On 1 April Scotland’s notorious Hate Crime Act comes into force. I have explained before why it is so noxious. It has been condemned by every civil liberties body you can think of. Police Scotland have made matters still worse by telling their officers that the measure of whether a Hate Crime has been committed should be whether the person reporting it feels offended or threatened, and that the officer should make no objective judgment as to whether that is reasonable from the facts of the case.
But I want to concentrate on one very specific aspect of this legislation. It will apply to social media, and indeed it is highly probable that a very significant proportion of the “Hate Speech” will be found on social media.
It is a well-established principle in Scots law that anything published on the internet, which can be read in Scotland, is deemed to be published in Scotland. The act of publication is not deemed to be the person actually publishing the item, let us say in Tahiti. The act of publication is deemed to be the reader opening the item on their device in Scotland.
(To emphasise the total illogic of this approach, while it is the person opening it which constitutes the act of publication, it is not the person who opened it who is deemed to have published it but the original creator/publisher. To emphasise the state’s dishonest thinking still more: if however what is being opened is not, say, libel or hate speech but rather illegal pornography, then it is in that case the person who opened it who is deemed to have published it.)
So a person in Tahiti who publishes a tweet which is opened by and offends somebody in Scotland because it offends a protected characteristic, had committed a crime in Scotland, even though they never left their home in Tahiti and may never have been anywhere near Scotland.
I know this sounds completely crazy, but I do assure you it is absolutely true. As kindly confirmed here by the Dean of Faculty.
Craig is absolutely correct here. If it’s published online and read in Scotland then – in law – it is published in Scotland.
— Roddy Dunlop KC (@RoddyQC) March 15, 2024
This means, beyond a doubt, that hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of new crimes will be committed in Scotland every year from 1 April. Committed in Scotland by people who were, at the time, all over the world.
If you think that is bad, let me tell you it gets infinitely worse. In addition to holding that Scots courts have jurisdiction over anything published on the internet anywhere in the world, because if it can be read here it is published in Scotland, Scottish judges have also invented the doctrine of “continuing publication”.
As it is the act by the reader of opening the matter online which constitutes publication, every time it is opened by someone in Scotland from the internet that constitutes a new publication. So any “hate speech” that has been online for ten years constitutes a new offence if you read it in Scotland now. “Hate speech” as defined in the Act, anywhere on the Internet, no matter when or where it was published, is going to be a new crime in Scotland if someone opens it or reads it after 1 April.
What I have said is simply true. It is irrefutable. There may sometimes be argument over who committed the crime – for example, it may sometimes be the author or sometimes the publisher who is guilty (though on social media they are in most instances deemed the same person). But that a crime has been committed in Scotland is not in doubt.
So how will Police Scotland and the Crown Office cope?
Through selective prosecution. With literally millions of available criminal offences being committed annually, the authorities have fantastic latitude to choose who and who not to pursue.
In theory of course all crime should be pursued equally. In practice that will be impossible. Scotland will have put itself into this impossible situation by the combination of two terrible bits of law. Scotland’s legal doctrine on internet publication is appalling and Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act is appalling. The combination of the two is almost indescribably bad.
Scotland’s internet doctrine that the entire internet is published in Scotland if you read it here, is a claim of universal jurisdiction over the internet. It should be derided into vanishing.
But the internet posed a dilemma for the courts. Either they had to accept a massive increase in freedom of speech, or claim jurisdiction over the entire internet. How do you enforce an injunction if somebody can simply publish the information from their home in Tahiti and you cannot touch them? Needless to say, the stupid and arrogant judges of Scotland went for the universal jurisdiction path and not the freedom path (to be plain, so have the courts in England and Wales).
There is, however, a real problem here. Outside the UK, Scottish judges can only get their hands on our “criminal” from Tahiti if they happen to come here, or by extradition. But extradition depends on the principle of dual criminality – the act has to be a criminal offence in the country being extradited both to and from. As there are few countries in the world willing to jail you for telling a story that starts “An Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman went into a pub”, extradition will be difficult in most cases.
It will, incidentally, certainly be an imprisonable offence in Scotland from 1 April to tell a joke beginning “An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman went into a pub”. The police just need someone to complain.
But this opens a very interesting question with England and Wales. Plainly there is an enormous amount of online social interaction between Scots and people in England and Wales. The Scottish courts do not need to extradite people from England and Wales, the police just truss them up and deliver them. But is England really going to accept that a woman sitting at home in Leicester, who made a bad taste joke online whilst in Leicester that is perfectly legal in England, can be sent to Scotland and imprisoned?
Did anybody actually think that through, in passing this Act through the Scottish Parliament?
The Hate Crime Act makes it a criminal offence to insult somebody. You can go to jail for seven years for insulting somebody. That does not have to be your own insult. It includes by “displaying, publishing, distributing” “giving, sending, showing, playing” or “making the material available”. It includes giving someone an album that contains offensive lyrics, or acting in a performance that contains offensive lines. It really does.
The most basic notion of liberty has been discarded.
To make plain the culture wars motivation, three of the six protected characteristics are sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics. I genuinely do not know what the last one means. It does not mean being male or female. Strangely enough it will still be perfectly legal to insult women or men.
Rather worryingly, much of the opposition to the bill comes from people who want to make more things illegal, rather than give the state less arbitrary power to bang up huge numbers of people.
