Scotland: Police State

Official hate out in the open.  In Orwell's "1984" they had official hate sessions too

These posters are currently being displayed in towns and cities all over Scotland.





There are others – but it was these that took my breath away –

You will note that these are posters from the Scottish Government and the Scottish Police.   At one level they seem fine.  Who is going to argue against the idea that we want rid of hatred?  That people should not call others names, or be violent, or mock and abuse?   But that is not what is happening here.  Note the following:

The posters themselves are somewhat ambiguous, unless you speak the code.  If you do speak the language of the Scottish Government and Police then what they are saying is that any kind of disagreement with homosexuality, the trans philosophy, or Islam  makes you guilty of hate and you have no place in ‘our’ community.

They are selective – Its only certain groups that are mentioned.  Look at what they leave out.   What about those of us who are Christians who are regularly mocked and abused in the media, in our schools and on the streets?  What about English people in Scotland?  What about the disabled?  Or many, many other groups?  Why do they only pick on these select groups?

They are intimidatory – It is not the job of the police to police our thoughts and hearts.  They can have no idea what we do or do not hate or love.  Their responsibility is to deal with crimes that are committed. They do not have the time, money or ability to deal with our thoughts. But it seems they are going to try.  The new State morality is going to be imposed through education and enforced by the State police – welcome to modern Scotland – the Saudi Arabia of Secularism.

They are self-contradictory – A poster which is designed to combat hate – spreads hate.  Imagine a poster which said – Dear bigots, you can’t spread your homosexual hatred here!” .  You would be arrested immediately for putting that up.  But now the police and the Scottish government are putting up a poster which incites hatred – by implying that it is religion that is to blame.  I get enough hatred in schools, Universities, the media and online, without the government and police encouraging it!

The posters say ‘love lives in this country, not hate’ – whilst encouraging people to hate anyone who dares to disagree with their new State morality.    They should say ‘insanity lives in this country’.  We are moving towards an Orwellian State where the in the name of love we are taught to hate all who do not agree with the State’s philosophy

If you doubt this is happening – take the case of the feminist activist Kelly-Jay Keen-Minshull who put up a poster with the following words“Woman, women, noun, adult human female.”  Dr Adrian Harrop, complained that it was transphobic and would make trans people feel ‘unsafe’.  So the company apologised, the poster was removed and the police are investigating.

Mr Harrop, 31, a GP registrar who lives with his husband in Sunderland, denied trying to silence anyone, saying he is not an activist. Asked why he found the meaning of the word “woman” so offensive, he said: “It really isn’t the dictionary definition itself, it’s the motivation behind it. That poster creates an environment of hostility for trans women and makes them frightened.”   He also said he was not removing anyones free speech, whilst demanding that these posters be taken down!

Mrs Keen-Minshull, 44, said the poster’s removal was Orwellian. “I find it far more sinister and pernicious than the old-fashioned sexism where the guy at the garage is surprised I know anything about engines. I’d take that guy any day over the Twitter troll who thinks I don’t know what a woman is.

“If the word ‘woman’ can mean anything, then women lose their sex-based protections and nobody is protected. Women are getting really, really fed up. Every single organisation that capitulates, paves the way for the next one to do the same. This is what trans activists do. This is how they silence women. I hope this will help people wake up to what’s going on.”

As I walked past a couple of these posters today, I saw two policemen in front of me – I almost felt that I should be handing myself into them.  After all by their new standards I must be a criminal – I believe that its ok to call a woman a woman…and that a woman is an adult human female!  And my name appeared in the Daily Mail this week Daily Mail (Scotland) 28.09.18  in what could only be termed a ‘transphobic’ article….and I just recorded a programme with the BBC which will undoubtedly in future years, when the State trains its though police, be used as a classic example of transphobia.

This is where we are heading…

I have now reported the police and the Scottish government to themselves for this ‘hate incident’ – Police Scotland and the Scottish Government Reported for Hate Incident

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The tediousness of political correctness

My mother took me to a barber that told me Bible stories while he cut my hair. He told some exciting tales and I didn’t mind having to go to the barbershop. One day he was telling me about Adam and Eve and monkeys. Many years later, I realized he had given me a lecture on the difference between creationism and evolution. I never realized that would be a controversial subject until much later.

As I got older, I realized that the barbershop was a good place to hear a lot of arguing. Several of the old men in the shop would be discussing anything from high school football to the local school board election. All you had to do was listen and you could learn all about football, life or who were the biggest crooks in town. I ended up replacing the barbershop discussions with standing around the back of a pickup with my hunting buddies or other geezers.

This type of interaction was great. Most of the news came from television and something would always set up a scenario for a joke.

Now TV has about finished me off. All the major networks have come up with something in the name of political correctness or the pushing of some type of agenda in the name of not offending anyone. I must be the jerk because all the networks have offended me so much I can’t watch.

