This is of surprise to absolutely no-one who has been paying attention to the development (I say development, it’s actually a regressive step) of hate speech (aka blasphemy) laws. You don’t get to have one law for classrooms and another for everywhere else. https://twitter.com/tombennett71/status/1334760489239318530

“Non-crime hate incidents” are the single most illiberal thing I can think of, but if you haven’t yet encountered one then you probably don’t realise that you can become unemployable on the basis of someone’s hurt feelings.

Offence is a useless metric. It’s subjective, unmeasurable, and most of all, a weapon available to the most powerful who have historically used it to oppress (again, see blasphemy). Making that weapon available to everyone instead of removing it from the top is not going well.

Even libel laws have a minimum threshold for harm.

If you are sufficiently offended by my thread here, you are welcome to call the police and report a non-crime hate incident. These tweets are indeed “motivated by hostility” (amazing how police can determine that without a trial, isn’t it?).

You don’t actually have to be the victim of my non-crime hate speech to use your right to be offended. Anyone’s hurt feelings are sufficient for police to act. If this is the first you’re hearing of this, welcome to the New Madness! Which is the Old Madness in a new dress.