The truth is that this appalling legislation was always a part of Nicola Sturgeon’s grand scheme to destroy the Scottish Independence movement from within through culture wars. Everybody sentient in Scotland knows that the entire intention is a massive abuse of process. Of the millions of people who could be prosecuted for online content read in Scotland, the intention is selectively to attack those who are gender critical.
Now I am in fact not gender critical myself. I still find the intolerance puzzling. But I absolutely defend the right of those who are convinced that trans people are a threat to women’s rights to state their position, free from the legal harassment that is about to be unleashed upon them.
What we are seeing is terrible repressive legislation, amplified by a terrible legal doctrine, leading to massive power by the state over individuals. We are going to see monumental abuse of process. The state will take completely arbitrary decisions on selective prosecution according to a state-political agenda, and will refuse to prosecute millions of other “crimes” under the same Act. This is fascism.
In the short term, I have no doubt that the Israeli lobby will be generating thousands of complaints of alleged anti-semitism aimed at those criticising Israel for its genocide. There is an extremely high correlation between Scottish unionism and Zionism which doubtless will be in play.
The situation contradicts, at the very least, articles 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights. A nightmare is coming.
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The culprit here is the common law doctrine of prosecutorial discretion, under which prosecutors are free not to prosecute all criminal offenses of which they become aware. That doctrine gives those prosecutors entirely too much power.
The alternative is the civil law system, as it is in continental Europe. Under that system, prosecutors are obliged to prosecute every offense of which they become aware. Under that system, the absurdity of the legal regime of which you complain would quickly become apparent, and have to be changed.
Mr Murray,
A man of your obvious grasp and intellect, can surely understand that women must maintain single-sex spaces (including prisons), sports, language, accolades etc. not just because it’s unfair and unsafe to mix sexes in many situations, but also because ‘woman’ carries an identity intrinsically related to our sex but which has nothing to do with regressive stereotypes. Trans people have equality, rights and freedoms the same as everyone else but those rights should not translate to privilege. Excessive demands, altering ‘woman’ as a sex category to somehow include male bodied people, who perceive themselves as female, will never achieve universal acceptance and the indoctrination of vulnerable children is a travesty. If you haven’t read ‘Time to Think’ by Hannah Barnes or reviewed the WPath files, you really should. Adults can decide how to live as they see fit but children are not able to make decisions with life-long consequences for health, relationships and fertility. ‘Gender critical’ is a loaded term which doesn’t begin to describe the breadth of concerns being expressed by women, men, LGB people who do not equate sexuality with identity, gender nonconformists who do not equate individual expression with sex modification and those who simply put the safeguarding of children first.
Something to consider.
Mixed toilets and changing rooms have existed for a long time and work perfectly well, if they have separate floor to ceiling cubicles.
A man that presents as a woman is as much at odds in a men’s prison as in a women’s prison. If you put them in a women’s prison, the women complain – quite rightly in my opinion. Instances of this where they have raped or sexually assaulted a woman prisoner when in a women’s prison, having presented themselves as a woman, are known.
A man that presents as a woman in a men’s prison is at risk there from being raped or sexually assaulted.
They should get separate accommodation – that’s the answer.
I have a gender-neutral toilet in my home. It’s worked just fine so far.
Well said J.Bell and there is a lot more to the trans agenda than is apparent to ordinary people: when it is used as a weapon against democracies, to break up political movements and parties, undermining and threatening national and local governments, globally, It is a cosh.
Much like the use of anti semitism accusations on the innocent.
Multiple strands to this: some – psych ops, Trojan Horses and other agendas …. Plus the industry of aspects of it – medical / pharmaceutical. Even taking money from NHS for unnecessary irreversible surgical procedures.
We are having our civil liberties surgically removed in the meantime.
The right for parents to protect their children the rights of women to be safe have privacy bodily autonomy.
The right to sex protected laws based on biology. And even to discuss they above issues. Whilst the minority of bullies throw their weight about in public and threaten everybody who disagrees with them there is something far bigger supporting them covertly.
Absolutely so, Lysias. My immediate reaction to Mr Murray’s logical and powerfully argued article was, “Well, if any apparent crime is not prosecuted, can’t the prosecution service be prosecuted for criminal negligence?”
After all, if any act is bad enough to be prosecuted as a crime, and the actor imprisoned if found guilty, surely it is at least as bad a crime to fail to prosecute any instance of that criminal behaviour.
Unfair and discriminatory laws are awful; but at least they ought to apply equally to everyone. If I can be prosecuted and imprisoned for breaking a speed limit, for example, the British Home Secretary should also be prosecuted and imprisoned if he commits the same offence.
It will all end in rebellion and insurrection.
Already it is widely recognised that the Police and the justice system is rotten, authoritarian and sectarian. Consensual, respected policing is gone. It is the enemy of the people and folks know it.
Mussolini ended up on a lampost. Hitler ended in a bunker. Their systems were broken apart. And so it goes, in any society where the government and their agents and agencies become the enemy of the people.
“And so it goes, in any society where the government and their agents and agencies become the enemy of the people”.
Arguably all governments are the enemies of the people. Some manage to handle the situation more cleverly than others. After all, you can fool all of the people some of the time – and that’s good enough for practical purposes.
Tom, a weird psyop goes on in China – the “polls” consistently indicate a strong identification with the authorities and the public good. Whether this is fake polling or the evil of communism or wide spread conformism etc., etc.
