What about the real life victims of crime?

When I heard that the Crown Prosecution Service, under the direction of Alison Saunders, was on a mission to eradicate hate crime, I thought great, finally we can go after Asian grooming gangs, or do something about thugs who throw acid in people’s faces.

But no. Turns out it’s not actual true-life crimes the CPS is cracking down on, but virtual ones. ‘The CPS today commits to treat online hate crimes as seriously as those committed face to face,’ Saunders wrote in the Guardian on Monday, adding: ‘We know online hate crime has devastating effects.’

Does it? I am often the subject of abuse online, and while it’s upsetting, I can’t say it has a ‘devastating’ effect. Sticks and stones etc.

Then again, I’m not on the CPS’s list of pre-approved victims, since I am not disabled nor do I belong to an ethnic minority. As for my religious and sexual tendencies, they are tediously mainstream.

Here’S Ms Saunders’ definition of a hate crime: ‘Any criminal offence . . . 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 a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.’

You can imagine editors at the Guardian nodding in sombre approval. Leave aside her ominous phrase ‘perceived by the victim’ — though the idea that being a victim is self-determined rather than a fact is a new one on me — and ask: Are these really the only people who count? The only ones deserving protection?

Of course not. Yet it is this lie — perpetuated by the likes of Saunders in Britain and rife in the U.S., where organisations such as Black Lives Matter do their best to stir up dissent to feed their narrative of oppression — that does more to stoke division in society than any in-built prejudice.

There’s nothing more frustrating than being accused of a crime you didn’t commit or a prejudice you do not hold. Yet this is the reality for many ordinary, decent people in Britain, who increasingly find themselves apologising for their very existence.

To liberal fascists on social media the world is simple: some groups of people are good, others inherently wicked. A recent example would be the better-off residents around Grenfell Tower portrayed as somehow greedily complicit in the tragedy; or the assumption, recently voiced by the student head of Cambridge University’s equality group, that all white people are racist.

The truth, as we all know, is far more complex. Prejudice and bigotry exist everywhere; but so do understanding and kinship.

The trouble with the internet is that it de-humanises, distorts and simplifies. And it shuts down all nuanced debate. That is why the referendum turned so sour. That is why the General election got so nasty. That is why the world is going slowly mad.

You might have thought it was the job of the head of the CPS to rise above such lunacy and instead keep a coldly dispassionate eye on all matters concerning the law.

Instead we have a woman whose chief concern seems to be to showcase her liberal credentials.

So, Ms Saunders, here’s my suggestion. Step out of your echo chamber, stop virtue-signalling on Twitter — and concentrate on helping the real victims of crime. I AM In TOTAL agreement with the younger generation on one thing: the unfairness of student loans. It’s not so much the principle; more that they represent such an appalling rip-off. The interbank lending rate is a record low, around 0.2 per cent. So why does the Government charge six per cent?