Don't you just hate that?

Alison Saunders says she won’t be renewing her contract. This is a contract that is now widely known wasn’t going to be renewed anyway. Why do unpopular people make slow-moving targets of themselves so regularly? This isn’t so much jumping before pushed as indicating when you’re already on the slip road. But what is Alison’s greatest legacy during her time as Director of Public Prosecutions, heading up the Crown Prosecution Service? Assessed like most other service industries, on the expansion of their ‘customer base’ you’d have to say she’s done a bang-up job. But turning us all into criminals is hard to describe as any form of success.

Imagine you are on a bus in any large city in the UK and a very fat woman in a burka gets on. She addresses the driver in a language you cannot fathom, then lumbers her way towards you, the only person occupying a double seat. Knowing there are free seats upstairs and with several stops to go, you vacate your seat and allow her to sit as you head upstairs. A low murmur comes from nearby, but you think nothing of it. When, a few stops later, you descend the stairs you are greeted by and escorted from the bus by the police. What was your crime?

You are not being charged with maliciously affording a seat to a lady – that would be sexist. Nor are you aiding and abetting the recognition of disability – that would be ableist. And fat-shaming. Thinking that beneath the burka was a woman is also assuming her gender, which is transphobic and not addressing the new passenger in her native language, or engaging the services of an interpreter could be construed as xenophobic since Mrs Saunders’ tenure in post. (Actually, referring to Alison Saunders as ‘Mrs’, even though that is her title, could, in itself be construed as a crime.) Nobody dare mention the burka.

No, you need not be charged with anything so specific and practically anybody on the bus could have denounced you to the Thought Crime Unit, because you are guilty without any form of trial of hate. Yep, you nasty, nasty, hatey bastard. It’s too late to try and defend yourself by claiming you were merely offering a seat to a lady; you could have budged up a bit but no, by leaving the seat altogether you have caused offence on a level capable of inciting actual violence among the more ‘misunderstood’ communities. Consider yourself lucky you weren’t lynched.

Lest you are unaware, the CPS definition of a hate crime is: 

"Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person's disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity."

They further ‘clarify’:

“There is no legal definition of hostility so we use the everyday understanding of the word which includes ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike.”

And the departing DPP seems to actually be proud of this. So, well done Alison. You really won’t be missed.

Pride didn't always mean Gay

Once upon a time there was a country to which the whole world looked for inspiration. While foreign natives rent their garments, shrieked in unstifled dismay at the smallest loss and wept uncontrollably for months in bereavement the stoic moustaches of the British Empire sat unquivering upon the stiffest of lips. There is a reason Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ is quoted to this day as the ultimate response to a world of uncertainty and doubt. “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!”

For many generations there was no finer sight than that of a man in a British military uniform, evoking passion and pride, nostalgia for the fray, memories of genuine camaraderie and most of all reassurance that the established order was being maintained and traditions observed. That man, those men, they stood for all that we did and furthermore they were prepared to place their own lives in peril that others may peacefully enjoy all that our long history had granted us.

It was a partnership and while some fretted about our dependence on Winston Churchill’s ‘rough men’ to keep us safe there was hardly a family in the land in which I grew up without connections in the armed forces. National service, simple tradition or just a yen to serve, a spell in ‘the mob’ was an experience that would stand out honourably in any curriculum vitae. As a rite of passage the experience was not only recognised but encouraged; army life sorted out many a wayward and aimless youth and thousands who served nought but their compulsory two years still regarded it as the making of them. In particular it made them British.

So how far and how wide of the plot have we travelled that just one week after the Battle of Britain was commemorated across the nation a modern-day RAF sergeant attending hospital in uniform was hidden from sight  because hospital workers claimed they didn’t want to upset people as they “have lots of different cultures coming in”. This is just one in a series of such stories. Yesterday a caller to LBC told of his experience being abused on Britain’s streets for wearing his uniform. 

Uniform is a symbol of belonging to something; some cultures insist that 50% of the entire population dress the same – the burka is an aggressive symbol of subjugation. But now the symbol of belonging to the former pinnacle of western civilisation is seen as somehow provocative? The pursuit of the new political holy grail of multiculturalism trumps all attempts to retain monoculture, except where that culture is not indigenous. That is all sorts of fucked up, right there. But, you know what else is provocative? I’ll tell you:

British sensitivities being side-lined in favour of an invading force of productive islamic wombs. Ignoring the systematic gang rape and trafficking of white girls in Rotherham and elsewhere for fear of being branded racist. Tiptoeing around dangerous cults practising the mutilation of their own young girls because of a misguided ‘respect’ for culturally appropriate torture. Allowing unrestricted migration of unidentified, openly hostile hordes of African and Middle Eastern fighting-age men in Europe but criticising those who fear them. These things are truly provocative.

