Sloppy thinking

In a recent interview Humza Yousaf said that a “non-crime hate incident” would be recorded whenever the police investigated an allegation of hate crime and found that the allegation was unfounded. In other words, no crime had been committed and so there was nothing to investigate further. When he was asked why a non-incident should be recorded at all, he replied that the information would be useful when looking at the national picture and would reveal “spikes of hate”. What a sloppy piece of reasoning! In just a few sentences Yousaf went from saying that a non-incident was a nothing, an empty allegation, to saying that it was significant piece of information. It was a blatant self-contradiction, yet Yousaf seemed to be totally unaware of any problem.

This kind of sloppy reasoning leads to glaring inconsistencies in the treatment of individuals. Murdo Fraser has given a full account in this newspaper of his experience of having a non-incident recorded against his name and how his accuser tried to exploit the fact by taking it to the Ethics committee (Perspective, 26 March). Strangely, when Yousaf himself was alleged to have committed a hate crime, no record of a non-incident was made. That kind of inconsistency damages people's trust in our system of justice and in the Government too.

The solution to these inconsistencies and illogical statements is obvious – stop recording non-incidents against the name of the accused. The allegation was found to be groundless, perhaps even vexatious, so there is nothing to record as far as the accused is concerned. There is no sense in recording non-incidents since nothing happened. That was what happened when Yousaf was accused, so let us all enjoy the same privilege!

Les Reid Edinburgh