Overall we must put this coherence down to the state and its structures – it seems an odd way to run a country.
Good lord! Why is it an odd way to run a country insofar as – even western polls admit – the vast majority think it does so well and in a way responsive to their interests and concerns? Certainly, however, your comment is somewhat odd.
I’m sorry witters, I thought I was on my own for a moment – it was just a wistful reverie, mainly focused around the idea that “consensual” relations are less complex than the standard master and slave dichotomy – we are all on the same team etc. I am OK now.
I wish it noted for the record, I am not a communist, nor indeed have ever been one, to the best of my knowledge. I can go further and say I wouldn’t know a communist if one ran me over as I returned from the foodbank. I am more conditioned in a war of all against all to the benefit of a few, but I can’t help having these wicked thoughts – I suppose if they continue I could ask the doctor to increase the dose of my medication but what’s the point? After all communism is dead, I am told. The doctor thinks getting involved with religion or sports and suchlike, is the way forward; but she is a terrible optimist, and when I asked, she was involved with neither – what a patronising hypocrite!
Airstrip One, here we come.
Yes. And any hope of a way out for Scotland thoroughly torpedoed. Observe the screws applied to Ireland next. But don’t mention the cretinising Americanisation.
I thought that on September 19th 2014 and predicted we would find ourselves at war with Russia.
Westminster Washington always want Scotland as the launchpad and presumably to take a hit even if it didn’t fly from East to West.
Perhaps the word Palestine will be considered offensive as there are some who consider that it doesn’t exist and mention of it will make them feel queasy and consequently litigious.
And, of course, those who “feel threatened” by the word Palestine should be ranked above those Palestinians actually being starved, abused and murdered by the self-proclaimed victim. Where did objectivity go?
Bramble there never was any, only Power – in its dormant phase then, now rutting. Just like the clients of Maxwell and Epstein at the “Castle” with its drawbridge retracted, safe from caring eyes.
The ban on Tiktok represents something new and we all going to have to get used to it.
As you say, the crime is remarking on genocide – Hitler would be so proud.
“In the East we will shoot anyone who looks askance at us”
translates into modern vernacular as:
“We will shoot anyone who looks askance at us”
Is there an explicit clause in the Act exempting Ibrox and Orange walks or will their exemption just be understood?
Zero tolerance for all forms of hate, except the only one that Scotland is infamous for.
frankywiggles do you remember Mark Walters first season at Ibrox – Ranger’s and Scotland’s shame.
If Rangers sign a transsexual can we expect tons of rubber tits or dildos as opposed to tons of bananas?
How does the old song go “up to my knees in Fenian blood.”?
I don’t like letting Huns fans off the hook, Will, but to be fair to them, it was supporters of opposing teams that were throwing bananas etc onto the pitch when Mark Walters was playing – including, sad to say, Celtic ones:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42371953
(MODS: Please delete this comment before 1st April, in case it offends Rangers supporters by its referring to them as Huns, and could thus mean that I’ve committed a criminal offence in Scotland.)
Nah la I was there several times. Somebody is telling you lies – I don’t know who but a lovely rewrite of something very, very ugly is my opinion of your statement
Since you wish to put your fingers through my wounds, I will add this.
In one the boozers near Ibrox, I saw a group of 30-40 full grown men assault a tiny young woman who they perceived as a Catholic. The bar was rammed, she came in looking for someone got about 20 feet, they closed around her and propelled her out the bar using their midriffs by bumping her with some violence. Her screams were lost in the general bedlam, I attempted to move towards her and remonstrate with men, I was pinned completely against the wall by ten or so men, all with their backs turned towards me , they completely immobilised me. When she had been evicted the men pinning me stepped away from me and I left the bar
Glasgow is a very rough city, and one sees a lot friction. I met thugs from both communities, however I found the legions of Ibrox much more difficult to negotiate than the Bhoys brigades – just my experience
Thanks for your reply Will. I’ve no desire to run my fingers through anyone’s wounds. The (presumably live) BBC commentator at the time must have been lying then, since in the video accompanying the article, he described bananas being thrown in front of the ‘Jungle’ terracing at Parkhead, which was home to the Celtic hardcore. If you spent some time at football matches in the eighties & nineties, you’ll know that many fans routinely verbally abused black opposition players, whilst cheering on those in their team. I lived in a mainly Proddy area of Glasgow for a couple years in the noughties – never had any real trouble in pubs & bars. It could occasionally get a bit rough & ready, but it’s nowhere near as bad as Leeds, if you ask me.
Mr Walters has earned my undying respect: the behaviour of football fans can be harsh and unrelenting. There were many incidents that season which made one squirm. It seems pointless to discuss them if official media has it down to one incident. If the past, as the poets tell us, is another country, it is an I’ll-defined and infinitely deformable one.
To illustrate my point, I was a witness to a serious crime that took place involving a certain sporting personality. I saw the tears, the damage and the bizzies – lots of them. The crime in a minor way, altered Scottish history, yet I have never even heard it alluded to even in the most cryptic manner in social media or in either mainstream or alternative news sources. It might be simple decency: everyone involved wanted to minimise the suffering to the victims.
