James Clark

A little note on the scary new Scottish Hate Crime Act. I see quite a lot of people criticising the Act for not including sex as a protected characteristic. I totally get why they'd say this, and it's bizarre that sex is not on the list. BUT... even getting into that discussion is a mistake. Even having the discussion means conceding that the government should be able to arrest people for "insulting" speech that "a reasonable person" thinks might be "likely" to "stir up hate". We shouldn't concede that! All the phrases in quote marks above are horribly ambiguous, and they're certain to lead to all kinds of vexatious complaints, needless arrests, wasteful court cases, and even convictions/punishments for people who've done nothing other than... say stuff. That's crazy! Even if someone isn't tried or convicted for saying stuff, the very experience of having the police investigate you or knock on your door *for a speech act* is something nobody in a liberal democracy should have to tolerate (and that's before we get to the idea of the police recording "non-crime hate incidents"). BTW, I know lots of these terrible ideas apply UK-wide - that's very bad too! But it just got a lot worse in Scotland. We had this debate hundreds of years ago. The only good answer to the issue of free speech is something like the First Amendment in the US: a totally robust protection meaning you can say whatever you want with no interference from the government - whether that's a liberal government or a conservative one (and remember that at any given time the next government might be quite different from the current one!). Anyway. Just wanted to register the fact that, for the first time since I left 6 years ago, I'm really really glad that I no longer live in Scotland.