Sue Fish, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire – since 23rd June 2016
Vera Baird, Police and Crime Commissioner, Northumbria
Theresa May – Prime Minister since 13th July 2016, former Home Secretary
I am increasingly contemptuous of what now passes for criminal justice in the UK. The law is a joke.
Can I say that? Will I be arrested?
I don’t mean it, of course. I’m not laughing.
I could start with the Family Courts. But let’s not. It’s too awful.
So let’s just recap the first few days of 2016 before getting down to more recent events.
Early last January we witnessed the unedifying spectacle of Vera Baird, Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria, counting down the days to the implementation of the new “coercive control” domestic abuse law. You may recall this was the new law covering psychological abuse and emotional and financial control. Victims of coercive control, we are told, often have their finances controlled by their partner and are isolated from friends and family and face a barrage of abusive messages when they are out of the perpetrators sight. Yes, indeed. It happens. But whether there should be legislation covering it is another matter. I have discussed the issue previously in September 2014.
Indulge me in a little game. I want you to imagine Kenny Everett swinging his stockinged legs and saying his catch-phrase “it’s all in the best possible taste“. Now all join in, here goes…”it’s all strictly gender neutral“. That was fun, wasn’t it? Perhaps you’d like to make a habit of it. You’ll have plenty more opportunities.
Vera Baird got into a spot of bother with Joe Public over the manner in which she chose to count down the days to implementation of the new coercive control law. She did so by running a sequence of ads. These are they…(click to enlarge)…
It seems that some people took exception to men always playing the villain’s role. What sensitive souls! As if women would ever be coercive or controlling. Shock horror. And Vera Baird insisted that “it’s all strictly gender neutral“. This was the woman, by the way, who opened her address to the Feminism in London Conference in September 2011, with these remarks,
- It was essentially the Refuge Movement that first counted the figures and demonstrated that domestic violence was not something that was done by a few cruel and unusual men;
- That violence in the home was as to more than 90%, by men on women.
The latter statement is just a staggering denial of reality. Not only does it flatly contradict every CSEW report for many years past but the worldwide weight of evidence that partner abuse is not a gendered issue is crushingly voluminous. In fact, sources outside the UK tend to indicate greater levels of female-on-male abuse than the reverse when the abuse is unidirectional, see for example Fiebert’s review or the definitively comprehensive PASK report. But it is the first statement, above, which is telling. Baird, in standard feminist fashion, believes that domestic abuse is the normal behaviour of all men. This is what feminism is – the belief in patriarchy theory – that men are powerful and use their power to oppress women. All men, all women. And this gives the lie to Baird’s protestations in January’16 that “it’s all strictly gender neutral“. The letter of the law may be, but not her view of it. And the ads she ran faithfully reflect her prejudice.
It is not the first time that Vera Baird has come unstuck over ads. Early in 2014, her Police and Crime Commission ran a series of ads. Central to these ads were the following claims: “Over 85,000 women are raped in the UK every year” and “Last year 1.2 million women suffered domestic violence“. These claims are misleading and cannot be substantiated. I do not state this simply as my own opinion: it is the considered opinion of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). I have had sight of documents made available under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act pertaining to a complaint to the ASA regarding these statistics, as used in the ads. The ASA upheld the complainants claim that these statistics were likely to mislead the public and could not be substantiated. Accordingly the Northumbria PCC was obliged to withdraw the ads in order to avoid the matter being escalated to the ASA Council for a formal adjudication, the results of which would have been made public by posting on their web site.
There is no doubt where Vera Baird is coming from. She has been vice-chairwoman of the Fawcett Society and founded the government funded Gender and Criminal Justice Forum at the Fawcett Society. She is a QC. She is a former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice. She served as Solicitor General for England and Wales. She is a very powerful player and is using her position, as do many feminists like her, to further her ideological agenda. It has nothing to do with equality but a great deal to do with a mindset that all men are swine who need to be controlled. Ironic, really, when you consider the nature of the new ‘coercive control’ law.
You can understand Baird’s sense of triumph in the run-up to the new law in January 2016 because nine months earlier, in March 2015, she was already personally leading police “training” in implementing it – in anticipation. Her “training” programme taught officers how to recognise when perpetrators of domestic abuse were using “coercive control” and to know how best to tackle it. All staff, whether frontline or not, received the training. Oh, it would all be strictly gender neutral, of course. You can see this from the photo of Ron Hogg, PCC for Durham, below, proudly clutching his ‘Violence against Women and Girls’ strategy guidance material after being trained at Durham University…(click to enlarge)…
Whose help did Baird enlist in formulating this “training programme”? Well, that would be the women’s DV charities, the epicentre of feminist activism. Specifically it was Wearside Women In Need, Newcastle’s Hope Consortium and Gateshead Council’s Domestic Violence Advisory Service, amonst others. And the Crown Prosecution Service, led by arch-feminist Alison Saunders, took an active interest – who would have thunk it?
