Could Zack Polanski be any more of an obnoxious twat?

The stats above are for one year. If you extrapolate over ten years you can see that 1 in 10 Jews will be subject to a hate crime over that period. So if you’re Jewish you will either have been a victim yourself or know other Jewish people who have been. Of course you’ll feel scared!

I can only conclude that Green voters are either clueless or actively anti-Semitic.

Exactly.

Just him mentioning the word 'perception' is frankly appalling, but not at all surprising given his repeated encouragement of antisemitism within the Greens and society more widely.

@ScarlettOYara It’s been well reported that they are gearing up to have enough candidates to contest many Labour seats at the next election. There have also been journalists expressing concern about how they find enough candidates and what checks will be in place. They will have exactly the same issues as Reform. Awful people will join and push their way forward.

The Greens are the new far left. It’s clear they are going for student votes and some cities have a lot of students congregated together. They won’t be getting the benign eco warriors of old. They want the disaffected Left. All extremes are dangerous and they will be a party garnering protest votes - and look where that gets us! We have a poorly informed electorate who think they are voting for a single policy area and that nice Caroline Lucas. They haven’t noticed the change and many won’t care either.

It’s gaslighting to suggest that it’s about perception. Jews are a tiny minority with a high concentration of hate crime in the community. Of course an individual Jew will feel less safe - they are more likely to experience hate crimes and more likely to see it around them than a person from any other minority group.

It’s also because there are way more mosques than synagogues. If you are an individual Muslim going to mosque, your chances of being a victim of a hate crime are about 10 times less than a Jewish person going to synagogue.

Thank you for those stats. They're all shocking, but antisemitism is objectively a serious problem.

People say this about women all the time. It’s a fair point to make for any group of people who face a threat. What is the actual risk v the perceived risk. It doesn’t minimise the issue, but it helps to contextualise it to help people feel more safe.

The level of attacks on synagogues is roughly the same as for mosques, but we don’t see the same kind of “elevated threat” narrative coming from Muslims. I expect some of this is because synagogue attacks tend to make the news. The skewed nature of media reporting has always been problematic when it comes to how people feel about crime. Crime levels have reduced significantly in almost every category but the reported fear of crime continues to rise.

Everyone should be safe, but more importantly everyone should be able to feel safe. Exploring whether there is a disconnect in those things is important for everyone.

UK hate crimes per capita (per capita is most relevant because it indicates how likely it is that an individual from the group in question will be a victim and how concentrated the crimes are in a particular community):

Jews - 106 per 10,000
Black British - 41 per 10,000
Asian - 24 per 10,000
Muslim - 12 per 10,000

It's not as if it's just a "perceived" risk is it?

There have been four anti-Semitic arson attacks in the last month alone in the UK.

In the UK, a Jewish person is less safe than any other ethnic minority person. This is an objective fact. So this begs the question of why he is denying it.

Oh, I think we all know the answer to this one.

Good question.

Do you think Zack would say the same thing to a trans identifying man who ‘perceives’ they’re at risk of being attacked for being trans?

Or would he take their concerns seriously (and fast track their right to use women’s toilets 🙄)

That is how modern political parties work. They form a policy and then every elected member is expected to defend it.

I think this is a sad state of affairs and is mostly driven by the way the modern media reports every tiny disagreement as being some sort of rebellion, but it is not unique to the greens.

The Greens are absolutely terrifying. I'd vote for anyone, absolutely anyone, before them.

That's very interesting, thank you. They do strike me as somewhat Stalinist.

I also expect they will have to rein in the more extreme members as time goes on and put in place a central structure to control their representatives.

They already have a central structure that is uber controlling on one subject. The Greens have thrown out members who oppose gender ideology, including their former deputy leader Shahrar Ali. Some of those expelled have taken the party to court, and won every time.

I don't think they're mainstream at the moment. If they intend to be, they need to have boundaries about what members say and post, and definitely rein in the more Stalinist element.
They've always had a manifesto including healthcare, education, law and order etc, but they seem to be doing that horseshoe thing where the Left veers towards the Right.

They are going from being a single issue minority party to a much more mainstream party. As they grow it is necessary that they start to have policies in many areas. I also expect they will have to rein in the more extreme members as time goes on and put in place a central structure to control their representatives.

Why not? It's an emotive subject for sure and as he says even a perceived threat needs to be taken seriously. Should we not question these things and look at some statistics to verify if the facts match up to the public perception?

Are you looking foward to legalised hard drugs or completely open borders the most?
Or maybe it's any man in a dress being allowed into your changing rooms and women's shelters that floats your boat.

They are no longer interested in the environment. Now it's pro trans, whats going on in Gaza, anti semitism and nothing to do with local issues at all.

My natural inclination is to vote Labour or Lib Dem, but I would vote Tory or Reform to stop the Greens.

He will still get the student vote though. He’s a chancer but is looking for seats from the disaffected Labour left. Students don’t think too deeply and all those 16 year olds - the mind boggles!

He knows exactly what response he will get and who this will appeal to

everyone knows that there is a large number of people on the left who hold anti semitic opinions and that is who he is playing to

its shameful many of these people will scream from the roofs about racism but anti semitism is ok because of what Isreali government are doing