Harry Miller, a former police officer, who successfully challenged the previous national policy for forces to record gender-critical views as non-crime hate incidents.
Judges said the policy had had a “chilling” effect on his freedom of speech.
Under the change, officers are only allowed to record a non-crime hate incidents if the incident is “clearly motivated by intentional hostility” and where there is a “real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence”.
And who decides when the criteria are met? The police, of course.
I honestly question the whole concept of “ hate speech”. It’s inherently political and contradicts freedom of conscience and speech. Even if the speech is nasty.
Non*-police matter.
*As in none-of-their-freaking-business. The British are generally known to be polite in their own grumpy way but the having police enforcing what is ultimately a matter of manners is a very British form of fascism.
@brian m – I do think it was intended to deter direct calls for violence against people based on protected characteristic, but like most good intentions can be twisted for evil purposes. When society accepted the idea that misgendering is “actual physical violence,” when we allowed Muslims to define “hurting religious feelings” as hate speech, we crossed a line into authoritarian regulation of speech. And, as someone with zionist leanings, I hate to say this but I wonder if the German Section 130 laws against holocaust denialism and Nazi speech weren’t the grease on the slippery slope. The laws were enacted in response to horror, but they certainly have led to the decay of speech rights.
“Hate speech is speech that someone hates. No other speech needs protection”
I’m not sure if I should have any reservations about that idea.