Under a new law which comes into force on Monday, if you live in Scotland you risk being charged with a ‘hate crime’ for something you say anywhere, including in your own home.
Those who think they’ve been slighted or ridiculed will be able to report it, anonymously if they wish, to more than 400 new ‘reporting centres’ spread across the country, including one in a Glasgow sex shop and a mushroom farm . Yes, I am aware that Monday is April 1. But, contrary to all appearances, this is no April Fool. Rather it is an all-too-real Orwellian nightmare with a Scottish accent, brought to us by the same people who’ve trashed Scotland’s once world-class schools, made the Scottish health service unfit for purpose, turned Scotland into the drug-related death capital of the world and run the Scottish economy into the ground.
Scotland already has laws which deal with hate speech and threatening or abusive behaviour, which is only right. But from Monday, the offence of stirring up hatred will be explicitly extended to disability, religion, sexual orientation, age and, of course, transgender identification. It is the equivalent of a modern, secular blasphemy law for the wokerati.
It’s already happening. The redoubtable J.K. Rowling, in the vanguard of defending feminist rights against the trans onslaught, has already been warned by activist lawyers that many of her previous tweets ‘most likely contravene the new law’ and she should ‘start deleting’ them. Of course, she will do no such thing.
The police in England have been wisely advised to ignore tedious Twitter spats. No such guidance has been given to the Scottish police. Innocent people could find themselves facing criminal charges for merely expressing an honest opinion. Scots women have already been arrested for putting up stickers calling for single-sex prisons.
He was justice minister when Sturgeon put her weight behind a new hate crime law. He remains committed to it, claiming that there is a high bar before anyone can be prosecuted, when it seems that words need only be ‘painful’ to the ‘victim’ for people to be charged, not just ‘hateful’.