The hospital has, apparently apologised for its actions, but only because of the outrage it caused. Too little, too late in most books. But it won’t end there. Not content with attacking any form of debate around immigration as racist and attempting to criminalise any action or speech deemed ‘unhelpful’ to the political project of breaking down national identities, there is now a new potential crime of micro-aggression waiting in the wings to serve its warped masters. It was bad enough when anything you said could be taken down and used in evidence against you; now any reaction you have to any situation could be misconstrued as a form of assault. Attempt to avoid making a race gaffe? That’s racist. Ask how to pronounce a foreign name properly? Could be micro-aggression. Stare a fraction of a second at the only ‘different’ member of the group? Hate crime. It’s only a matter of time before somebody gets arrested for breathing inappropriately.

Brownies? Even the name is racist!

So, while we still have time and before any form of jingoism becomes a crime in itself, set those top lips a-quiver and sing A Song of Patriotic Prejudice even as they drag you away to the re-education camp. “The English, the English, the English are best. I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest!” You are going down, whitey!

Hate Criminal!

“I hate you!” Which parent hasn’t heard their child issue this infant-fatwa before retreating to a sullen, glowering silence intended to maim? The last weapon in an arsenal preceded by wide-eyed begging, crocodile crying, nagging and the faux rending of garments. It’s an expression that more often accompanies frustrated avarice than any form of genuine malice but the threat is there: “I have tried to reason with you, now my only option is to withdraw my love. Let’s see who cracks first.” Hah! But how and why do very young children so readily resort to using the ‘H’ word?

I’m not even sure I really know what hate is. I don’t think I hate anybody, I really don’t. I find the views of some risible and others simply ridiculous. I have a modicum of pity for those so stupid they will unthinkingly vote for systems that keep them trapped in mediocre lives, but on the plus side they are no competition for me… I admit to a combination of fear and revulsion when it comes to the spitting snarling thugs from a variety of backgrounds and motivations and yes, I would happily see them disappeared, but I don’t hate them – they are just a form of inhuman vermin towards which I adopt an entirely pragmatic attitude.

So what, then, is a hate crime? We need to sort this out because lately it feels like there is some secretive policy unit feverishly working on defining ever more finely nuanced examples of this crime genre. To distract from islamophobia this last week has focused on resurgent anti-Semitism and an alarming - but entirely specious - statistic that 95% of all ‘hate crime’ in the UK is of that ilk. As it turns out the reported 358 Jew-bashing episodes represented significantly less than 3% of the 13,000 hate crimes in London last year. Sod the Heebies then – I want to know what the other 97% were for!

Every time the term ‘hate crime’ is attached to anything there are more calls to restrict freedoms; freedoms that, in the Britain I was born into, were taken for granted. “It’s a free country” was a standard playground response to anybody demanding the silence of their peers. It’s entirely because of our own good natured tolerance that we have abased ourselves to entertain clowns like Mo Ansar who claims to represent the ‘goodie’ side of those we don’t understand. While I’m on things we genuinely don’t understand, I wonder if female genital mutilation (FGM) is recorded as a hate crime? I bet it isn’t. 

But while we may be reluctant to hate those we disagree with, the same courtesy is not reciprocated. Far from it; we harbour in our midst people who hate us enough to not only curb our freedoms but would eradicate our culture altogether and regularly use our own legal processes to aid them. At a rally in Birmingham yesterday, ostensibly to show how lovely they really are, a significant number of muslims and their stooges called for the introduction of blasphemy laws to do exactly that. And still I don’t ‘hate’ them; I just want them somewhere else.

Don't even joke about it!!

To cap it all, that ‘one-percent’ that we are all supposed to hate? The one-percent responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened to anybody... ever? Well, it turns out to be us. Yes, if you are white, middle class, middle aged and English there is a very good chance that you personally are in the world’s top one percent of earners and collectively we own the vast bulk of the world’s riches. For that we are supposed to apologise? Don't you just hate that?