British Politics

You'd need to have one of the protected characteristics to report them. It's clear from twitter that there will be a number of complaints being made right from the off from a particular group of activists as Johanna Cherry aludes to in her comments in the BBC article.. Will be interesting to see how Police deal with a deluge of complaints about JK Rowling.

I doubt they're going to hold yet another Tory leadership contest in advance of the GE. Although, obviously, we have been on the weird and wrong side of the looking glass for some time.

Dear God, Amateur Hour in Scotland has gone on far too long. Although I wouldn't put it past a Starmer government in Westminster to follow on.

Mind you, a large part of the problem in regard to 'hate crime' stems from the Macpherson principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macpherson...), which gives primacy to the alleged victim's claimed perception of any supposed crime. This is unsound, in policing and judicial terms, and relates to a fundamental error in Macpherson's report. Although Macpherson was perfectly well aware that the problem in the initial failed Lawrence investigation was corruption (the father of one of the suspects, Norris, had known corrupt influence over Met officers, and this was continually referred to as 'the Norris factor' during the inquiry), the learned judge sought to gain political brownie points by blaming the whole thing on 'institutional racism' instead. This never made any sense even in the judge's own terms, because he found no fault at all with the second investigation -- it was simply that by the time the second investigation got to work, the corrupt detectives on the first investigation had allowed the vital evidence to 'go away'. If 'institutional racism' were really the sole problem, then it would have affected the second investigation -- carried out by detectives beyond the Norris corruption web -- just as much, which it didn't. I'm afraid Macpherson has a great deal to answer for, both in terms of misdirecting public policy on 'hate crime' and in terms of screening and masking police corruption.

Plots seems real enough to concern bigwigs. The sheer number of Tory MPs in jeopardy who in a normal election might consider their seats safe says we're in unchartered territory now.

Even an uptick of a few percent might be enough to save a large number of them given how asymmetric the electoral calculus is.

This is simply a denial of a fundamental principle of the rule of law, your "unwritten constitution" here shows it's severe limits.

Criminal law can NEVER defer to subjective victim sentiment to determine if an action is a crime or not. It must be absolutely objective, everyone with all the external measurable data about an event should be able to come to the same conclusion about an action being criminal or not after reading the law. That's a very very basic principle.

And most importantly it must be absolutely obvious for you, if an action you are evaluating is criminal or not.

I believe a hate crime still has to meet the standard criteria to be considered a crime, with the hate part being considered an aggravating factor when determining a sentence.

The concept of a ‘hate incident’ seems terrible to me and just entirely subjective and open to abuse.

I disagree with the existence of hate crimes but at least if hate is defined objectively that's something that is consistent with western rule of law.

going to take many years for hate laws to develop properly but in general it's good imo. The fuss at the police investigating before evidence of ill will etc doesn't seem very serious to me.

Third party recording is nuts but that's independent of whatever is being recorded by government.

'stalking horse' springs to mind. If the right get the leadership open again then they are likely to really want someone who can unite them with reform (electorally at least). Tory + reform is still a very significant force.

I don't think it's proper to send the police to someone house because someone else found an internet comment offensive.

At the very least make people pay as much as the charge would have entailed if the complaint wasn't warranted.

It has to be costly to accuse people unjustly, otherwise you get a society where everyone is calling the police on everyone else for anything, which is called a police state and it's not a civil society.

Plus all the self-censorship "just to be safe", which is actually the intended outcome of the monsters who drafted those laws and procedures

I agree but if you report that you're a victim of a hate crime then the polcie should attend

No way on charging. There will be potentrial repercussions if it's malicious/etc -the bar should be high imo but it does exist.

We may disagree on ther impact of hate crime. It's far too serious to dismiss imo. The exact approach to legislation is very debatable.

This only applies to Scotland, not the UK

I don't think I agree with all of that.

We don't know what the actual Tory/Reform split is, but united they're capable of winning 30 to 35% of the vote probably, even now. If the Tories move even further to the right they may take back some voters from Reform but lose more to abstentions/LD/Lab.