And let’s not forget the role of our beloved Prime Minister, then Home Secretary, Theresa May, as Chair of the National Oversight Group on Domestic Violence. Vera Baird’s membership of this august body formed part of her leadership role in driving the new coercive control law, and the presence on this Group of such fine upstanding exemplars of rectitude as Polly Neate of Women’s Aid and Sandra Horley of Refuge were, no doubt, a beneficial influence. That they are all feminists is all to the good, of course.
The lobbying which called for the creation of the new law came from this same axis: the women’s refuge sector. Without doubt, this sector will have “advised” in the formulation of the new law – if not actually drafted much of it. The decision to proceed with a (so-called) “consultation” on the proposal rested with feminist Theresa May as Home Secretary. And who was consulted? Why, these same people in the women’s refuge sector. After all, they are the experts on DV, aren’t they? A few annoying MRA types might also have responded to the call, but they could safely be ignored as obvious misogynists.
[Actually, less easily dismissed male-friendly, voices also failed to influence the Bill. A very real threat to the feminist lobby would be the claim by disenfranchised fathers that a mother breaching contact orders would be guilty of controlling behaviour. But the feminist lobby closed ranks to neutralise that one by restricting the coercive control law to cohabitees. Once the mother has got the father out of the house, she can be as controlling as she wishes. Odd that, given that the CSEW definition of partner abuse does not require cohabitation].
You can read my contemporary spin on this farce of a “consultation” here.
So, to recap: the desire to “enhance” the law on domestic violence originated from within the DV charity sector, a sector whose funding requires that the focus on DV against women is constantly revivified. This same lobby was then instrumental in “advising” on the formulation of the law. It’s senior representatives sat on the National Oversight Group, chaired by the (feminist) Home Secretary whose call it was to take the matter into legislation. The consequent ‘consultation’ exercise was a farce since the same lobby was taken as the authority for comment – and any unwelcome dissenting voices could be ignored with complete impunity. Meanwhile, other senior feminists were well placed to prepare for the implementation of the new law. Since implementation requires police action, the key to effective implementation is to role out “training” to the police – designed and delivered by the self-same feminist lobby. All this is neatly achieved within the feminist bubble.
The coercive control enhancement of the DV law was enacted as part of a larger set of Amendments to the Serious Crime Bill (2015). It was sponsored by feminist Theresa May as Home Secretary, together with Lord Taylor of Holbeach, also of the Home Office. The same Bill enhanced the law on FGM and various sexual offences against children. So this change to the law did go through due process, although the feminist domination of both the House of Parliament and the House of Lords would be unlikely to throw up objections when all incoming sources of ‘expert advice’ would be from the feminist lobby which has a monopoly on opinion in this area. Anti-feminist, or men’s rights, views are almost entirely unrepresented in our legislature at any level. Why? Because the feminist control of the narrative has embedded the view that such opinion is vile, anti-equality and misogynistic. In other words, dissent has been suppressed.
But all this is just a prelude to the main event, which occurred on 13th July 2016, the same day that Theresa May became Prime Minister.
The latest wheeze comes to us courtesy of Sue Fish, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire. She didn’t waste any time. She’s only been in the job three weeks. I’m afraid we will have to suspend our little game of “it’s all strictly gender neutral“. All pretence of gender neutrality has now been abandoned as the confidence of the sexist lobby increases. Trivial, non-criminal acts are now to be reclassified as hate crimes if someone, somewhere – anyone, anywhere – chooses to label them as misogynistic. The decision to make this change to the de facto law has come to us courtesy of Nottingham Women’s Centre, with the Nottinghamshire Police acting as their willing stooges.
Perhaps you thought, dear reader, that laws were made in Parliament? Parliament does indeed define the law in principle. But the de facto law is what is implemented on the ground by the police forces and the prosecution services. The legislated law and the de facto law do not always coincide. For example, our society tolerates male genital mutilation and paternity fraud because the police and prosecution services do not act against these common practices. Both are illegal. They contravene existing statutes. But the de facto law is what counts. The feminists have recognised this. They realise that it is not necessary to go through all that messy parliamentary business. As long as feminists are in place as senior police officers and/or PCCs, and as long as the Crown Prosecution Service is feminist dominated, then they can operate at the level of de facto law without bothering with actual legislation.
