Graham Linehan arrested on arrival at Heathrow Part 4

[IDareSay]

These threads have mostly been used to follow the case that has taken place at Westminster Magistrate's Court over the 4th and 5th September, (and will continue on the 29th October), but were created to follow the fallout of Graham's arrest at Heathrow on his return to the UK for this court case last week, and what is allegedly a conspiracy of TRAs to intimidate and harass a number of people, including Graham, with the alleged support of various police services.

He is currently on trial for alleged harassment of a trans identified male and criminal damage to the man's phone. The charges stem from a series of events in October 2024 at Battle of Ideas.

Part 1 here
Part 2 here
Part 3 here
Graham's account of the arrest here
You can support his Substack here
Or buy him a coffee here

Free Speech Union are running a fundraiser to support a claim against the Met in reference to the Heathrow arrest. Just search FSU and Graham Linehan fundraiser and it should be easy to find. At the time of posting it has reached 64% of its stretch target.
The FSU have managed to get the bail condition that @Glinner must not post on X removed, so he is now freely posting on there again.

Most of the mainstream media have reported on the case, but none have covered it as well as Nick Wallis. Follow him on X for live posting from the court again on 29th October.
You can support Nick here (posted Friday 5th September):
"I am deeply grateful to everyone who has seen fit to bung me the cost of a coffee, a pint or even a bloody London pint since I found out I was able to come back today. If you think you can afford to make a small donation, there’s more info here:"
https://store29806256.company.site

That’s exactly it! I’m referencing Gengar the Pokémon, which is my favourite Pokémon.

🥰😍

It seems to me like a refinement of the NCHI system since they're not supposed to be recording NCHIs any more. So the crime doesn't reach the evidential basis to be referred to the CPS for charging, it might not even legally be a crime, but they'll keep a black mark against your name indefinitely and they won't even tell you.

This is potentially a huge scandal. Who knows how many law abiding people have non-crime "crimes" recorded against their names.

And I'm sure there will be lots of people who defend the practice but just think it's possible to have a sensible and competent police force who'll do it to the other people, not our kind of people.

I've never believed that libertarianism is a sane philosophy, but the current British regime seems determined to turn me into a libertarian.

I thought there had to be a crime to which the 'hate crime' was attached?

In any case to be tried and convicted but be entirely unaware of it...that's...words fail me!

They have convenient catch all crimes like malicious communication and harassment and stalking (which obviously are sometimes genuine crimes which disproportionately affect women) they can slot it into and then apply the “hate crime” aggravator.

Is this still going to be a separate category or will it be more like a form of intelligence, which the police already routinely gather?

Thanks. A silly little thing but something that makes me wonder each time.

When ASBOs were a thing, I remember trying to explain ASBOs to a bewildered American who said, "You mean in England, you can be taken to court just for being an asshole?"

The rule of law depends on some level of transparency and predictability. If you do X, there is a chance you will be caught and charged, and then if you're found guilty the court may impose a range of penalties on you.

I've become very suspicious of these vague categories that allow PC Plod to maintain a little list of all the bad people, but nobody is to know who is on the list or what they did to get there.

I'm even more suspicious when someone like Lynsay Watson seems able to get PC Plod to do his bidding, not once or twice but multiple times. It starts to look like an arbitrary use of power from a police force who barely seem to bother investigating crime.

I guess it's super low effort to investigate an online crime where someone has basically wrapped it all up in a bow for you. No need to leave your desk, nice tick in the stats for both reports dealt with and dei.

It's a reflection of the immature schoolboy who runs it. He no doubt thinks it's hilarious while most people think it's pathetic.

Yes, how you’re being measured on your work/solve rate could have a big impact on how keen you are to prioritise pursuing carefully crafted social media “crimes” reported by a former officer who knows how the system works, over say a burglary or sexual assault.

It's all about incentives.

Many years ago, Socialist Workers Party guru Tony Cliff introduced a Thatcherite system of league tables to encourage recruitment, where the regional organisers with most recruits would be at the top every month and the slackers would be at the bottom. Cliff took a while to realise that he was just rewarding the biggest liars.

Imagine you're a police sergeant who deals with malicious communications. There's a woman down the road who's been complaining for months about being stalked by her ex, but she's a pain to deal with and takes hours out of your Friday morning every week and her case will never be solved. Well, unless her ex escalates to killing her, but touch wood...