I don't think these rumours are about anything more than dissatisfaction with Sunak being unveiled as a completely useless corrupt liar no different to his predecessors and the effect that's had on their share of the vote and therefore on Tory MPs in safes seats being at risk. It's the election year self-preservation society and they'll happily eat each other to hang on to their privileges as MPs if they possibly can, plus Sunak was never one of their own anyway in the way that Johnson, Truss and Mordaunt are, and all the grovelling he's done to the far right only deluded him to believe that he was anything other than a stop gap for someone else.

Chez, you always have a complete lack of understanding of anything when it comes to legislation, or politics in Scotland. What you believe doesn't seem very serious shows your polticial naivety. I posted a tweet from the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, who is Scotland's top solicitor, about the dangers of this legislation. Are you claiming you know more than him? And lest we accuse him of bias, he is someone who has represented the Scottish Government in a few cases in recent years.

I don't think I've really pointed it out in here but there has been a fair bit of discussion over the past few years among Scottish Labour supporters and people of the left about how naieve our English brethren are. They fail to recognise the failings of a government who are far far more nationalist than the Tory government at Westminster. It seems that because the SNP have criticised Brexit and also the Conservative party that there is somehow a connection there with Labour or the left. Anyone who claims to be interested in politics should be above such nonsense.

Here's one of many articles to help out someone with such a myopic view of politics as yourself

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/202...

Re the bolded, Y=you'd be wrong about that. As an example, a family conversation at the dining table could be a hate crime.

There are no repercussions for malicious claims. The bar isn't high either.

You somehow manage to get everything wrong.

The rest of the UK has no hate speech laws?

They do, but legally there are differences. The law in Scotland is far worse. The quote I posted above in the tweet from the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates doesn't apply in England.

I might be misunderstanding the situation, but this page (https://www.scotland.police.uk/advice-an...) defines a hate crime as a crime that the victim or any other person understands to be motivated by malice or ill will towards a social group.

I certainly think the ‘any other person’ is pretty worrying here and clearly the choice to upgrade a crime to a hate crime is going to be very subjective in some cases. There is always some level of subjectivity in determining the appropriate sentence for a criminal offence anyway though.

However the definition does imply that a hate crime does still have to satisfy the (less subjective) conditions to be a crime in the first place which was my point.

I would presume a family conversation could potentially already be a crime before the new legislation if that conversation is extreme enough.

Just to be clear, I’m referring specifically to criminal stuff here. I find the entire concept of non-crime hate incidents pretty ridiculous and not something the police should be involved in.

Unless your definition of a family conversation involves someone racially abusing another member to the extent that it would already have been a crime before this new legislation then this is completely false. See this Twitter exchange:

The stuff around the reporting and recording of them appears to be crazy but the actual legality of actions and ultimately the definition of what is a crime isn't changing much - it's mostly how something has the added aggravation of it being a "hate" crime that is changing.

let me understand if I get it correctly, would it then be a crime, reportable by anyone, in Scotland, to state "all men are violent pigs"? a concept that many women in some stages of life, often after being abused by men, express to friends and family (and sometimes on social media) as a way to vent their frustration? would that result in a convinction?

if not why not?

This wouldn’t be a hate crime because sex hasn’t been included as one of the protected characteristics. I believe the statement “all gay men are violent pigs” would be considered a hate crime (reportable by anyone), because sexual orientation is one of the protected characteristics.

There is also still an element of it needing to be considered threatening or abusive and incitement to hatred of a group for it to be an actual crime.

As I understand it once the new legislation is in place that would mean that it could be reported by anyone and that would result in it being investigated and recorded by the police but that it would ultimately be no more likely to be considered a crime than it is now. If it did meet the threshold of being considered a crime then it would probably be significantly more likely to considered a hate crime when it came to charging/sentencing with the additional penalties that brings with it.