Kelly’s Eye

SO IT turns out that the Scottish Police cannot cope with the deluge of hate crime reports, with 8,000 made in the first week of the governing Scottish National Party’s new legislation coming into force.

Who would have thought? You’ll be telling me next that Lord Cameron is a grotesque hypocrite for his criticism of Israel’s conduct in its war with Hamas.

The chairman of the Scottish Police Federation says that not only are officers overwhelmed by such complaints, they’re confused about when charges should be made, due to inadequate training.

Yet you could rehearse the cops for weeks on end about the law’s supposed parameters and it wouldn’t make a jot of difference. The speech codes enforced on us are deliberately ever-changing – what no one ever blinked an eyelid at is suddenly a supposed “hate” crime – to ensure people feel fearful of transgressing the latest contrived taboo.

As I’ve said before, if George Orwell wrote 1984 today, the three slogans of the ruling Party on the wall of its Ministry of Truth – “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” – would have a fourth added: Diversity is Conformity.

The SNP legislation is merely the most explicit manifestation yet of a paranoia in the governing class – from politics and the arts, to the civil service and broadcast media – which regards the general public (and, specifically, the white working class) as a bigoted mob who must be relentlessly conditioned into compliance.

If the new hate laws can be exploited to fuel personal and political vendettas, as is already happening in Scotland, so much the better, it seems.

In less than a generation, we have reached a situation in which despite failing to solve a single burglary in nearly half of all neighbourhoods, our forces of law and order have all of their valuable time taken up instead with policing our opinions.