On the other hand, some TRA has just made a complaint about Helen Joyce that doesn't amount to a crime or meet any kind of evidential standard, but you can enter it on your records, mark it NFA and that's a case logged and disposed of. And it might even win you DEI brownie points!

It makes sense if you think of the police as just another public sector bureaucracy whose only real incentive is to say on a spreadsheet that they've met their KPIs.

Bang on.

I've just seen a video on Twitter of a man saying that he tried to report a flasher, whose immediate escalation involved two separate women, to a nearby policeman who just laughed/shrugged it off.

@SionnachRuadh your post is dead on as depressing as that is

Ha...you just triggered an ancient memory there. My granddad was a Garda sergeant in rural Ireland aeons ago. When he died we found an old log book full of dastardly crimes which required no further action - after a warning. Like not having a functioning light on a bicycle. Pages of this stuff to impress the Super. You can see where Flann O Brien got his ideas from.

From a poster, Sidsy, on X:

'As @HJoyceGender has also found out, Home Office Crime Recording Rules obligate police forces to record a "crime" (not just a NCHI) purely on the basis of victim perception - even when the case is closed as the allegation cannot be proven. So when you read about the "increase in hate crime", this is based not on charges/convictions but simply on the number of crimes recorded. This system is being abused and the "data" is not fit for purpose.'

https://x.com/GrumpyOW/status/1966109043702808655

The rules say:

-The Crime Recording Rules also promote a victim-oriented approach to crime recording. This means that a victim’s belief that a crime has occurred is, in most cases, enough to justify its recording as a crime.

-The rules place an obligation on the police to accept what the victim says unless there is “credible evidence to the contrary.” So the following reasons aren’t enough to justify not recording a crime:

• the victim declines to give personal details;
• the victim doesn’t want to take the matter further; or
• the allegation can’t be proven.

I hope you don’t mind @yourhairiswinterfirebut this is extremely relevant to another current thread so I’m going to copy and paste it there.

Fucking hell. That's absolutely ridiculous. Since when was a crime defined by any random person on the street??

How many times have we had TRAs here complaining that the hate crime against transgender people is increasing?

When in reality there's a massive probability that it's a bunch of TRA's lying to the police. And they don't even have to give their personal details? So anonymous TRAs???

I knew the police were bad, but this outstanding amount of wankery is breathtaking.

“A victim oriented approach to crime recording” unless you’re a victim of a random assault not on the basis of a protected characteristic, victim of a sex crime, domestic abuse, stalking (like poor Shana Grice) or in fact most crimes which have victims.

Also a lot of ridiculous organisations set themselves up to record “hate crime”, didn’t they? There was going to be an app.

Incentives!

Theodore Dalrymple tells a story (he might have embroidered this for comedy purposes) about the time the Blair government set a target of reducing suicides by 50%. Dalrymple wondered how the state could do that, but as luck would have it, he was appearing as an expert witness in coroner's courts at the time.

Coroner: Could this death have been accidental?

TD: I don't think so, the deceased took 200 tablets and washed them down with a bottle of rum

Coroner: Is there a one in a million chance it could have been accidental?

TD: Um, I suppose so

So the number of accidental deaths recorded went up and the number of suicides recorded went down.

We often complain about the low conviction rate for rape, and quite rightly. Although to be blunt, rape is on purely evidential grounds not an easy crime to prove, and there's no easy procedural fix for getting that conviction rate up.

The hate crime guidelines are not only based entirely on victim perception, but also incentivise recording a hate crime where the copper has a sniff of a protected characteristic (except for sex). Douglas Murray tells a story about a friend who was involved in some altercation on a train - I don't remember the details, except that when the copper realised Murray's friend was gay, he started positively badgering the poor guy to agree to it being recorded as a hate crime.

If you log lots of hate crimes on the computer - and even better if they're just bullshit complaints that you can NFA - your productivity rate goes way up, and Sir Mark Rowley can go on the TV and claim the Met is scoring big victories against the rising tide of hate crime.

It's like a Soviet five year plan where you're producing 300 million tons of steel and next year you raise the target to 200 million, and you hope nobody out there can do sums.

It's not impossible that the majority of reported hate crimes against transpeople are the result of one embittered former copper with a phone, a dream and a go get 'em attitude.

THIS

Unless the person handing you the dossier is a woman, or Graham Linehan, in which case you just toss it.

But if it comes from a TRA with a history of harassing women - brilliant stuff lads, there'll be buns for tea.

Why have I just got a ‘Bold Gendarmes’ earworm?