‘Being offensive is a crime’: UK police quickly apologize for bizarre LGBT ad campaign. FULL ANALYSIS

Note. The following exercise presents a controversial issue as reported by RT. As usual I’ll give a brief personal comment below this. But then I’ll go one step further and show the reader some of the “fact checking” and research that goes on when assessing these articles for publication here at Uncensored. Martin

Liverpool’s Merseyside Police in the UK have apologised after stirring up controversy with a campaign that ominously warned Brits they could be charged with “being offensive.”

RT
Mon, 22 Feb 2021

Superintendent Martin Earl apologised in a statement on Monday for “any confusion” the campaign caused, declaring: “We would like to clarify that ‘being offensive’ is not in itself an offense.”

Earl explained that the campaign was organized by local police in the Wirral area of Merseyside “to encourage people to report hate crime,” but added that the message was “incorrect,” despite calling it “well intentioned.”

Merseyside Police in Wirral became the target of international condemnation and concern after it posted pictures last week of its police officers standing by a rainbow flag billboard that read, “Being offensive is an offense: Merseyside Police stand with and support the LGBTQI+ community, we will not tolerate hate crime on any level.”

The billboard also defined “hate crime” as a crime against “sex workers, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, race, ethnicity or nationality, religion, faith or belief,” prompting some Brits to question whether ridiculing prostitutes was now a criminal offense.

Martin comments: This has reached a new depth of insanity. Even George Orwell never imagined this level of dystopia. How much public money has been wasted on this virtue-signalling garbage? Rainbow police cars??

Is there anything behind this police initiative though? Is there a valid motivation? Well, here’s the other side of the story from the MSM:

Homophobic and transphobic hate crimes surge in England and Wales | Society | The Guardian

That article presents a very different perspective. Massive increase in reported Hate Crime, shocking figures. Perhaps this police campaign is justified then, even if they crossed the line? Well, we have to weigh up these two contrasting perspectives and seek out some facts.

Now, the question is, how does one define “Hate Crime”? There’s a big difference between making a remark that someone finds offensive; stalking/harrasment; and physical violence. It appears little if any differentiation is made in the statistics in the link above, everything being lumped together as general “Hate Crime”. A more useful statistic would be: How many of the reports resulted in actual convictions. This would give a much clearer picture. Government stats tend to be more detailed and instructive so we will check some out.

Blaming Brexit for an increase in Hate Crime? One suspects a political motive behind that claim. Correlation does not necessarily equate to causation. Again we’ll see what the available evidence says.

LETS DO SOME RESEARCH!

First the BREXIT-Hate Crime link:

In general, hate crimes are quite infrequent and have been on a different trend relative to other crimes…

We find a 15-25% rise in recorded hate crime as a result of the Brexit referendum vote. This effect is concentrated in the first quarter after the referendum (July to September 2016). Specifically, the impact is largest and most significant in the first month after the referendum (July 2016). This impact is substantially smaller than the 41% effect reported by the Home Office.

Love Thy Neighbour? Brexit and Hate Crime (iza.org)

The authors of the above study do indeed report a causation behind the correlation, but it is not as long term nor as large in scale as MSM reports are suggesting.

Now to Hate Crime statistics themselves.

How reliable are the reported hate crime statistics?

I will quote at length from official government documentation. Emphasis in bold is mine.

Statistics
There is no single reliable source of hate crime statistics in England and Wales. The two main sources used to record crimes in England and
Wales are the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) and the
Police Recorded Crimes series. Both are problematic in that the CSEW
does not cover all crimes which may have a hate crime component such
as homicides and public order offences.5 Nor does it record crimes
directed against those aged under 16. Police recorded figures do not have National Statistics status like the CSEW and are likely to
underreport the true extent of hate crime as many people do not report
it to the police.6

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hate Crime in its report,
How Do We Build Community Cohesion When Hate Crime Is On the
Rise published in February 2019, also noted that:
Hate Crime is often intersectional in nature (e.g. many
victims are women as well as being black, LGBT++, Muslim
etc.). However, the current legislation does not allow for
this intersectionality to be recorded so the picture that
authorities have lacks depth and subtlety.7

The 2019/20 Hate Crime in England and Wales statistical bulletin included data on hate crime incidents from the CSEW.
Hate Crime figures from the CSEW were due to be published in 2020/21. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic however, face to-face interviewing was suspended in March 2020 resulting in the publication of figures being brought forward combining the latest annual data with that from 2017/18.8

According to the CSEW, combined figures for the 2017/18 to
2019/20 surveys showed there were estimated 190,000 hate
crime incidents each year. This represented around 3% of all
crime recorded by the CSEW compared with 2% of all police
recorded crime.10 Over the combined surveys 2017/18 to
2019/20, 47% of hate crime incidents recorded by the CSEW
were reported to the police. This compares with 38% of all
crimes.11

CBP-8537.pdf

Now that puts things in perspective somewhat. A read of the PDF also gives some helpful breakdown about the nature of crimes committed and percentages.

Be assured, this author does NOT condone violence or abuse, physical or psychological, against anyone, regardless of their racial, cultural or sexual identification. BUT: It does appear that that the “Hate Crime” issue is being overtly singled out and blown out of all proportion compared to other crimes. The documentation suggests that reporting has increased rather than the actual number of crimes. Although this suggests previous years may have been under-reports, it reduces the “increase in crimes” claim while suggesting previous years actual figures may have been more inline with current figures indicating a more constant percentage of actual hate crimes, but many going unreported. That in mind, surely the increase in reporting is actually a positive thing in the long run. In this respect, public awareness campaigns would appear to have worked. So why is the media putting such a negative spin on this? Political agendas intervening again?

Crime figures in the UK DROPPED generally during this same period:

Recorded crime dropped by 6%

Firearm offences dropped 7%

Knife offences dropped 3%

However, domestic abuse increased 9%

It would appear that COVID has been a factor both in the nature of crimes rising or falling, and the accuracy of actual stat. figures.

If you want DATA as opposed to MSM hype and political agendas, here’s a good start:

Crime and justice – Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

In conclusion, it would appear that LGBT Hate Crime, while it cannot be condoned, and should be reported and subject to justice, has been highlighted beyond proportion and therefore smacks of virtue signalling. Why not highlight domestic abuse, an area of crime which does appear to have risen, predictably, rather alarmingly as a result of COVID lockdowns? Is it because there is a negative effect to lockdowns inthe domestic violence issue?

On the other side of things, the public awareness campaign does appear to have a had a positive effect except in this instance (and possibly others) where Police went too far with their misleading “Hate Crime” message.

It always helps to weigh up both sides of an argument, regardless of one’s personal stance.

I guess the main “take” from this instance is the inaccurate and rather Orwellian message being delivered the Merseyside Police which is perhaps best separated from the LGBTQ+ context in which it was delivered. Or, does one take the stance that the LGBT… movement is being used as a trojan horse for the implementation of such messages to test public response? What do YOU think?

I hope this has been a helpful “behind the scenes” expose to you. My personal philosophy, and my commitment to Uncensored News, is rather than simply churn out a torrent of copied and pasted articles, a selection is made based on articles that have been subjected to some scrutiny found to have merit and substance. Articles and opinions that ought to serve as starting point for productive debate and objective research. Most importantly, we will never tell you what to think. You can do that for yourself! Martin