UK News

The state has set up a databasing system to record criminal transgressions of people in Britain. But the police have taken it upon themselves to unilaterally use this system to record non criminal incidents where people have been accused of transgressing against woke censorship rules eg by criticising transgender dogma. Worse still, these transgressions are recorded merely on claims by the easily offended and are not necessarily investigated by the police to ensure voracity. Hence the claims can easily be used by people to settle scores or further grudges. Such unverified complaints turn up on official records checks when people are vetted for a job such as teaching.

The courts have criticised the police for the recording of these non-crime hate incidents (NCHI) as unlawful, and the government has also chipped in with guidelines for NCHIs to try and prevent abuse. However the police are having non of it, and are continuing on with their use more or less ignoring the court and government criticism.

The College of Policing is a taxpayer-funded quango that provides national advice to forces. In response to the court and government criticism it has been required to update its own manual for officers on how to record NCHIs, in a document called authorised professional practice (APP).

But it has been accused of deploying an "Orwellian" and "woke spin" it has decided to ignore ignore government instructions in its new draft. In the Home Office code, there are 11 scenarios provided where officers should or should not record an NCHI, 63% of which advise explicitly not to record one. However, the college's new guidance has only eight scenarios, all different to the Home Office ones, just 12.5% of which advise explicitly not to record.

Seven out of eight of these were in the college's old guidance. This was found in 2021 to be unlawful in the Court of Appeal and to disproportionately interfere with free expression in its section on how police should record incidents. It followed a High Court victory for Harry Miller, a former constable who successfully sued after Humberside Police officers visited his workplace and recorded an NCHI because of a "transphobic" limerick he shared on Twitter.

Miller, founder of Fair Cop, a group scrutinising police political correctness, told The Telegraph:

The police will not be schooled in the Home Office guidance once the APP comes out, they will be schooled in the guidance given by the College of Policing, which will mean we are exactly where we were before.

The College of Policing has taken an overtly political stance. The Home Office's examples were all very sensible and corrected the previous mistakes, but they will once again be shelved for the approved ideology of the College of Policing.

Sir John Hayes, chairman of the Common Sense Group of 60 Tory MPs, said the College of Policing has long been a cause for public concern and called to clear out some of the bad apples that are there before they affect the whole of policing's reputation:

Policing only works by consent and the nonsense we hear from the College of Policing risks that consent, so this is another example of politically correct nonsense, perpetuating the appalling practice of arresting people for what they believe and think.

To say it is Orwellian is an understatement; I think George Orwell will be spinning in his grave.

Jeeves and Wooster books have been censored to remove prose by PG Wodehouse deemed unacceptable by the publishers, Penguin.

Original passages in the editions of the comic novels published since 2022 have been purged or reworked. These censored editions can also be identified by a disclaimer reading:

Please be aware that this book was published in the 1930s and contains language, themes and characterisations which you may find outdated.

In the present edition we have sought to edit, minimally, words that we regard as unacceptable to present-day readers.

Wodehouse has become the latest author to have their work altered, after novels by Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and Agatha Christie were purged of words deemed at odds with modern sensitivities.

In the 1934 novel Right Ho, Jeeves , a racial term used to describe a minstrel of the old school has been removed.

In Thank You, Jeeves , whose plot hinges on the performance of a minstrel troupe, numerous racial terms have been removed or altered, both in dialogue spoken by the characters in the book, and from first-person narration in the voice of Bertie.

 

Offsite Comment: How dare they rewrite PG Wodehouse?

17th April 2023. See article from spiked-online.com by Simon Evans

No one has the right to meddle with his pristine and perfect prose.