The EU debate - Part III

The Prime Minister · Oct 30, 2016

pieguts said: ↑

I voted remain....just a eurosceptic
Click to expand...

How can you be if you voted remain?

Euroscepticism (also known as EU-scepticism or anti-EUism) is criticism of and strong opposition to the European Union (EU). Traditionally, the main source of Euroscepticism has been the notion that integration weakens the nation state, and a desire to slow, halt or reverse integration within the EU.

NSIS · Oct 30, 2016

pieguts said: ↑

I voted remain....just a eurosceptic
Click to expand...

Sorry mate. Must have got you confused with somebody else...

Stan · Oct 30, 2016

Hull City AFC (DMD) said: ↑

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-real-hate-crime-scandal/

Britain's real hate crime scandal

Britain is in the grip of an epidemic, apparently. An epidemic of hate. Barely a day passes without some policeman or journalist telling us about the wave of criminal bigotry that is sweeping through the country. It’s been bad for years, they say, but has become worse since the EU referendum. Police forces tell us that hate crime has ‘soared’ in recent weeks; there’s been an ‘explosion of blatant hate’, according to some newspapers. Twenty-first-century Britain, it seems, is a pretty rancid, rage-fuelled place.

If you feel this doesn’t tally with your experience of life in Blighty in 2016, you aren’t alone. There is a great disparity between the handwringing over hate crime and what Britain is actually like. The open racism even I can remember in the 1980s has all but vanished. Racist chants at football matches are a distant memory. Hard-right, foreigner-bashing parties may be thriving on the Continent, but they are dying over here. The likes of the BNP and EDL have withered due to lack of interest. This is a British triumph.

It’s not vainglorious to say that Britain is the most tolerant country in Europe, perhaps the world. In France, for instance, a national news-making hate incident is the attempted burning down of a mosque, which happened last month in Toulouse. In Britain, it is somebody shouting something nasty on a bus.

It’s almost impossible to argue reasonably that Britain is a bigoted country where ethnic minorities are somehow kept down. On the contrary, they are now more likely than whites to hold top jobs (doctors, lawyers, chief executives). More than a million Londoners voted for Sadiq Khan in May, giving him the largest direct mandate enjoyed by any individual in British history — not bad for the capital of a nation in which, according to Lady Warsi, it has become ‘socially acceptable’ to despise Muslims.

Yes, the statistics are scary, and nobody should downplay the hurt caused to those who are attacked and abused. The number of hate crimes recorded by the cops has grown year by year. Six years ago, there were 42,255; in 2014-15, there were 52,528.

But these figures need to be taken with a fistful of salt. There is something wrong with the way we report and measure hate crimes in this country. The numbers do not necessarily speak to any objective spread of hate in modern Britain. On the contrary, what the BBC calls an ‘epidemic’ is a product of the authorities redefining racism and prejudice to such an extent that almost any unpleasant encounter between people of different backgrounds can now be recorded as ‘hatred’.

Consider the Brexit aftermath. The police say that 3,192 reports of hate incidents were received in the last two weeks of June, and 3,001 in the first two weeks of July. Apparently that constitutes a rise of 48 per cent and 20 per cent respectively on last year’s levels of incidents. But can we engage in some scepticism here? Many of these incidents (the police can’t at the moment say how many) were reported through True Vision, a police-funded website that allows anyone anywhere to report something they either experienced or witnessed, anonymously if they like. No evidence is needed. Everything is instantly logged as a hate incident. This inevitably presents a warped view of reality.

Already, two infamous post–Brexit ‘incidents’ have been debunked. It was widely claimed, for instance, that an attack on a tapas bar in Lewisham, south London, was a hate crime; actually, police say it was a burglary. A photo of four boneheads in Newcastle holding a banner saying ‘Stop Immigration, Start Repatriation’ was widely shared as evidence of xenophobia. But Geordies have pointed out that those idiots have been holding up that banner every weekend for ages, long before Brexit.

Beyond the post-Brexit hysteria, it’s incredible how subjective the idea of ‘hate crime’ has become. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service first agreed a common definition of hate crime ten years ago and started measuring national hate-crime levels in 2008. A hate crime, the police say, is ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic’. They monitored ‘five strands’: crimes driven by prejudice based on race, religion/faith, sexual orientation, disability, and gender identity.