When the statute law and the de facto law diverge due to police action we call that a Police State. But what we have here is something different. It is the feminist lobby calling the shots. We have a Feminist State. The law is being defined by the feminist lobby, especially the refuge sector, because they have taken control of how de facto law is implemented. We have seen this already in the “training” of the police forces by the feminist lobby prior to the coercive control law being passed into statute.
As regards the new offence of misogynistic hate crime, the Nottinghamshire Police Statement makes absolutely clear whence the new ‘law’ originates,
Nottinghamshire Police, in partnership with Nottingham Women’s Centre, has become the first force in the country to recognise misogyny as a hate crime.
The additional category will apply to a range of incidents reported to the police, from street harassment through to unwanted physical approaches. Chief Constable Sue Fish said: “I’m delighted that we are leading the way towards tackling misogyny in all its forms. It’s a very important aspect of the overall hate crime work being conducted and one that will make Nottinghamshire a safer place for all women. “What women face, often on a daily basis, is absolutely unacceptable and can be extremely distressing. Nottinghamshire Police is committed to taking misogynistic hate crime seriously and encourages anyone who is affected by it to contact us without hesitation. The work we are doing with Nottingham Women’s Centre is so valuable and I am looking forward to continuing that work.”
The initiative did not spring fully formed from nothing. Work started to lay the foundations for the move in June 2014 with ‘research’ into hate crime. The Nottinghamshire Police Statement continues,
In 2015, armed with the findings of the research and funded by the Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Commissioner, Nottinghamshire Police and Nottingham Women’s Centre hosted the inaugural Nottinghamshire Safer for Women Conference. The event included testimonials by victims of misogynistic hate crime and examples of British Transport Police’s marketing and Hollaback UK’s campaign work. The day contributed to an action plan, which Nottinghamshire Police pledged to implement and, shortly after, project teams were set up to create new policing policy, training packages and communication strategies. Melanie Jeffs, Centre Manager at Nottingham Women’s Centre said: “We’re pleased to see Nottinghamshire Police recognise the breadth of violence and intimidation that women experience on a daily basis in our communities. Understanding this as a hate crime will help people to see the seriousness of these incidents and hopefully encourage more women to come forward and report offences.”
In line with the new way of reporting, the force has spent the last three months providing misogyny hate crime training to selected officers and staff and, by the end of July, those officers will have completed the course.
You see how this works? All sources of ‘advice’ and ‘research’ to which the police are exposed are ensured to be of suitable ideological alignment. The police are thus “trained” in the Correct perspective before the change in the ‘law’ is announced. It helps if senior police officers or the PCC are sympathetic to the cause, but this is not always necessary. Note how the presentation of ‘research’ leads to coercion of the police to “create a new policing policy” by the feminist VAWG lobby. But a “new policing policy” is a new de facto law. That’s how it works.
The worst is yet to come. This is how Nottinghamshire Police have chosen to define hate crime,
A hate crime is simply any incident, which may or may not be deemed as a criminal offence, which is perceived by the victim or any other person, as being motivated by prejudice or hatred.
There are good reasons why it should be Parliament which defines laws. One reason – worth mentioning in passing – is the rule of democracy. We elect MPs for the purpose. I don’t recall having elected Nottingham Women’s Centre. There is another reason though. Laws need very careful phrasing to avoid inconsistencies and unintended consequences. Whilst Parliament does not always get this right, because it can be tricky, at least they can call on professional civil servants who are alive to the problems. What the Nottinghamshire sexists have done has gone off the far end of the crazy scale.
Let’s start with “hate crime is any incident, which may or may not be a criminal offence…“. In plain words, they have created a new category of crime which was not previously a crime. By whose authority? Well, by the authority of the Nottingham Women’s Centre and their police stooges. It will be interesting to see if any senior figure in the judiciary or government stomps on this outrageous presumption. Anyone taking bets? That’s the Feminist State, right there.