The crime had a sectarian element and the criminals were in my humble opinion (I am not a mental health expert and am not offering any form of medical advice) insane rather than professionals who might stand to gain from the commission of the crime. At that time I was a simple hole-digger – I just happened to be digging a hole in what would become a crime scene. The Police wanted no statements, there were other witnesses who had been more central to the action. I was sent home; someone else finished the hole another day. It was as if it had never happened.
I have few obvious attributes, yet in Glasgow I was mistaken for some sort of “undercover agent” by several OCGs, with as they say “hilarious consequences” and as a result of these unpleasant encounters discovered that to criminal Glaswegians my “appearance” could be leveraged to alter their behaviour in the most dramatic of fashions. Those were the days, lol.
frankywiggles, good point. May I suggest: any complaints made, will be lost.
Bretschneider lapsed into silence and looked disappointedly round the empty pub.
‘Hallo, there used to be a picture of His Imperial Majesty hanging here once,’ he started up again after a while. ‘Just where the mirror hangs now.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Palivec replied. ‘It did hang there, but the flies used to shit on it, so I put it away in the attic. You know, somebody might be so free as to pass a remark about it and then there could be unpleasantness. I don’t want that, do I?’
[…]
Bretschneider showed Palivec his eaglet, stared at him for a moment and then asked:
‘Are you married?’
‘I am.’
‘And can Madam carry on the business for you during your absence?’
‘She can.’
‘Then it’s all right, Mr Palivec,’ said Bretschneider gaily. ‘Call your wife here, give the business over to her, and in the evening we’ll come for you.’
‘Take it easy,’ Švejk consoled him. ‘I’m only going there for high treason.’
‘But what am I going for?’ moaned Palivec. ‘After all, I’ve been so careful.’
Bretschneider smiled and said triumphantly:
‘Because you said the flies shitted on His Imperial Majesty. They’ll certainly knock His Imperial Majesty out of your head there.’
——————–
— Jaroslav Hašek: The Good Soldier Švejk (1921)
Wasn’t Svjek’s commander Lukas a gender fetishist (in todays parlance some kind of “trans”) or I did I read to much into the items in the lieutenant’s chambers?
I had a lot of laughs with this book – after I read it I ran into a young Czech, who despised the book and claimed that most of the Czech youth thought the same, which surprised me – the power of Western propaganda?
I think the items in the officer’s room were evidence of his privileged philandering.
As I recall, Hašek was a Communist-leaning drunkard who for a time wrote for a magazine as its nature correspondent and provoked furious comment by his inventions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Ha%C5%A1ek
Thanks Rolf – the way this man writes created a tsunami of confused humour in this reader. Several times, in what is a book of considerable length I was overwhelmed by the bald, Svejkian comedy, being unsure of what was actually being said, even though it was written in plain (translated) English and found my imagination didn’t have the boldness to marry the elements together into a composite whole. This effect was emphasised by laughter – on several occasions I found myself laughing for days over the ridiculous minimalism of Hasek’s prose, evinced by Svjek ambiguous and ambivalent utterances
Interestingly, your excerpt contains one of the elements that most intrigued me – the racial composition of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the relations between the various groups – to come across Germans merely being officious, rather than what they would be doing in twenty years or so was new to me.
I suppose Bretschneider would have been drafted in 43-44 as a member of an aged cohort and stationed in one of the various Festungs in Eastern Europe to await being overrun by the Soviet Tank Armies. Austrian units in the Wehrmacht didn’t have a great reputation and though not as poor as Saxon units, I find it difficult not to believe his end would have been as equally farcical, though considerably more tragic than his depiction in The Good Soldier Svejk
What a start to a fantastic novel. A real favourite of mine.
I’m offended every time I hear an Israeli apologist. Maybe we should get them put in jail? If the stupid law is there then make it work 2 ways.
Why stop there. I am offended every time the BBC says “a Hamas-led health service “ or Gazans have “died” unexplainably.
Palestinians “lose their lives”. The fact that this loss occurs in close proximity to Israeli snipers is neither here nor there, of course.
Or according to the NYT “Starvation stalks Gaza’s children’. Jonathan Cooke is excellent at exposing the utter hypocrisy behind these headlines
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2024-03-20/media-genocide-gaza/
“Yes it’s death, but surely there must be something liberating about it, amongst the destruction and the madness? This is especially true for human animals – nobody wants animals of whatever kind to suffer unnecessarily”
A fake quote I have just manufactured. Is the glass half empty or is it half full?
German Secretary of the Interior Mrs. Faeser has announced as well a law against hate speech / hate crime which would blur above all the distinction between speech and deed.
Just 2 days ago BERLINER ZEITUNG quoted several lawyers and former Secretary of Justice Gerhart Baum criticizing the idea as not fit for democratic rule.
Now, such an conflation of action and words in Germany is not new. But it had been limited to right-wing views / Nazism (Swastikas in public e.g.)
The fact that this discussion is taking place at all is a catastrophe.
But just like with the plan to introduce pro-Israel statements into cultural funding requests in Berlin has been stopped for now, Faeser´s is not through either, yet.
“According to the researcher Emily Dische-Becker, almost a third of those cancelled in Germany for their supposed antisemitism have been Jews.”
See:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/11/denouncing-critics-of-israel-as-un-jews-or-antisemites-is-a-perversion-of-history
thx for the link
Craig, you talk about “gender critical” people and how you are not one. But even this kind of language is a part of all this, and has led up to where we are now. I’m not “gender critical” either. I have what I consider to be gender dysphoria and considered transitioning in my long distant youth. I spent a lot of time then around the LGBT community, including transsexuals – the word now deemed outdated as it has actual meaning, as opposed to the blanket umbrella term “trans” which can mean anything.
