Are we really so delicate in Scotland now that we can’t cope with name calling?
I was interested to learn that “hate speech”, which the SNP hope to protect us from, is something which the US First Amendment allows, as befits a mature democracy. However, it is to be outlawed in Scotland because we are such weak, feeble people that we cannot cope with someone calling us by a rude name.
Of course, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they tell us and there can be little doubt that this has exactly that sentiment. However, in myyouth, rudeness and downright character assassination were part and parcel of growing up in the Free World, as we used to call ourselves.
However, Britain has changed a lot in the last 50 years or so and our approach to many things has been altered by other cultures’ norms being regarded as superior to our own. We see the effects of this in the “Black Lives Matter” movement which is actually about America and the race relations situation there which has resulted from the slavery and civil rights discrimination that lasted up until my adulthood.
It does not relate to the UK, though it is being pushed by t hose with a vested i nterest and is followed blindly by those who know ver y little about anything.
It is time that this legislation be torn up, as it deserves. That will probably come in the form of the Supreme Court striking it down, as it deserves.
A mature democracy can only survive with the fresh air of debate, uncluttered by “protective measures” put in place to cushion us from freedom of expression.
ANDREW HN GRAY Craiglea Drive, Edinburgh
In an effort to deflect criticism of their manifold policy failures, two years ago the SNP commissioned a report on hate crime from Inner House judge Lord Bracadale.
He recommended, and the SNP now propose, an enormously broad offence of publishing anything that could in a court’s view raise hatred against any protected group, including religion, disability, age, sexual orientation, and gender. Bracadale apparently believes that hate is in the eye of the beholder, irrespective of the intent of the writer or speaker. Under the new offence, punishable by up to seven years in jail, Scottish courts would have jurisdiction over anything accessible to people in Scotland. The fact that a tweet was typed on a laptop in England would be irrelevant. A crime is committed if there are Scottish victims.
The bill has united comedians such as Rowan Atkinson with the Catholic Church and Secularism UK. It aids the hilarious presentation of Scotland as modern, tolerant and inclusive in contrast to England and weaponises woke ideology for use south of the Border.
( REV DR) JOHN CAMERON
Howard Place, St Andrews