‘The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.’ This thought-provoking quote was coined by Eliezer ‘Elie’ Wiesel, a Romanian Jew who was imprisoned as a boy by the Nazis in both Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
His mother and younger sister were both gassed by Hitler’s henchmen, and his emaciated father died in Buchenwald before it was liberated by US troops.
Wiesel settled in America after the war and went on to become a distinguished writer, campaigner, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
I’m sure that his harrowing experiences of the Holocaust positioned him perfectly to write and comment on the subject of hate. In my dreams, every single person who descended on London last weekend under the guise of an ‘anti-far right’ event would make themselves familiar with the work of the great Elie Wiesel.
The world might just become a better place if they did. I won’t hold my breath, though, because many of the clearly antisemitic morons who attended that march would probably baulk at the thought of reading the work of a Jewish man.
Come to think of it, I’d like those who prowl the corridors and the classrooms of the College of Policing to take the time to absorb some of the wisdom of Mr Wiesel. They might get a grasp of what hate really looks like.
Hanging a pair of soiled underpants on your washing line is not hateful. It is undoubtedly unhygienic, and clearly a very stupid thing to do.
Whether or not it requires police officers to deal with such an incident is open to discussion, but if I had been called to a dispute between neighbours about stinky shreddies, I would have probably radioed back to the controller that the matter had been dealt with by dispensing some ‘words of advice’.
That advice would definitely have included a stern warning to Mr Brown from number 2, that any such repeat of his unsavoury antics would result in his arrest for behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace.
Criticising the headteacher of your child’s school is a very public-spirited thing to do, especially if that head is not up to the job.
Even if a headmistress or master was very capable in the eyes of many, we are still free in this nation to publicly state what we think of anyone, and that includes spreading our opinion far and wide on social media.
Saying that the Bible is a work of fiction, or that the Prophet Muhammad should not have married a child, might be offensive to believers, but it is not against the law in any way, shape or form, however and wherever you say it.
Unfortunately, due to ill-thought-out and frankly stupid directives handed down to frontline cops in recent years by the clueless dimwits of the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council, people have found themselves reported for ‘Non-Crime Hate Incidents’, simply for being involved in situations or expressing beliefs similar to those that I’ve highlighted above.
Scrapping non-crime hate incidents is a win, but what’s replacing them is anything but - Peter Bleksley
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This unsavoury debacle has had some very serious consequences for a considerable number of very unfortunate individuals.
Entirely innocent members of the public have been cuffed and locked in cells. Careers have been ruined by overzealous and poorly trained police officers who have been brainwashed into thinking that saying something that somebody fundamentally disagrees with is a crime. It’s not, and never has been.
Certain Chief Constables are now having to dig very deep into their budgets to compensate people who have done nothing wrong. Good.
With much justification, Plod has been perceived as the enemy of free speech, rather than the protector of it, and over the years, clueless and countless Home Secretaries of all political persuasions have failed to get a grip on this issue.
The current Home Secretary, tough-talking Shabana Mahmood, has vowed to put this right, as she announced this week that officers will no longer record or investigate incidents that threaten free speech.
Instead, she’s going to get them, ‘patrolling our streets, catching criminals, and keeping communities safe.’ Most of today’s police officers have precisely zero experience of patrolling on foot.
Standby for incoming grievance procedures and employment tribunals because ‘I got blisters’. It’s nearly seven months since Mahmood took over at the Home Office, and I’ve yet to see any evidence that her robust rhetoric is delivering any results whatsoever regarding illegal migrants, the shoplifting epidemic and knife crime.
Perhaps I should grant her more time before judging her; however, she reminds me of an opponent I came up against many years ago when I was boxing for the Met.
At the weigh-in, an extremely muscular physical training instructor from one of the armed services took great delight in telling me how he was going to pulverise me and extract huge pleasure from doing so.
A few short hours later, the referee stopped the fight in the first round to save the gobby military man from further punishment. Home Secretary, you can trash-talk all you like, but you need to start landing some hefty blows, and soon, very soon indeed…