I’m 110% critical of “gender” if gender is taken as the sexist, regressive stereotypes of sex. I also know – and none of the 1990s transsexuals who helped me understand the pros and cons of transition would disagree – that people cannot literally change sex. Appropriate, safe, healthcare, even for those who fully transition and pass perfectly, requires that understanding. I’m also massively critical of children who don’t conform to sexist stereotypes being told they’re “in the wrong body” and might really be the other sex and sold a story they can change sex and it’s all rainbows and unicorns and a happy thing.
What’s been happening over the past 6 years is that women, and men but more often women, who dare hold those opinions have been increasingly targeted by a nasty, intolerant bunch of zealots.
The focus has been most on those with child safeguarding roles, or with powerful voices for children (e.g. children’s authors with huge social media reach). Consider this: in November 2017, as this ideology was just emerging, both children’s ministers in Scotland and Wales (Mark McDonald here and Carl Sargent in Wales) were taken out on daft and trumped-up “sexual assault charges”, both in processes that were later used in the far-bigger Salmond case. Sargent, whose process was a civil service one identical to Salmond’s, committed suicide).
The hate crime bill is the end point of what has been a very concerted campaign by these authoritarian zealots to silence people. “Gender critical” is simply the term for those who have been fighting against an ideology that seeks to criminalise the truth and compel speech. It is, and never was, about “trans” people, of which there is no definition. They have robbed transsexuals of their language as much as women and the rest of them.
As this is a culture war, there are clearly people on “the other side” who also want to silence and hound people like you out if parties for not being sufficiently vocal on their side, but that side of the culture war has never really been necessary: we’ll see that side emerge out of the backlash to all this, and have seen a nascent form of it within Alba. But for the moment, those demonising the “gender critical” are very much the dominant force and this piece of legislation is their hard-won prize.
It you weren’t “gender critical” between 2017 and today, you should have been. OTOH, it’s also good to have strong voices who haven’t got bogged down in either “side” of that culture war but can recognise it for what it is. But they need to recognise how it has been used, who it has been used to target, and that this was always its end point.
Well said Cath.
Take off your vile womanface costume, then you can tell us you don’t believe in gender sterotypes.
Eh? I’m a woman, thanks. By sex. I didn’t ever transition to pretend to be anything else, just stayed an extremely “unfeminine” one. But I understand totally why for some there is a real desire to do it. I just think for most, as the older transsexuals who helped me decide were very honest about, it’s not the best option. Living totally as yourself is.
Good, Cath! You found a way. I think many do not and I feel for them, being born the opposite of how you feel you should be. It must be so difficult to deal with day-in-day-out. I think your choice is the best: accepting that you are the way you are is difficult for so many people for all sorts of reasons. It can take decades to finally settle and accept. And do trans-people really have a happier life after the trans, or do different problems arise to replace those they left behind?
A steady person, is often an attractive person, regardless of their physical characteristics, so I would agree with both of you
“variations in sex characteristics”. Whether or not the language is clear, it must be intended to refer to intersex conditions, which most often result from insensitivity to sex-related hormones.
No they mean whatever they need to mean, whenever they need to mean it. That’s the point of such vague wording.
If they meant intersex, they’d have said so concisely. As you did.
The position in the sequence “sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics” is what makes it clear that is intersex that is being referred to, though it may include other variations as well.
I thought it meant “non-binary”, i.e. people who define themselves as not 100% female or 100% male. “Non-binary” is something you define yourself as, while “intersex” is a physical characteristics you are born with.
It might be that the Scottish law meant to include both those groups?
I am concerned that anti-pollution activism (like the Chem Trust) might be punished for raising awareness/concerns about the damage industrial/military chemicals do to the environment and living beings, if they continue to describe ‘birth defects’. If endocrine disrupting chemicals cause intersex conditions in marine life, are corporate polluters (real-life equivalents of The Simpsons’ Mr Burns) to be protected by this law, just because someone may say they are offended by characterisations of harm and damage?
https://chemtrust.org/edcs-health/
Btw, if you’ve not read it, Ewan Morrison’s piece on cute authoritarianism is excellent
https://areomagazine.com/2023/03/15/cute-authoritarianism/
I began reading Morrison’s article with high hopes, but came across this:
“The technology uses cameras made by Hikvision, a state-owned Chinese company which also supplied equipment used in the surveillance of the genocidal Uyghur concentration campus in Xinjiang”.
“Campus”? I’ve never heard of a university being crossed with an extermination camp before. This suggests that Morrison is either very thick, somewhat illiterate, or guilty of some subliminal “persuasion” of his own.
Why would China even want to exterminate Uighurs?
This appalling law does work both ways though. So ‘they’ have created the means to prosecute the establishment scumbags !
It really doesn’t and they really haven’t. As Craig says, this will be used selectively. By that establishment. It’s highly likely if you report the wrong person you’ll end up with the criminal record.
Yes, you’re right. One voice in the darkness might be powerless, but 1,000 voices is different.
Yes, well said Cath. I don’t think Craig knows what ‘gender critical’ means, he’s got it backwards
(1)(b) and (2)(b) do, at least, include either an intent test or reasonable person test. Someone simply being offended doesn’t seem like enough ground for prosecution to actually win a case if I understand the wording correctly, right?
