Nottinghamshire Police Force ,led by the admirable Sue Fish, and working with the Nottingham Women's Centre has become the first UK police force to classify sexual harassment as a "hate crime" but what the Nottingham Rozzers define as harassment is terrifying. As the Mother-in-Law lives in Nottingham I must now steer well clear of her because I am - in that County - now guilty, on a regular basis, of acts which can constitute hate crime.
The Rozzers state:
Misogyny hate crime, in addition to the general hate crime definition, may be understood as incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman, and includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman.
Examples of this may include unwanted or uninvited sexual advances; physical or verbal assault; unwanted or uninvited physical or verbal contact or engagement; use of mobile devices to send unwanted or uninvited messages or take photographs without consent or permission."
The joy of our Orwellian hate crime laws in Airstrip One is that it is not the Rozzers or the law that defines whether an action is a hate crime. Here I quote the bible of authoritarian Britain, the Guardian newspaper:
Police record as a hate crime any offence perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on any of five protected characteristics: race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. It is open to police to add another category – such as gender – if they notice a trend...It is enough for a victim to say they believe the offence targeted at them was motivated by hate because of their disability, sexual orientation, race, religion or transgender status for it to be recorded as a hate crime.
Ends.
Please remember the use of the word trend for later.
More importantly, I hope that you now understand the sinister way that a hate crime is not a hate crime because a specific action has been taken but merely becuase the "victim" feels that an action has been taken which is hate crime. Wolf whistling at women is something I have never been able to do, I just can't work out how to.
But I would not wolf whistle at a women in Nottinghamshire or anywhere in the North as it is an unpleasant act per se and - as I have noted many times before - in the Northern welfare safaris most women seem to be obese, tattooed monsters, allergic to hard work and less intelligent than your average sparrow.
So the chances of me wolf whistling at a woman in Nottingham are very low but if I was to transgress would it really be a crime let alone a hate crime? In Nottinghamshire it is now both if the bird who is whistled at thinks that it is. Oh fuck I used the word "bird" to refer to a woman.
Apparently that is so demeaning that it can also be classified as a hate crime if some stroppy cow with PMT thinks so. I fear that had I accused a specific woman of being a stroppy cow with PMT I might again be in the soup were I in Nottingham.
I am now writing from Warwickshire where the rozzers say they have no plans to make sexual harrassment a hate crime. Phew. I can therefore use the phrase PR bird or PR bimbo in my writings withour risking arrest. But were I to be writing from the house of my mother-in-law I could theoretically face a vist from Sue Fish's finest, investigating my hate crimes for using such phrases.
Orwell would be terribly proud of Sue Fish and her colleagues in the Nottinghamshire filth not least because, I suspect they cannot prove a "trend" of sexual harassment and thus actually have no rights whatsoever to implement this law but are just seizing the powers anyway. The releases from Nottinghamshire Police give no hard data to substantiate the claim of trend, indeed the issue is not even mentioned.
Meanwhile when should I explain to the Mrs that to ensure my liberty I cannot risk any more visits to the in-laws?