The police’s ‘Hate Crime Operational Guidance’ now stresses that the victim’s perception is the deciding factor in whether something is measured as a hate crime. No evidence is required. ‘Evidence of… hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident,’ the guidance says. ‘[The] perception of the victim, or any other person, is the defining factor… the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception.’ So you don’t need actual evidence to prove hate crime, just a feeling. The police are discouraged from asking for evidence. This is reflected in the policies of individual constabularies. So the ‘Hate Crime Procedure’ of the Surrey Police says ‘apparent lack of motivation as the cause of an incident is not relevant as it is the perception of the victim or any other person that counts’. No clear hateful motivation? Doesn’t matter. Record it as a hate crime anyway. Indeed, even when nothing hateful was said to the victim of a crime, still the police must record the incident as a hate crime if the victim perceives it to be so. The police guidance gives the example of a gay man being ‘sworn at and threatened’ by an assailant who said absolutely ‘nothing… about his sexual orientation’. If this gay man ‘perceives that he was targeted [because] he is openly gay’ then the police must ‘record this as a hate crime based on sexual orientation’. Think about this. If any gay man is shouted at in the street, by anyone, about anything, with no mention of sexuality, that can be recorded as an anti-gay hate crime. There’s no need for any proof whatsoever that anything anti-gay in sentiment was said or even intimated.

The unhinged subjectivity of the hate-crime definition becomes even clearer on the issue of what is called ‘secondary victimisation’. This is when a victim of an alleged hate crime feels that the police are not being sensitive enough and thus compound the ‘hate’ he or she has experienced. The police guidance says ‘secondary victimisation is based on victim perception, rather than what actually happens. It is immaterial whether it is reasonable or not for the victim to feel that way’. Again, this sanctification of perception over ‘what actually happens’ has trickled down into hate-crime policies of local constabularies. So the ‘Hate Crime Policy and Procedure’ of Greater Manchester Police says that if a hate-crime victim feels indifference from the police, this ‘victimises them a second time’ and ‘whether or not it is reasonable for them to perceive it that way is immaterial’. Truth, then, is ‘immaterial’.

In a world obsessed with evidence-based public policy, it is odd that a new crime category which explicitly eschews evidence in favour of emotion is subjected to such little scrutiny. And it gets worse: the prosecution of a hate crime doesn’t actually have to prove that hatred was the motivation. The CPS states: ‘The prosecution does not… need to prove hatred as the motivating factor behind an offence.’ The CPS says any crime that involves ‘ill-will, ill-feeling, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment, or dislike’ on the basis of a ‘personal characteristic’ could be a hate crime. So unfriendliness can now be criminal. Next time you read about a hate-crime epidemic, bear that in mind.

Burglaries and robberies are often recorded as hate crimes. According to the Home Office, of all the hate incidents in the Crime Survey for England and Wales, 8 per cent are burglaries. And 1 per cent is bicycle theft. A racially motivated bike theft? You might think stealing is just about stealing, but if the victim thinks his stuff was nicked because he’s foreign, gay or trans, then it is recorded as hate crime.

The ‘Hate Crime Operational Guidance’ demands ‘increasing the reporting and recording of hate crime’. It specifies that success should not be measured by a reduction in hate-crime levels, perhaps because this will give people the impression that community life in Britain is getting better, and we can’t have that. ‘Targets that see success as reducing hate crime are not appropriate,’ it says, as this won’t ‘motivate managers’ to ‘promote positive recording’ or ‘increase the opportunity for victims to report’. So ‘success’ has one meaning only: creating evidence to suggest the problem is getting worse. The police are incentivised to find hatred, because their goal isn’t to tackle crime so much as to create a public impression of mass hatred.

Why are our authorities so willing to push this deceptive agenda? Why is our country determined to see itself as bigoted? It’s because creating a panic about hate crime gives officials and others a sense of purpose and history. But the squalid search for, and exaggeration of, hatred is dangerous and, to use a word so popular on social media, divisive. It is a slur on the white working classes to claim that what they think and say — on immigration, Europe, life in general — is racist. Such a perception convinces minorities that they should live in fear. It spreads anxiety and silences discussion. It rips Britain apart.

According to one leftie online magazine, Britain now evokes ‘nightmares of 1930s Germany’. But this doesn’t square with the reality of our country today, and you shouldn’t believe it. The hate-crime epidemic is a self-sustaining myth — a libel against the nation
Click to expand...

Magical Stan predicts that Kustard will like this post (although Simple Kustard will only read the first paragraph).

Stan · Oct 30, 2016

King Kustard said: ↑

How can you be if you voted remain?

Euroscepticism (also known as EU-scepticism or anti-EUism) is criticism of and strong opposition to the European Union (EU). Traditionally, the main source of Euroscepticism has been the notion that integration weakens the nation state, and a desire to slow, halt or reverse integration within the EU.
Click to expand...

Because he's capable of reasonable and logical thought.

NSIS · Oct 30, 2016

Stanley said: ↑

Magical Stan predicts that Kustard will like this post (although Simple Kustard will only read the first paragraph).
Click to expand...

Firstly, The Spectator is a well known ( surprise, surprise!) right wing publication.

Secondly, are they seriously trying to say that the reported 48% rise was all due to false reports! One if two, maybe. But 48%!...

