14.02.20 Live updates on Harry and Kate’s cases HERE

[MrsSnippyPants]

I shall be glued to social media this morning and thought it might be useful to have a place where we can post updates as they come in so people need to follow just one thread.
Please post Twitter handles of anyone providing live updates as you find them.
@WeAreFairCop are saying it is likely the judgement will NOT be read out so they hope to get a copy and summarise and tweet after 10.30am

Far too late to the thread but I thought Radio 2 was good today. Who is the lunch time presenter? He seemed to have a lot of time for the GC view. He even brought up Karen White and explained about Karen to the listeners in quite some detail!

from a current thread about LGB Conservatives' concerns about regulatory capture,
Unformidable has just posted:

"Well, well, well. Tomorrow's Times, "No. 10 backs free expression ruling on trans tweets". Downing Street prepared to press for a review of the College's guidelines."

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a3822486-LGB-Conservatives-think-the-Tory-party-is-captured-too?msgid=93944273#93944273

because I am neither, and never want to be your mate, freedom of speech

Clearly freedom of speech is not a priority for you. But for the millions of us to whom it matters?

We are pleased about the judge's defence of it when it is under such sustained attack

Spectator article by Kim Thomas: 'I Stand by Kate Scottow'
(extract)
"Why are the police wasting time arresting Twitter transphobes when they could be tackling knife crime? That was the question asked by Boris Johnson in an article for the Daily Telegraph last February, in which he lambasted officers for arresting a mum for sending some rude tweets. A year on, Boris Johnson is Prime Minister. And now that mum has a criminal record.

Today’s judgement was a hard sight to bear: a 39-year-old mother of two children, one of whom is autistic, listened as the judge at St Albans Magistrates’ Court found her guilty, under the Communications Act (2003), of using a public communications network to ’cause annoyance, inconvenience and anxiety’.

The verdict means Kate Scottow is unlikely to be able to fulfil her ambition of becoming a forensic psychologist, after completing her master’s degree in the subject last year.

Her crime? To send some offensive tweets to a trans woman called Stephanie Hayden. These included describing Hayden as a ‘pig in a wig’ and referring to Hayden as ‘he’ or ‘him’.

Scottow’s tweets were, admittedly, uncivil. But nothing she wrote was worse than what can be seen every day on Twitter and other social media platforms, where thousands of cruel insults and threats are regularly posted without any comeback at all. Hayden herself has referred to people as ‘nutters’ on Twitter. She has also referred to social media site Mumsnet as ‘Nuttersnet’.

Hayden admitted during the trial to being a serial litigator in the civil courts. ‘I am litigious, I put my hands up. I use the law if I feel I have to use the law,’ she told the court." (continues)

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/i-stand-with-kate-scottow/

Julia Hartley Brewer tweets calling for support

".... If you believe in free speech, you should help support her appeal. Everyone needs to know about this so please share far & wide."
twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1228368161118019584

Tomorrows Times front page. No 10 indicating willingness to press for review of Police guidelines. This could be excellent news.

According to Barracker:

The judge appears to have left us with a situation where the recording of hundreds of thousands of noncrime hate incidents can continue unchecked, and continue to blight people's 'criminal records' and affect employment opportunities.

About the recording of "incidents," if the purpose is preventing escalation, or for gathering information, I don't see how making the records available to potential employers furthers those particular goals.

But I can see the benefit to those who want to see the trangenderist agenda carried out in places like schools or organizations supporting youth, since this is can obviously be used to screen out those who are vocal about their concerns with Safeguarding from employment in those fields. The exact people we need more of in those fields. Law enforcement should get this ffs.

Speaking of taking advantage of policies to screen out those deemed "undesirable,"

After the Langcleg debacle I’m a bit concerned that RO has now been targeted.

Mumsnet have stated that they only delete following reports haven’t they?

Worried about this, I hope RO gets clarification on why that was deleted.

Twitter link to The Times front page:

twitter.com/bbcnews/status/1228446525321293824?s=21

Astonishing, isn't it to twist the judge's words like that? I will admit I didn't make it through the whole post by our visitor, but lasted long enough for that bit.

For the avoidance of doubt, the judge stated categorically that Harry's tweets did not constitute hate or a hate incident. He agreed that the non-crime hate crime recorded as a hate incident on Harry's record should not be stricken but should be amended by adding that the court found him not guilty of hate.

That's because the recording of the complaint against Harry as a hate incident was required by the guidelines as they stand. However, the act of recording a hate incident is not proof that the incident in question constitutes hate.

The mere act of doing so is not in and of itself a guilty verdict, because the officers are not asked to decide whether the complaint is justified. (I would say they cannot do so as this is based on the victim's personal perception, which cannot be objectively disproven.) What was within their power, and where they erred, was in the actions they took after recording the complaint.

What the judge also unequivocally expressed was that the current guidelines are in alignment with the law. He explained why. He also commented that the guidelines were problematic in some aspects, especially in the recording of non-crime hate incidents that show up on an ERC which may be unfair, but that even this was in line with the law.

He then gave Harry leave to appeal directly to the Supreme Court where the law may be challenged as well as the guidelines.