But the mention of summary conviction is horrifying. No jury means no “reasonable person” test being actually tested.
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and do not know specifics of Scottish legal system, so definitely not qualified to comment XD
Fun fact: It’s legal to be critical of trans people in North Korea.
Fun fact: It’s legal to make a joke about women or men in North Korea.
Fun fact: It’s legal to make a joke about an Englishman, Irishman, and Scotsman in North Korea.
Fun fact: It’s legal to make jokes about sexual orientation in North Korea.
These days, I’d rather go visit Pyongyang than Edinburgh. Less chance of being thrown into prison, you know?
Fair point but I would brush up on your knowledge of the “Great Helmsman” just to be on the safe side
N Korea has resisted America more stoutly than most countries, including the countries of our soon-to-be dissolved Union and payed in oceans of blood for exercising their Sovereignty
Who amongst us would be willing to pay that price?
I am sure that such jokes are absolutely legal and permissible in Russia. After all, it’s a free and democratic country.
(Can I say that?)
No doubt, you will be offending someone after April 1. Could a good lawyer help you?
“I am sure that such jokes are absolutely legal and permissible in Russia”
That just shows how degenerate Russian society is, then.
How about “ An English gender neutral unit, a Scottish gender neutral unit and an Irish gender neutral unit went into a corporate recreational drug distribution venue…”? It doesn’t scan as well for comedic purposes but think of all the cash Big Pharma is gonna make from the joke.
How long will it be before one can’t criticise the extremely wealthy?
That would be the logical end point of this legislation. The people who own your country and those that run it for them hate you and see you as “worthless savages/losers” and you all need to be “re-educated” in the deference of yore – the iron fist minus the velvet glove
Mr Murray you said about Mr Yousuf to give him a chance. Is this his chance expended?
Could someone please tell me of any political party in Scotland which explicitly opposes this shit?
Thanks.
Absolutely. That party hails from Bolton, or otherwise Greater Manchester.
Sorry.
Takes all kinds…
Which party are you referring to?
Or are you just being unnecessarily cryptic?
It is not “big” and it is certainly not “clever” whatever you have been told
I said QUIET
it’s so much fun to see an article about free speech where comments are simply erased, even though they strictly follow the “rules”.
I tend to believe the forbidden attacks “ad hominem” are from someone else to begin with…
FYI Brutus is not only a popular name for a guard dog, it’s also a famous historical figure.
All these moments will be lost like tears in the rain. Don’t worry, you’ll get over it.
The Alba Party.
Seems to be a private party …
You will have to go to somewhere like North Korea or vote Alba to support a political party which explicitly opposes this “shit”
ISP are against it.
Thank you all who took the time to reply. 👍
All very well, old fruit, but you were one of the buggers telling everyone to vote ScotNaz.
(But I’m open to correction. I do hope saying “open to correction” isn’t interpreted as a Hate Crime. Come to that, I do hope addressing you as “old fruit” doesn’t suffer likewise. Or using “buggers” as a dismissive.)
“ to vote ScotNaz.”
dearime this looks remarkably like a future-hate crime – are your “chills multiplying”?
Are you also puzzled by society’s ‘intolerance’ of blackface performers?
The ‘intolerance’ of blackface is no more genuine than their intolerance of genocide or famine. It is purely performative. Justin Trudeau continues to be a hugely admired and respected figure at the very top of western society.
Aaargh. “Trans people are a threat” is not the GC position. The GC position is that biological sex is real and immutable, and that in some contexts sex matters.
Transwomen are men. Most of the time their sex is irrelevant. However if a space exists where women are incarcerated, less than fully conscious or mobile, have to undress or receive intimate examination or care, or are seeking support after a sexual assault, then sex is not irrelevant, and transwomen should be excluded. They should have spaces of their own, of course, but not access to spaces set aside for women.
I admire your honesty writing greatly and it is disappointing to see the GC position misrepresented.
Mr Murray, is it wise to put your bank account details on a public website? Might be worth thinking about!
I’d suggest Mr Murray might have more than one bank account … Might be worth thinking about !
Account name and number and sort code aren’t sensitive information. They let you pay in but that’s all and are printed on every cheque you ever wrote. If anything more than those is asked for, watch out.
There’s a new piece by Matt Taibbi on ZeroHedge about C.J. Hopkins’s prosecution in Germany that discusses the new Scottish law.
Sorry, I’m writing this on a tablet, so I can’t post a link.
[ Mod: “It’s Not About Trump” (ZeroHedge, 20 Mar 2024) ]
I think, Craig, you are being disingenuous when you say you don’t understand the gender critical point of view, casting a slur on it as intolerant. I think you know perfectly well that the not inconsiderable numbers of male bodied people prepared to exploit gender ideology and self ID pose a very real threat to women in women’s sports, prisons, hospital wards, changing rooms, rape crisis centres etc. – you just choose not to engage with the Staniland question : “Do you believe that male-sexed people have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with teenage girls?” Either you think men should be able to do what they want when they want as far as women are concerned or you don’t want to stick your neck out for fear of the consequences. Which is it I wonder?