Consider the Brexit aftermath. The police say that 3,192 reports of hate incidents were received in the last two weeks of June, and 3,001 in the first two weeks of July. Apparently that constitutes a rise of 48 per cent and 20 per cent respectively on last year’s levels of incidents. But can we engage in some scepticism here? Many of these incidents (the police can’t at the moment say how many) were reported through True Vision, a police-funded website that allows anyone anywhere to report something they either experienced or witnessed, anonymously if they like. No evidence is needed. Everything is instantly logged as a hate incident. This inevitably presents a warped view of reality.

Archers Road · Oct 30, 2016

Hull City AFC (DMD) said: ↑

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-real-hate-crime-scandal/

Britain's real hate crime scandal

Britain is in the grip of an epidemic, apparently. An epidemic of hate. Barely a day passes without some policeman or journalist telling us about the wave of criminal bigotry that is sweeping through the country. It’s been bad for years, they say, but has become worse since the EU referendum. Police forces tell us that hate crime has ‘soared’ in recent weeks; there’s been an ‘explosion of blatant hate’, according to some newspapers. Twenty-first-century Britain, it seems, is a pretty rancid, rage-fuelled place.

If you feel this doesn’t tally with your experience of life in Blighty in 2016, you aren’t alone. There is a great disparity between the handwringing over hate crime and what Britain is actually like. The open racism even I can remember in the 1980s has all but vanished. Racist chants at football matches are a distant memory. Hard-right, foreigner-bashing parties may be thriving on the Continent, but they are dying over here. The likes of the BNP and EDL have withered due to lack of interest. This is a British triumph.

It’s not vainglorious to say that Britain is the most tolerant country in Europe, perhaps the world. In France, for instance, a national news-making hate incident is the attempted burning down of a mosque, which happened last month in Toulouse. In Britain, it is somebody shouting something nasty on a bus.

It’s almost impossible to argue reasonably that Britain is a bigoted country where ethnic minorities are somehow kept down. On the contrary, they are now more likely than whites to hold top jobs (doctors, lawyers, chief executives). More than a million Londoners voted for Sadiq Khan in May, giving him the largest direct mandate enjoyed by any individual in British history — not bad for the capital of a nation in which, according to Lady Warsi, it has become ‘socially acceptable’ to despise Muslims.

Yes, the statistics are scary, and nobody should downplay the hurt caused to those who are attacked and abused. The number of hate crimes recorded by the cops has grown year by year. Six years ago, there were 42,255; in 2014-15, there were 52,528.

But these figures need to be taken with a fistful of salt. There is something wrong with the way we report and measure hate crimes in this country. The numbers do not necessarily speak to any objective spread of hate in modern Britain. On the contrary, what the BBC calls an ‘epidemic’ is a product of the authorities redefining racism and prejudice to such an extent that almost any unpleasant encounter between people of different backgrounds can now be recorded as ‘hatred’.

Consider the Brexit aftermath. The police say that 3,192 reports of hate incidents were received in the last two weeks of June, and 3,001 in the first two weeks of July. Apparently that constitutes a rise of 48 per cent and 20 per cent respectively on last year’s levels of incidents. But can we engage in some scepticism here? Many of these incidents (the police can’t at the moment say how many) were reported through True Vision, a police-funded website that allows anyone anywhere to report something they either experienced or witnessed, anonymously if they like. No evidence is needed. Everything is instantly logged as a hate incident. This inevitably presents a warped view of reality.

Already, two infamous post–Brexit ‘incidents’ have been debunked. It was widely claimed, for instance, that an attack on a tapas bar in Lewisham, south London, was a hate crime; actually, police say it was a burglary. A photo of four boneheads in Newcastle holding a banner saying ‘Stop Immigration, Start Repatriation’ was widely shared as evidence of xenophobia. But Geordies have pointed out that those idiots have been holding up that banner every weekend for ages, long before Brexit.

Beyond the post-Brexit hysteria, it’s incredible how subjective the idea of ‘hate crime’ has become. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service first agreed a common definition of hate crime ten years ago and started measuring national hate-crime levels in 2008. A hate crime, the police say, is ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic’. They monitored ‘five strands’: crimes driven by prejudice based on race, religion/faith, sexual orientation, disability, and gender identity.