So, no this judge does not agree with the commenter on p. 24 about the hate crime legislation and he most certainly did not find that Harry was guilty of a hate incident. Such misrepresentation should be shameful and shocking, but alas, it's par for the course.

Hi Dadby Hi dadbythesea

On the thread, you treated us to a misogynists reply, please don't call us "fangirls,” because it’s belittling. And I am certainly not.

Note that sex is not listed. I wonder what sort of terms would be included in hate crimes lists if it were?

Calm down Dad. You're making yourself look even more ridiculous than last time.

No one cares what you think. And stop using misogynistic language.

Is there somewhere I can listen to the Evan Davies interview please? I can’t see a link on the thread, though I may have missed it.

Evan Davies interview with Harry Miller was onRadio 4 PM so BBC Sounds:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000f7yk

That bit about No 10's support for a change to the law, in today's Times article, is very encouraging, Fallingirl.

But I note that the Rt Honourable Justice Knowles, also agreed with the likes of me, who said in the name of the hate crimes 1998 legislation, Harry the owl, was guilty of a hate incident
I must have missed this bit. I remember that the judge said he agreed that the recording of non crime hate incidents was a proportionate action used for a legitimate purpose, but can’t see where he stated Harry was guilty of anything. Can you please point out that part of the judgement for me? Ta

I don't think dad will be coming back, as he is that previously banned poster.

Saying he was going to donate to a rape crisis refuge, but he won't now, because we are also awful, was one of his offences, if I recall.

I hope to God he is not raising his sons to have the same misogyny.

His previous name was 2BoysandaCairn and yes he was banned for telling a rape victim that if she's not nice enough to him he won't donate to a rape crisis centre.

Haha women changing their Twitter handle to MandyMcGirlDick!

The weather is telling me to be indoors all day so I'm going to go through the Miller vs College of Policing decision properly. There's much to enjoy:

61. She goes on to describe the Claimant as a ‘bigot’ who ‘eighty years ago ... would have been making the same comments about Jewish people’. It is not clear what comments she is specifically referring to, but I understand she regards the Claimant as someone who eighty years ago would, by his writings, have contributed to the socio-political conditions in Germany which paved the way for the Holocaust and the murder of millions of Jews.

It seems likely that the College of Policing is going to have to revise its guidelines. If one revision is that any report of a non-crime hate incident must be properly checked to determine whether hate is present, how much Police resources is this going to consume? Assuming there are over 10,000 such reports per year, won't this cause a massive problem to the Police? The present system works because the reports are not assessed. That's why there's more than 100,000 of them.

They need to give these reports as much attention as a 999 operator triageing the calls into:

1. Genuine emergency.
2. Over-anxious or confused person.
3. Timewasting fuckwit.

Nauticant I managed most of the 65 pages and that bit stood out! Has increased my respect for judges

156. I conclude that HCOG is lawful under domestic law because the police have the power at common law to record and retain a wide variety of data and information. The cases make clear that no statutory authorisation is necessary in relation to non-intrusive methods of data collection, even where the gathering and retention of that data interferes with Convention rights.

I can see the justification where the data reflects facts which are correct. However, I can't see the justification for recording a non-crime hate incident where there's no hate which is erroneous because the Police haven't bothered to assess what happened. In other words, recording an untrue statement made by one person who has a grievance against another with the Police taking one side. This looks like saying the Police can record anything, true, false, defamatory, whatever, because they've been granted to record some things. I would expect there to be a proportionality test to avoid that.

I'm sure Harry is crying into his cornflakes because some self righteous, rando 'daddybythesea' doesn't want to be his mate.😃

Btw 'Dad' you were also the one who said that you'd rather send your sons to bomb squad training rather then interact with women who don't automatically do what you say. How is that going?

206. For these reasons, I conclude that the use of complainant perception in defining non-crime hate incidents does not contravene the requirement of foreseeability. Overall, the perception based approach in HCOG does not, in my judgment, confer a discretion so broad that it depends on the will of those who apply it, on the whim of those who may report incidents, nor are its terms so broadly defined as to produce the same effect in practice: In re Gallagher, supra, [17].

This surprises me.

245. I understand that ‘TERF’ is an acronym for ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’. It is used to describe feminists who express ideas that other feminists consider transphobic, such as the claim that trans women are not women, opposition to transgender rights and exclusion of trans women from women's spaces and organisations. It can be a pejorative term.

This is a qualification of what the judge said in court "I have become familiar with term TERF. It is a derogatory term used by those who seek to deplatform those who hold different views."

281. Although I do not need to decide the point, I entertain considerable doubt whether the Claimant’s tweets were properly recordable under HCOG at all. It seems to me to be arguable that the tweets (or at least some of them) did not disclose hostility or prejudice to the transgender community and so did not come within the definition of a non-crime hate incident.

This seems to be a call for the way non-crime hate incidents are recorded to be subject to much more rigor. I'm not sure how this would be pursued at an appeal.

My summary would be that it's fortunate that Harry Miller acted against both Humberside Police and the College of Policing. Getting the win against HP, or even if he'd lost, meant that this received widespread favourable coverage, with notable exceptions who decided that because Miller is a bigot or a gammon the decision of the High Court in his favour must be wrong. For example Evan Davis.