The experience in other countries shows that the numbers of people applying for gender recognition other than their biological sex is small and approx half are males applying to be recognised as female and half are females applying to be recognised as male. In the eight years to 2022 in Ireland there was a total of 1185 people who applied for a gender recognition certificate, 18 of whom were 16/17 year olds. That from a population of 5 million roughly. The numbers are tiny and it isn’t predominantly dodgy males trying it on. The Irish government is obliged under law to produce an yearly report and the latest I can find (2022) is linked below.
https://www.gov.ie/pdf/?file=https://assets.gov.ie/262827/9a1b18eb-cf70-466e-b738-3e2af4202c60.pdf#page=null
Perhaps doing some due diligence as to what the actual factual numbers are rather than imagining what could happen would be prudent. Over eight years there is zero evidence that it is males predominantly; in fact, it is equally males and females who apply for gender recognition.
“In the short term, I have no doubt that the Israeli lobby will be generating thousands of complaints of alleged anti-semitism aimed at those criticising Israel for its genocide”. I doubt that many complaints conflating Anti Zionism and Anti Semitism will suceed since Dr David Miller won his case at the Bristol Employment Tribunal recently.
The unanimous judgment of the tribunal is:
1. The claimant’s anti-Zionist beliefs qualified as a philosophical belief and as a
protected characteristic pursuant to section 10 Equality Act 2010 at the material
times.
2. The claimant succeeds in claims of direct discrimination because of his
philosophical belief contrary to section 13 Equality Act 2010 in relation to:
a. The respondent’s decision to dismiss him on 1 October 2021
b. The respondent’s rejection of his appeal against dismissal on 23 February
2022
Full case here…http://rllaw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Judgment_Miller-v-Bristol-Uni_Rahman-Lowe-Solicitors.pdf
Civil liberties are very important. So is anti-racism.
Presumably the intent is to remove due process and move to a judicial system like Judge Dredd’s Megacity One.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega-City_One#Origin
Although, some of the odd crimes featuring in that 2000 AD comic strip seem less ludicrous than universal jurisdiction through time and space for publishing. With mobile phone AI now claimed to predict your next input, we might move to future/thought crime as your phone rats you out for glowering at an article. How is anyone to safely write about historic conflicts?
“ How is anyone to safely write about historic conflicts?”
Maybe that is the point?
Also don’t be a simp Sleeping Dog, bringing the West down. The Russians had East Meg 2, the Chinese had Sino Cit, both Judge-run tyrannies, yet you don’t mention them – I find myself wondering why.
What are you – some kind of Putin/Xi apologist?
@will moon, I seem to remember the Russians had an East Meg 1 (funny thing to call your metropolis) until Genocide Joe had an apoplexy or something, but the origins of Megacity One are particularly interesting (elected President, world on brink etc). Perhaps more pertinently, would a Scottish independent future resemble the Caledonian Habitation Zone?
Tartan judges, Sleeping Dog, are a step away.
East Meg 1 was burnt out in the atomic wars – from Leningrad to Moscow.
The writers of 2000AD wrote the future – not always in every case, but you have only to add a few other texts, some songs and some films and you are there – sorry, “here”.
The one thing that most missed is network surveillance: its ubiquity, its power. The only vague references/allusions I have come across are in some of Philip K Dick’s work but even here depictions, however terrible, bear no resemblance to what is emerging today.
@will moon, as Wikipedia’s page on Mega-City One Judges puts it:
which featured in various key stories. The Judges went further (the Smiley case). Their equivalent of SpyCops was the Wally Squad. Pro-democracy protesters were routinely viewed as akin to domestic terrorists by the Judges, and some of them were (followers of the cult of ex-President Booth, for example). I no longer read 2000 AD comic, and didn’t read the Megazine, so I don’t know what the most recent stories contain.
I have not read it in a while myself . My statement above is very much related to my memory of the comic in the 80/90s
I have read many times that humans are storytelling creatures but what has become clear to me since the 2000’s is how defining this characteristic is – blogs, social media etc
In the novel “A Scanner Darkly” PKD has all the characters grassing each other – ugly, but I guess not unusual in criminal conspiracies, however the twist is they all grass themselves as well – it is all done using anonymising technology.
Back in the 90’s I was interested in programming – I wrote several small programs that enabled one to scrape the input of various search engines. The data generated was beyond incredible. The search requests would whiz past the view on the terminal – it was like looking at the collective human soul – you might struggle to believe what people might type into a search engine – I certainly did, for several years at least and I can’t be the only who saw what I saw.
Nothing I have read in SF has signalled the significance of the conjunction of storytelling animals with networked surveillance ie what I saw on those endless search requests. Of course I haven’t read everything, who could except maybe an emergent AI?
Even in PKD’s darkest visions eg “Flow My Tears The Policeman Said”, where he has the Internet (remarkable for a novel written in the 1970’s) , depicted as a global sex-grid which is one of the premier control mechanisms of the global tyranny – the sheer individuality of people – these storytelling creatures and their individual moments is not realised. No writer has to my knowledge, described the emergent power of “Big Data” – a new self-image of humanity and it is up for grabs.
@will moon, have you read William Gibson’s work? I read The Peripheral, which was recently made into a television drama series, and comes at the issue from an unusual angle.
Only a couple Sleeping Dog, Neuroromancer and another I have forgotten the title of, certainly not the one you mention, which I will find and read. Both novels I did read hinted at the idea I mentioned above. Also I remember reading Blood Music by Greg Bear, which though somewhat unsettling, I found a useful contribution to this debate.