The police’s ‘Hate Crime Operational Guidance’ now stresses that the victim’s perception is the deciding factor in whether something is measured as a hate crime. No evidence is required. ‘Evidence of… hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident,’ the guidance says. ‘[The] perception of the victim, or any other person, is the defining factor… the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception.’ So you don’t need actual evidence to prove hate crime, just a feeling. The police are discouraged from asking for evidence. This is reflected in the policies of individual constabularies. So the ‘Hate Crime Procedure’ of the Surrey Police says ‘apparent lack of motivation as the cause of an incident is not relevant as it is the perception of the victim or any other person that counts’. No clear hateful motivation? Doesn’t matter. Record it as a hate crime anyway. Indeed, even when nothing hateful was said to the victim of a crime, still the police must record the incident as a hate crime if the victim perceives it to be so. The police guidance gives the example of a gay man being ‘sworn at and threatened’ by an assailant who said absolutely ‘nothing… about his sexual orientation’. If this gay man ‘perceives that he was targeted [because] he is openly gay’ then the police must ‘record this as a hate crime based on sexual orientation’. Think about this. If any gay man is shouted at in the street, by anyone, about anything, with no mention of sexuality, that can be recorded as an anti-gay hate crime. There’s no need for any proof whatsoever that anything anti-gay in sentiment was said or even intimated.

The unhinged subjectivity of the hate-crime definition becomes even clearer on the issue of what is called ‘secondary victimisation’. This is when a victim of an alleged hate crime feels that the police are not being sensitive enough and thus compound the ‘hate’ he or she has experienced. The police guidance says ‘secondary victimisation is based on victim perception, rather than what actually happens. It is immaterial whether it is reasonable or not for the victim to feel that way’. Again, this sanctification of perception over ‘what actually happens’ has trickled down into hate-crime policies of local constabularies. So the ‘Hate Crime Policy and Procedure’ of Greater Manchester Police says that if a hate-crime victim feels indifference from the police, this ‘victimises them a second time’ and ‘whether or not it is reasonable for them to perceive it that way is immaterial’. Truth, then, is ‘immaterial’.

In a world obsessed with evidence-based public policy, it is odd that a new crime category which explicitly eschews evidence in favour of emotion is subjected to such little scrutiny. And it gets worse: the prosecution of a hate crime doesn’t actually have to prove that hatred was the motivation. The CPS states: ‘The prosecution does not… need to prove hatred as the motivating factor behind an offence.’ The CPS says any crime that involves ‘ill-will, ill-feeling, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment, or dislike’ on the basis of a ‘personal characteristic’ could be a hate crime. So unfriendliness can now be criminal. Next time you read about a hate-crime epidemic, bear that in mind.

Burglaries and robberies are often recorded as hate crimes. According to the Home Office, of all the hate incidents in the Crime Survey for England and Wales, 8 per cent are burglaries. And 1 per cent is bicycle theft. A racially motivated bike theft? You might think stealing is just about stealing, but if the victim thinks his stuff was nicked because he’s foreign, gay or trans, then it is recorded as hate crime.

The ‘Hate Crime Operational Guidance’ demands ‘increasing the reporting and recording of hate crime’. It specifies that success should not be measured by a reduction in hate-crime levels, perhaps because this will give people the impression that community life in Britain is getting better, and we can’t have that. ‘Targets that see success as reducing hate crime are not appropriate,’ it says, as this won’t ‘motivate managers’ to ‘promote positive recording’ or ‘increase the opportunity for victims to report’. So ‘success’ has one meaning only: creating evidence to suggest the problem is getting worse. The police are incentivised to find hatred, because their goal isn’t to tackle crime so much as to create a public impression of mass hatred.

Why are our authorities so willing to push this deceptive agenda? Why is our country determined to see itself as bigoted? It’s because creating a panic about hate crime gives officials and others a sense of purpose and history. But the squalid search for, and exaggeration of, hatred is dangerous and, to use a word so popular on social media, divisive. It is a slur on the white working classes to claim that what they think and say — on immigration, Europe, life in general — is racist. Such a perception convinces minorities that they should live in fear. It spreads anxiety and silences discussion. It rips Britain apart.

According to one leftie online magazine, Britain now evokes ‘nightmares of 1930s Germany’. But this doesn’t square with the reality of our country today, and you shouldn’t believe it. The hate-crime epidemic is a self-sustaining myth — a libel against the nation
Click to expand...

^^^didn't read lol

DMD · Oct 30, 2016

NowsufferinginSpain said: ↑

Firstly, The Spectator is a well known ( surprise, surprise!) right wing publication.

Secondly, are they seriously trying to say that the reported 48% rise was all due to false reports! One if two, maybe. But 48%!...

Consider the Brexit aftermath. The police say that 3,192 reports of hate incidents were received in the last two weeks of June, and 3,001 in the first two weeks of July. Apparently that constitutes a rise of 48 per cent and 20 per cent respectively on last year’s levels of incidents. But can we engage in some scepticism here? Many of these incidents (the police can’t at the moment say how many) were reported through True Vision, a police-funded website that allows anyone anywhere to report something they either experienced or witnessed, anonymously if they like. No evidence is needed. Everything is instantly logged as a hate incident. This inevitably presents a warped view of reality.
Click to expand...

I never said it was false reports, I said it coincides with changes in the reporting system and predates brexit.

