Yousaf pretends his thrilling new law is not aimed at defiant women:

Humza Yousaf said he was “not surprised” police had assessed JK Rowling’s online posts challenging the new hate crime law to be non-criminal.

Well no, I’m sure he wasn’t surprised, because I’m sure he knew that the police know better than to tangle with JKR as opposed to women who are not rich and famous.

Mr Yousaf told BBC Scotland News: “Those new offences that have been created by the act have a very high threshold for criminality. The behaviour has to be threatening or abusive and intends to stir up hatred. So it doesn’t deal with people just being offended or upset or insulted.”

That’s nice; now explain to us exactly what the difference is between threatening or abusive or intended to stir up hatred, and offensive or upsetting or insulting. Explain exactly what the difference is and how we know what the difference is and how we detect the difference and how we demonstrate the difference to the police when they turn up at the door.

The first minister added: “Anybody who read the act will not have been surprised at all that there’s no arrests made. JK Rowling’s tweets may well be offensive, upsetting and insulting to trans people. But it doesn’t mean that they meet a threshold of criminality of being threatening or abusive and intending to stir up hatred.”

But how do we know? How do we know? No, seriously, how do we know? Especially given the history of the police and uppity women in Scotland? How will women who aren’t JK Rowling know for sure that what they say is “offensive” but not “abusive”? When the police in Scotland have in fact pursued and hounded women for saying things that don’t strike most of us as even offensive?