Now consider, “hate crime is any incident which is perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice or hatred“. The key role of perception in this definition means that it may be a crime which has no objective reality. This is where postmodernism and “women’s ways of knowing” have led us. The fact that two people may perceive the same incident differently does not perturb these gender zealots, because there is no absolute truth – only women’s truth. But this definition is worse than usual. It is not only the “victim’s” perception which defines the crime – but anyone’s. So, anywhere a feminist ideologue happens to be hanging around, anything a man says or does might be labeled criminal – simply because said feminist perceives it so. I honestly do perceive the Nottinghamshire Police Statement as having been motivated by prejudice or hatred – but no one is going to care about my concerns – because the new ‘law’ is explicitly gender biased. The “victim” must be female. The Statement continues,
Misogyny hate crime, in addition to the general hate crime definition, may be understood as incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman, and includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman. Examples of this may include unwanted or uninvited sexual advances; physical or verbal assault; unwanted or uninvited physical or verbal contact or engagement; use of mobile devices to send unwanted or uninvited messages or take photographs without consent or permission.
Blows your mind, doesn’t it? Leaving aside the explicit gender bias, consider the first sentence. It makes all heterosexual sex a hate crime. Why? Well, that would be an incident in which a man’s behaviour is targeted towards a women and in which her sex is the most significant motivating factor. Ergo, as per the definition, heterosexual sex – or any of the usual romantic preludes thereto – are hate crimes. You can hear the lesbian feminist separatists popping the champagne corks from here.
But it is not only sex that is made a hate crime. Any incident in which the woman’s sex is the motivation is now a hate crime. For example, I dare say that if you saw two men having a fight in the street (not that I ever have) you might walk on by and leave them to it. On the other hand, if you saw a man beating up a woman in the street you would be far more inclined to intervene. You’ve seen the YouTube social experiment videos. But such assistance to a woman would now be a hate crime – because it would be an action taken specifically due to her sex. This is the craziness you get when the police and the refuge lobby define the law.
But it gets worse. Consider the second sentence which labels as misogyny hate crime any “unwanted verbal contact”. Recall that this law is specifically about men offending against women, not the reverse. What we have here is a law which makes it illegal for a man to initiate a conversation with a woman, even if it is merely a brief “hello” in passing. Now sane, reasonable people may object that such trivia are not what the law is intended to protect against. What sane, reasonable people need to understand is that the insane, unreasonable people are in charge. Staggeringly, we already know that many young women these days do regard men who say ‘hello’ to be harassers. They have been raised in a society which has taught them to fear men. This is the result.
So even well educated, and supposedly confident, young women have been reduced, needlessly, to quivering jellies. Take, for example, Daisy Buchanan’s piece in the Guardian, “I’m tired of being kind to creepy men in order to stay safe” . Ms Buchanan claims that her experience of sexual harassment by men has been so severe that she has had to impose her own curfew and tries to be in bed by 11pm. She has had to do this because, she says, “I know from experience that something bad might happen if I have to get home after midnight and the streets are full of potentially terrifying men“.
What appalling experiences have led this poor woman to adopt such a view? In her entire life to date she seems to have had just three experiences to relate. Trigger warning: explicit details follow. All three of these experiences have involved men who have spoken to Ms Buchanan uninvited, in public. And…..and….you wait to hear the gory deatils. No, there is no “and”. That’s it. Three men whom she did not know addressed her in public. That’s it. What they said was, respectively, “What are you reading, then?”, “What’s your name” and ” I keep seeing you around – what’s your name?”. Monsters!
So, before you sane, reasonable people dismiss my concerns that the new Nottinghamshire ‘law’ might be abused, just remember Ms Buchanan. There is a certain type of woman who, once they become aware they have this power, will use it. Meanwhile, saner women will be obliged to accept the infantilisation that is being foisted upon them whether they like it or not.
This leaves men unable to initiate social contact with a woman.
A man must not talk to a woman unless she addresses him first. Do not speak until you are spoken to, gentlemen – just like the relationship between a Victorian bourgeoise and her servant. Except that, in the case of the Victorian class system it would only be a violation of social convention for a servant to be too forward in addressing his betters. The Nottinghamshire law actually makes it a criminal offence for a man to address a woman uninvited. Thanks to the wonderfully enlightened views of the feminist lobby, the gulf between the sexes is now greater than the gulf between the servant and patrician classes of the Victorian era. It will not be long before men are expected to avert their eyes when a woman passes by (aargh, the male gaze!) – just as servants in great Victorian households were expected to do (even to turn their faces to the wall in some cases).
Then there is the misogyny hate crime of a man using a mobile ‘phone to send, to a woman, “unwanted or uninvited messages or to take photographs without consent or permission“. Virtually all texts are uninvited, and many are unwanted. I couldn’t begin to list the number of banks, insurance companies, scientific journals, etc., that would be committing acts of hate crime against me if I were a woman. And is it not legal to take photographs, or videos, in a public place? There are few public places in UK cities where you are not on CCTV. And many news items, such as terrorist actions, are accompanied by video footage from passers by. Is this to be illegal? Most concerning is the effect this ‘law’ might have on the precautions that some men are now taking to protect themselves against false allegations – namely to video everywhere they go. Is even this defence-of-last-resort to be denied them? Their precautions are over the top, you think? May be. But…..