Tobes · Oct 30, 2016

Hull City AFC (DMD) said: ↑

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-real-hate-crime-scandal/

Britain's real hate crime scandal

Britain is in the grip of an epidemic, apparently. An epidemic of hate. Barely a day passes without some policeman or journalist telling us about the wave of criminal bigotry that is sweeping through the country. It’s been bad for years, they say, but has become worse since the EU referendum. Police forces tell us that hate crime has ‘soared’ in recent weeks; there’s been an ‘explosion of blatant hate’, according to some newspapers. Twenty-first-century Britain, it seems, is a pretty rancid, rage-fuelled place.

If you feel this doesn’t tally with your experience of life in Blighty in 2016, you aren’t alone. There is a great disparity between the handwringing over hate crime and what Britain is actually like. The open racism even I can remember in the 1980s has all but vanished. Racist chants at football matches are a distant memory. Hard-right, foreigner-bashing parties may be thriving on the Continent, but they are dying over here. The likes of the BNP and EDL have withered due to lack of interest. This is a British triumph.

It’s not vainglorious to say that Britain is the most tolerant country in Europe, perhaps the world. In France, for instance, a national news-making hate incident is the attempted burning down of a mosque, which happened last month in Toulouse. In Britain, it is somebody shouting something nasty on a bus.

It’s almost impossible to argue reasonably that Britain is a bigoted country where ethnic minorities are somehow kept down. On the contrary, they are now more likely than whites to hold top jobs (doctors, lawyers, chief executives). More than a million Londoners voted for Sadiq Khan in May, giving him the largest direct mandate enjoyed by any individual in British history — not bad for the capital of a nation in which, according to Lady Warsi, it has become ‘socially acceptable’ to despise Muslims.

Yes, the statistics are scary, and nobody should downplay the hurt caused to those who are attacked and abused. The number of hate crimes recorded by the cops has grown year by year. Six years ago, there were 42,255; in 2014-15, there were 52,528.

But these figures need to be taken with a fistful of salt. There is something wrong with the way we report and measure hate crimes in this country. The numbers do not necessarily speak to any objective spread of hate in modern Britain. On the contrary, what the BBC calls an ‘epidemic’ is a product of the authorities redefining racism and prejudice to such an extent that almost any unpleasant encounter between people of different backgrounds can now be recorded as ‘hatred’.

Consider the Brexit aftermath. The police say that 3,192 reports of hate incidents were received in the last two weeks of June, and 3,001 in the first two weeks of July. Apparently that constitutes a rise of 48 per cent and 20 per cent respectively on last year’s levels of incidents. But can we engage in some scepticism here? Many of these incidents (the police can’t at the moment say how many) were reported through True Vision, a police-funded website that allows anyone anywhere to report something they either experienced or witnessed, anonymously if they like. No evidence is needed. Everything is instantly logged as a hate incident. This inevitably presents a warped view of reality.

Already, two infamous post–Brexit ‘incidents’ have been debunked. It was widely claimed, for instance, that an attack on a tapas bar in Lewisham, south London, was a hate crime; actually, police say it was a burglary. A photo of four boneheads in Newcastle holding a banner saying ‘Stop Immigration, Start Repatriation’ was widely shared as evidence of xenophobia. But Geordies have pointed out that those idiots have been holding up that banner every weekend for ages, long before Brexit.

Beyond the post-Brexit hysteria, it’s incredible how subjective the idea of ‘hate crime’ has become. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service first agreed a common definition of hate crime ten years ago and started measuring national hate-crime levels in 2008. A hate crime, the police say, is ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic’. They monitored ‘five strands’: crimes driven by prejudice based on race, religion/faith, sexual orientation, disability, and gender identity.

The police’s ‘Hate Crime Operational Guidance’ now stresses that the victim’s perception is the deciding factor in whether something is measured as a hate crime. No evidence is required. ‘Evidence of… hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident,’ the guidance says. ‘[The] perception of the victim, or any other person, is the defining factor… the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception.’ So you don’t need actual evidence to prove hate crime, just a feeling. The police are discouraged from asking for evidence. This is reflected in the policies of individual constabularies. So the ‘Hate Crime Procedure’ of the Surrey Police says ‘apparent lack of motivation as the cause of an incident is not relevant as it is the perception of the victim or any other person that counts’. No clear hateful motivation? Doesn’t matter. Record it as a hate crime anyway. Indeed, even when nothing hateful was said to the victim of a crime, still the police must record the incident as a hate crime if the victim perceives it to be so. The police guidance gives the example of a gay man being ‘sworn at and threatened’ by an assailant who said absolutely ‘nothing… about his sexual orientation’. If this gay man ‘perceives that he was targeted [because] he is openly gay’ then the police must ‘record this as a hate crime based on sexual orientation’. Think about this. If any gay man is shouted at in the street, by anyone, about anything, with no mention of sexuality, that can be recorded as an anti-gay hate crime. There’s no need for any proof whatsoever that anything anti-gay in sentiment was said or even intimated.