But as I said, I have found nothing of any granularity concerning storytelling and networked surveillance, the alpha and omega of our emergent futures – the squalor of humanity and the glory of humanity married at last – oh the squalor and the glory!
Thanks for the tips Mothman and Peripheral, some ideas to further my research lol!
“It includes giving someone an album that contains offensive lyrics…”
Well, there goes a large sector of the global music industry. Including most rap.
Not just Unionists. ScotGov under Sturgeon endorsed the hardcore zionist (“IHRA”) definition of antisemitism.
This new Scottish legislation follows a now well-worn game plan used by those proposing ‘liberal’ ‘progressive’ reforms that result in utterly illiberal oppressive results. Part of the trick, as in this case where discretion is given to prosecutors, is the selective application to target those who pose problems for authority. It is not limited to governments.
For example in the Scottish university where I worked during the first decade of this century, a new ‘Respect’ policy was introduced (not just in my university but across the sector – these things are coordinated). This meant that those who did not treat colleagues with ‘respect’, including respecting all the characteristics (and more) covered by the Scottish Hate Act, would leave themselves open to disciplinary action, and allow grievances to be taken out by victims.
Who could argue with this civilised, progressive, liberal policy?
Except that is not how it worked out. In my experience as a Union Rep, ordinary staff who took out a grievance against senior staff or managers under the policy, invariably failed in their grievance.
Moreover, I know of no case in which senior management or other senior staff were disciplined for not respecting those more junior. On the contrary, this institution was notorious for bullying and harassment of those more junior by senior colleagues and management. Rather, the only cases I am aware of where the policy was ‘successfully’ used was against Union Reps who were frequently targeted for being ‘disrespectful’ to their betters, often for merely describing the bullying of senior staff in grievances taken by more junior staff. Indeed most Union Reps in the organisation were subject to vexatious disciplinary procedures at some time (other than the usual pet reps kept by management).
In my own case, I was subject to vexatious disciplinary procedure on the basis of the contents of a complaint I had made on behalf of a member, which quoted the member’s description of what she had received at the hands of a notorious professor of medicine who was a renowned bully.
My written submission on the member’s behalf was deemed to be ‘disrespectful’ towards the learned and renowned professor, and I (not she) was disciplined.
Craig is correct. That is how this law will be used. Selected ‘nuisances’ will be targeted for the crime of telling the truth.
This way lies fascism.
Classic bait and switch Dr Iain, is it not?
One thinks it might be better, only to find it is the same-old same-old, sharpened and more focused. The effects of “Time and Motion” studies seem similar – the purpose of both is to reinforce management dominance.
Surprise, surprise – but fool me once…..
Absolutely yes. Higher Education, like other professions, is being ‘proletarianised’ and de-skilled, the better for management to gain control, and for professionals to lose their autonomy – and also to drive salaries down (e.g. junior doctors).
And so the whole gamut of Taylorism and so-called ‘scientific management ‘ is employed, at the forefront of which are the paid liars and class traitors formerly known as Personnel Officers and now called Human Resources (or Human Remains as we called them).
‘Time and Motion’ studies are key to Taylorism and the alienation of Labour from its labour product.
As Harry Braverman¹ notes in his key work ‘Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century’:
”Logically, Taylorism belongs to the chain of development of management methods and the organization of labor……….It starts, despite occasional protestations to the contrary, not from the human point of view but from the capitalist point of view, from the point of view of the management of a refractory work force in a setting of antagonistic social relations………It does not attempt to discover and confront the cause of this condition, but accepts it as an inexorable given, a “natural” condition. It investigates not labor in general, but the adaptation of labor to the needs of capital. …… It enters the workplace not as the representative of science, but as the representative of management masquerading in the trappings of science”………Taylor dealt with the fundamentals of the organization of the labor process and of control over it.”
A major part of that coercive control is the use of policies and the disciplinary process to undermine the autonomy of workers, their collective power and to attack their unions and those who represent them. You cannot understand HR policies without understanding these facts.
Similarly, you cannot understand why governments no longer (if they ever did) represent the electors, but the Money Power that owns and controls them. Queer theory, and its policy consequences, seeks to undermine the very fundamentals of human relationships in order to fragment society and control it on behalf of those who manipulate society from the shadows.
Repressive laws (such as the Scottish Hate Law) in support of that aim will increasingly figure in the programmes of governments. Whether the idiots who largely form the Scottish government are aware of that, or whether they are hapless dupes, you can judge for yourself. But I don’t think either Harper or Sturgeon fall entirely into the latter category, although Humza Yousaf almost certainly does.
__________
¹ Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (pp. 59-60). Monthly Review Press.
Sorry: “Harper” should have read “Harvie”.
My apologies to his predecessor of that name.
That is a persuasive excerpt you have posted Dr Iain, thanks
ps I had once a friend who worked at Safeways and he always described his work situation as being “a human resource for Safeway”He was a radical course lol
You are getting a lot of stick from Saint Andi of Wightman but what he does not tell you in his merciless Tweets attacking your blog is Roddy Dunlop is/was/is/was/is/was his lawyer
My ability to comment on YouTube has been blocked for hate speech. I have no idea what I said to trigger the software – or the Zionist reporting me for hate speech, but the general topic would have been criticising Israel, US, UK, and Canada for the genocide. I’m not a free speech absolutist, but close enough