- Tell that to Mark Pearson who was saved from a false allegation only by CCTV footage;
- Tell it to this man who was saved from going down for rape by CCTV footage;
- Tell it to this taxi driver whose in-cab CCTV saved him from a false allegation of sexual assault;
- Tell it to this music teacher whose life was blown to bits by a false accusation of rape, and whose torment might have been ended quicker if he had had video footage;
- Tell it to this primary school teacher whom a woman falsely accused of sexually abusing her daughter;
- Or this vicar, falsely accused of being a paedophile by a woman-and-daughter hate campaign;
- Tell it to this Durham University student;
- Tell it to this man-on-a-bicycle who was saved from false allegations by testimony from members of the public – but who might not have been;
- Tell it to these falsely accused young men from an agricultural college;
- Tell it to this falsely accused hedamaster;
- Or this falsely accused fire chief;
- Or the victim of this woman’s false rape claim;
- Or this army veteran deceived by a false rape claimant;
- Or the boyfriend of this law graduate who was found guilty of false rape allegations;
- Or any man crossing the path of this prolific rape liar;
- Or any man on Facebook who comes to the attention of this liar;
- Tell it to this father who was falsely accused by his own daughter;
- Or to this father who was falsely accused by a CAFCASS social worker of sexually abusing his own daughter;
- Or this grandfather, accused by his own granddaughter in a bid for his money;
- Tell it to Cliff Richard, Nigel Evans, Paul Gambaccini, Lord Bramall, Harvey Proctor, Michael le Vell, William Roache, David Easter, Conor Oberst and Ben Sullivan;
- You couldn’t tell it to Jay Cheshire because he killed himself;
- And you couldn’t tell it to these ten men because they killed themselves too;
- And even 12 year old boys are now being subject to false allegations of rape by under-aged girls who learn early what power they have – such as this appalling case and this one,
I could go one, there’s no shortage of examples. As one young American man said after being cleared of a rape charge: “Understand that society today doesn’t favour young men, and you need to, as a young man, protect yourself“. It’s understandable that some young men are steering clear of women altogether and/or having a go-pro camera always recording.
Bear in mind in all these cases that the burden is increasingly on men to prove their innocence. I quote, “Feminising of justice makes it hard for men charged with rape to get a fair trial….When it comes to sexual assault, decades of campaigning by feminists and more strident members of the victim lobby have browbeaten judges and policy-makers into a change of approach. The prevailing attitude seems to be that it is unfair to anyone claiming to have been the victim of a sexual attack that they should have to accept that their alleged attacker is ‘innocent until proved guilty’ and that the case has to operate under due process. As a result, the system has been re-engineered to make it more difficult for the accused to defend himself.” There are well documented cases in which evidence is given to the police showing unambiguously that the allegations are false, but the police ignore it. The police appear to have joined with the CPS in trying to maximise convictions, rather than serve the interests of justice.
And it is not only in allegations of sexual assault that the law has ceased to function. The domestic violence laws are being commonly abused as a fast-track for women to get rid of an unwanted male partner. Men can be thrown out of their own home and banned from seeing their children without evidence or trial. And our society is tolerating this state of affairs which has been going on for decades now.
The law has been flagrantly anti-male for a long time. But it’s getting worse. Male genital mutilation is ignored, paternity fraud is ignored, the family courts are a Stalinesque nightmare, judicial sentencing of male offenders is far, far harsher than that of female offenders but campaigns not to imprison women gain support from all centres of power. We now have the ‘coercive control’ enhancement of the domestic abuse laws, which puts the State in your home to monitor your behaviour, it’s all strictly gender neutral. And the move by Nottinghamshire police reveals how the feminist lobby can now impose de facto laws against men without the bother of working through parliament.
The target of the new law based on hypersensitivity to ‘misogyny’ or sexual assault is broader than just the men who are actually accused. It targets every man. It is a concerted and sustained campaign of psychological aggression.
When nice, well educated, well heeled, law abiding, middle class boys like me cease to respect the law, something has gone very wrong. And when the law departs from what is morally valid, there ceases to be a moral precept to be law abiding.
The bovine masses of men continue to slumber. They remain unaware of their own increasing social destruction. But if men were to awake they would ask themselves this question: why should men continue to cooperate with a society which so blatantly despises them?