The unhinged subjectivity of the hate-crime definition becomes even clearer on the issue of what is called ‘secondary victimisation’. This is when a victim of an alleged hate crime feels that the police are not being sensitive enough and thus compound the ‘hate’ he or she has experienced. The police guidance says ‘secondary victimisation is based on victim perception, rather than what actually happens. It is immaterial whether it is reasonable or not for the victim to feel that way’. Again, this sanctification of perception over ‘what actually happens’ has trickled down into hate-crime policies of local constabularies. So the ‘Hate Crime Policy and Procedure’ of Greater Manchester Police says that if a hate-crime victim feels indifference from the police, this ‘victimises them a second time’ and ‘whether or not it is reasonable for them to perceive it that way is immaterial’. Truth, then, is ‘immaterial’.

In a world obsessed with evidence-based public policy, it is odd that a new crime category which explicitly eschews evidence in favour of emotion is subjected to such little scrutiny. And it gets worse: the prosecution of a hate crime doesn’t actually have to prove that hatred was the motivation. The CPS states: ‘The prosecution does not… need to prove hatred as the motivating factor behind an offence.’ The CPS says any crime that involves ‘ill-will, ill-feeling, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment, or dislike’ on the basis of a ‘personal characteristic’ could be a hate crime. So unfriendliness can now be criminal. Next time you read about a hate-crime epidemic, bear that in mind.

Burglaries and robberies are often recorded as hate crimes. According to the Home Office, of all the hate incidents in the Crime Survey for England and Wales, 8 per cent are burglaries. And 1 per cent is bicycle theft. A racially motivated bike theft? You might think stealing is just about stealing, but if the victim thinks his stuff was nicked because he’s foreign, gay or trans, then it is recorded as hate crime.

The ‘Hate Crime Operational Guidance’ demands ‘increasing the reporting and recording of hate crime’. It specifies that success should not be measured by a reduction in hate-crime levels, perhaps because this will give people the impression that community life in Britain is getting better, and we can’t have that. ‘Targets that see success as reducing hate crime are not appropriate,’ it says, as this won’t ‘motivate managers’ to ‘promote positive recording’ or ‘increase the opportunity for victims to report’. So ‘success’ has one meaning only: creating evidence to suggest the problem is getting worse. The police are incentivised to find hatred, because their goal isn’t to tackle crime so much as to create a public impression of mass hatred.

Why are our authorities so willing to push this deceptive agenda? Why is our country determined to see itself as bigoted? It’s because creating a panic about hate crime gives officials and others a sense of purpose and history. But the squalid search for, and exaggeration of, hatred is dangerous and, to use a word so popular on social media, divisive. It is a slur on the white working classes to claim that what they think and say — on immigration, Europe, life in general — is racist. Such a perception convinces minorities that they should live in fear. It spreads anxiety and silences discussion. It rips Britain apart.

According to one leftie online magazine, Britain now evokes ‘nightmares of 1930s Germany’. But this doesn’t square with the reality of our country today, and you shouldn’t believe it. The hate-crime epidemic is a self-sustaining myth — a libel against the nation
Click to expand...

According to one leftie online magazine (last paragraph)

What that piece basically says is 'ignore the statistical facts lads, it's all down to false reporting' which is very convenient and ignores the reality.

Hardly surprising that Dull yet again is defending the indefensible though, due to his far right beliefs that he hasn't got the stones to openly admit.

DMD · Oct 30, 2016

https://www.cps.gov.uk/news/latest_...e_crown_prosecution_service_than_ever_before/

Hate Crime
Hate crime is any criminal offence committed against a person or property that is motivated by hostility towards someone based on their disability, race, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation:

race, colour, ethnic origin, nationality or national origins

religion

gender or gender identity

sexual orientation

disability

age

More hate crimes prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service than ever before
13/07/2016

The Crown Prosecution Service is prosecuting a record number of hate crimes, a report published today shows.

In the past year, the CPS has prosecuted 15,442 hate crimes - a 4.8 per cent rise on the previous year (2014/15), which also saw a 4.7 per cent increase from the year before that (2013/14).

The CPS's eighth Hate Crime Report details a 41 per cent increase in disability hate crime prosecutions, compared to 2014/15, alongside the highest conviction rate for homophobic and transphobic prosecutions.

In addition, there has been the highest proportion of sentence uplifts in racially and religiously aggravated crime cases, which comprise 84 per cent of all hate crime prosecutions.

Alison Saunders, Director of Public Prosecutions said, "My message is that a hate crime is exactly that - a crime - and will not be ignored. Hate crime creates fear and has a devastating impact on individuals and communities. Nobody should have to go about their day to day life in fear of being attacked.

"This report shows that more of these incidents are being recognised as hate crimes, so they are reported, investigated and prosecuted as such. It is important that this trend continues and no one should simply think that this abuse - on or offline - will be dismissed or ignored.

"More than four in five prosecuted hate crimes result in a conviction, which is good news for victims. Over 73 per cent are guilty pleas - this means that more defendants are pleading guilty due to the strength of the evidence and prosecution case, so victims do not have to go through the process of a trial.

"The CPS has undertaken considerable steps to improve our prosecution of hate crime and we will continue this improvement."

The CPS today also announced a commitment to consult publically in relation to revised policy statements on all strands of hate crime (racially and religiously motivated, homophobic and transphobic, and disability hate crime) which will reflect the CPS's approach to the prosecution of these crimes. Following this, CPS legal guidance for each strand will also be updated to reflect the developments.

In addition, further engagement will take place with community partners and stakeholders in the form of Local Scrutiny and Involvement Panels, and National Scrutiny Panels. The CPS will also liaise closely with the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs' Council to ensure that these commitments are delivered.

Solicitor General Robert Buckland said, "Tackling hate crime has always been a priority for the Government. We have worked extensively to improve our collective response to this issue and in particular to improve recording of hate crime, so that we now have a fuller picture of the scale of the problem."

Hate crime overall

The conviction rate across all strands of hate crime was 83.2% in 2015/16 and 82.9% in 2014/15

The proportion of successfully completed prosecutions with an announced and recorded sentence uplift was 11.8% in 2014/15, an increase from 4.1% the previous year. In 2015/16, recorded sentence uplifts reached 33.8%

The number of hate crime cases referred, by the police to the CPS, for decision in 2014/15 was 14,376 which was an increase of 2.2% on the previous year's figure. In 2015/16 the number of referrals decreased by 9.6% to 12,997

In 2014/15, the number of completed prosecutions increased nationally by 4.7% on the previous year. Again, in 2015/16 the percentage increase was 4.8%.

Racially and religiously aggravated hate crime

In 2014/15, the conviction rate for racially and religiously aggravated hate crime was 83.5%. In 2015/16 the conviction rate was 83.8%

In 2015/16, the CPS prosecuted 13,032 racially and religiously aggravated hate crimes

Guilty pleas featured in 74.0% of successful outcomes of racially and religiously aggravated crime prosecutions in 2015/16

Homophobic and transphobic hate crime

In 2014/15, the conviction rate for homophobic and transphobic crime was 81.2%. In 2015/16, the rate increased to 83.0%

In 2014/15, the CPS prosecuted 1,277 homophobic and transphobic cases, and this increased to 1,439 in 2015/16

In 2014/15, the police referred 56 transphobic cases to the CPS for charging decision. This figure rose to 98 in 2015/16. There were 37 completed prosecutions under the transphobic crime flag on the CPS digital case management system in 2014/15 and 85 the following year

In relation to defendants in transphobic cases, in 2014/15, 26 (70.3%) were men and 11 (29.7%) were women: a disclosure rate of 100.0%. In 2015/16, 66 (77.6%) were men and 19 (22.4%) were women

In relation to victims in cases of transphobic hate crime, in 2014/15, 20 (57.1%) were women and 12 (34.3%) were men (with a disclosure rate of 91.4%). In 2015/16, these figures were 51 (52.0%) were women and 27 (27.6%) were men (with a disclosure rate of 79.6%)

Disability hate crime

The volume of cases referred to the CPS by the police for a charging decision increased from 849 in 2014/15 to 930 in 2015/16, an increase of 9.5%

The number of convictions increased over the two years from 503 in 2014/15 to 707 last year, an increase of 40.6%

The conviction rate remained broadly consistent over the two years at 75.1%

The proportion of successful outcomes arising from guilty pleas was 66.1% in 2014/15 and fell slightly to 63.4% in 2015/16

DMD · Oct 30, 2016

Tobes said: ↑

According to one leftie online magazine (last paragraph)

What that piece basically says is 'ignore the statistical facts lads, it's all down to false reporting' which is very convenient and ignores the reality.

Hardly surprising that Dull yet again is defending the indefensible though, due to his far right beliefs that he hasn't got the stones to openly admit.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying ignore them at all, quite the opposite. I'm saying look at and study the facts before making knee jerk claims or using them selectively for your own agenda. All that does is highlight the desperation of someone with a weak argument.

I've posted an article from the CPS that shows a rise in convictions for hate crimes that predates brexit.

steveninaster1 · Oct 30, 2016

Hull City AFC (DMD) said: ↑

Well if only you'd said earlier that Steve says it's true. **** any evidence, Steve's spoken.
Click to expand...

It's all a game of let's pretend to you. Most of the change in attitude won't appear in any official statistics because it is low level and enough to make people feel unwelcome rather than report it to the police.

Stan · Oct 30, 2016

Hull City AFC (DMD) said: ↑

I'm not saying ignore them at all, quite the opposite. I'm saying look at and study the facts before making knee jerk claims.

I've posted an article from the CPS that shows a rise in convictions for hate crimes that predates brexit.
Click to expand...

Let's be honest, you're not saying ignore them, you're saying celebrate them.

You're a nasty, scared old ****

DMD · Oct 30, 2016

steveninaster1 said: ↑

It's all a game of let's pretend to you. Most of the change in attitude won't appear in any official statistics because it is low level and enough to make people feel unwelcome rather than report it to the police.
Click to expand...

You could well be right, which supports what I'm saying about the selective interpretation of the current facts.

The current stats show a shocking rise in prosecutions, particularly in crimes against people from the LGBT communities and the disabled.

These figures are shameful, as are racist hate crimes and they need addressing and stamping out, but lumping it on brexit misses the real issues in society,

The Prime Minister · Oct 30, 2016

I dont want to get into this hate crime crap but....

Hate crime has always been around, its just come into the open since the Brexit vote, just like every so often you get a wave of dog attacks and the papers suddenly have a blast on it, even though dog attacks happen all the time.

Hate crime is unacceptable, but sadly it will always go on.

as you were...

Stan · Oct 30, 2016

King Kustard said: ↑

I dont want to get into this hate crime crap but....

Hate crime has always been around, its just come into the open since the Brexit vote, just like every so often you get a wave of dog attacks and the papers suddenly have a blast on it, even though dog attacks happen all the time.

Hate crime is unacceptable, but sadly it will always go on.

as you were...
Click to expand...

Comparing hate crimes with dog attacks....you redneck simpleton

And how can you say hate crime is unacceptable given some of the crap you've come out with about Muslims, Romanians and where you choose to live? Your views on Muslims are hate crimes you dozy ****!

Your kids must be so ashamed of you!

NSIS · Oct 30, 2016

steveninaster1 said: ↑

It's all a game of let's pretend to you. Most of the change in attitude won't appear in any official statistics because it is low level and enough to make people feel unwelcome rather than report it to the police.
Click to expand...

Exactly! Conviction rates mean nothing in reality. The vast majority of these events go unreported, let alone Unconvicted, unless they feature violence.

Tiddler · Oct 30, 2016

steveninaster1 said: ↑

Same link
'Hate crime soared by 41 per cent the month after the Brexit vote, official figures show.

Meanwhile, a Home Office report showed there was an increase in hate crime of 19 per cent in the year leading up to the vote, between April 2015 and March 2016.'

Why be so selective with your quotes when facts are quoted within the story?
Click to expand...

Also from the link that tourettes posted as evidence that Brexit voters attacked these Spaniards...

'The videos of Spaniards being violently assaulted in separate incidents have fuelled speculation the attacks could be linked to Brexit'

Your selective eyesight shows you to be as much a failed spin doctor as tourettes, the snide and their pet the spanish misogynist.

pieguts · Oct 30, 2016

King Kustard said: ↑

How can you be if you voted remain?

Euroscepticism (also known as EU-scepticism or anti-EUism) is criticism of and strong opposition to the European Union (EU). Traditionally, the main source of Euroscepticism has been the notion that integration weakens the nation state, and a desire to slow, halt or reverse integration within the EU.
Click to expand...

Because I looked beyond the headlines!

steveninaster1 · Oct 30, 2016

God's Cock said: ↑

Also from the link that tourettes posted as evidence that Brexit voters attacked these Spaniards...

'The videos of Spaniards being violently assaulted in separate incidents have fuelled speculation the attacks could be linked to Brexit'

Your selective eyesight shows you to be as much a failed spin doctor as tourettes, the snide and their pet the spanish misogynist.
Click to expand...

Again all I did was balance the argument while you cut and paste to avoid the reality of the whole story.

There is no certainty in determining if an individual attack is specific to Brexit but really it is no different to the spate of attacks on 'germans' after we lost in 2010 world cup. A trigger for some who hold pretty nasty views.

But it's more than that, I have south african friends whose kids are now subjected to torment at school that didn't exist before, an English friend who is increasingly finding it harder to win contracts for his business if he wants to use Eastern European engineers despite the lack of qualified people of English decent. I know a couple of Portuguese and Bulgarians who have already left.

As I said a few days ago I will be interested to see if the referendum itself has had an impact on immigration numbers because first hand experience says it quite possibly is.

Star of David Bardsley · Oct 30, 2016

Is the idea now just to post enough long waffling posts about not much so that people give up replying?

Intolerance has always been around but a significant minority seem to be less ashamed to demonstrate it post-referendum. Anti-semitism is creeping up in regularity and we are in quite serious danger of following in the footsteps of France.

"How can a eurosceptic possibly vote Remain?" FFS.

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