When I try to watch a movie channel, they keep playing the same shows over and over. I will watch a movie many times but I’ve run out of patience with these old movies. How many times can you watch the M.A.S.H. marathon? I’m tired of watching a 30-minute show that they play over 90 minutes.

The cable news channels have got a format like standing around a pickup truck. The only trouble with these shows are five people talking at a the same and the opinions differ so much you wonder if they are talking about the same things.

Shakespeare was all about conflict but these shows create way too much. “ You are a liar, no you are a liar.” Nobody will report facts. They only argue about opinions. Worse, all of these divergent opinions seem to be opposing what I think.

There was one thing left that I thought was worthy of watching. Sports should be the last bastion of television that would be settled on the playing field. Well, they couldn’t leave that alone either. It was nice when sportscasters would talk about different teams and the strengths and weaknesses of the team or the style of coaching the athletes got. You could argue with your buddies about the way you played high school football and why you should be coaching. It was all nice and fun. You could have a favorites team and revel in the loses of your rivals.

Well they couldn’t stand it. They had to ask some athlete what he or she thought of some politically explosive something that had nothing to do with your favorite sport.

The player was merely trying to play the sport. He or she wasn’t trying to right the wrongs of chemical warfare or a new tax bill attached to something that oppressed half the citizens in the country.

Some of the football players were merely trying to learn the plays and go to class. Sportscasters started asking about voting and taxes and what they thought of politicians. “Just let them play the game.”

Now I’m faced with something that is worse than a New Year’s Resolution. I’ve quit watching television. Don’t believe for a minute that I’m going to be able to quit watching. I’m just trying to take a break for a while.

It would be nice to have this break to catch up on some other projects. It won’t take long and I’ll be back watching and complaining.

The last thing I watched tells me that the Christmas channel will be starting up soon with 32 new movies.

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We all had more freedom in the past

Veteran actress defends the British comedy, 'Only Fools and Horses' (1981 to 1991)

Sue Holderness thinks political correctness would stop 'Only Fools and Horses' from being made today.

The 69-year-old actress played the role of Marlene Boyce in the iconic British sitcom, but Sue doubts whether the programme would be a success in the #MeToo era.

The actress - whose on-screen character famously had her bum pinched by Del Boy - explained: "It's a problem for writers. Would gentleman be allowed to pinch ladies' bottoms without being slapped in the face and have a writ put on them? I don't know.

"I must say I haven't had my bottom pinched for a long time so gentlemen must be a little bit more nervous.

"People still shout 'Marlene' at me in the street. There were occasions where I'd get my bottom pinched by complete strangers, that, I'm happy to report has stopped, which might be because of my great age now. Perhaps I look too old."

Sue also blasted people who have recently called the show racist.  Instead, she insisted the programme's humour was "very innocent" and not at all "offensive".

She told The Sun newspaper: "A lot of people on social media are saying 'Only Fools' is racist and there are lots of things you couldn't have and I think it's a pity that we've gone quite as politically correct as that.

"An awful lot of that stuff is funny and I find that very few people are actually offended, because if the joke's good enough ... It was really very innocent.

"And you absolutely knew Del and Rodney were not racist people, they were good eggs - none of it was offensive."

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On Political Correctness And The American Left, A French Take

Gaspard Koenig

I spent more than a month in the United State this summer, meeting with intellectuals almost always from the progressive elite, on both the East and West coasts. My impression: the other half of the country has gone completely crazy as well. Among the urban, educated classes, political correctness has acquired such a level that it requires another expression. It’s a new set of Ten Commandments of which the first is clear: thou shall repent. The struggle against discrimination, once a weapon for minority emancipation, has been transformed into an instrument of oppression of the majorities (antiquated or supposed), nourished by a climate of suspicion as violent as the “fear” denounced by the opposing camp.

Take, for example, a conference at New America, one of the most respected think tanks in Washington; non-partisan — so, left wing. Question: are Americans abandoning democracy? The discussion moves, without surprise, towards the lack of confidence the public holds for traditional institutions. Then comes time for questions. A participant asks if the problem has anything to do with the fact that the United States was founded by white men. “Absolutely,” responded the speaker with enthusiasm. The rest of the panel, composed of professors and researchers, rushed to nod their heads in agreement, for fear of ever being marked as traitors —or even “white supremacists.”

How can one have confidence in traditional institutions if their representatives no longer dare to express the smallest divergence of thought?

Another revealing experience: a workshop on “Women in Tech”— a group which is effectively underrepresented. The organizer, a woman, placed us in a line and asked us to take a step if we were white, another if we were male, to step back if we didn't have university degrees, and so on. The result was to create a “scale of privilege” that we were invited to discuss, sitting in a circle like at an Alcoholic’s Anonymous meeting. My refusal to admit guilt earned me eternal damnation.

This is how the new Ten Commandments reassigns each person to his racial or sexual identity, creating countless occasions of racism and sexism against the desired equality. Universities are tragically invaded by 20-year-old inquisitors (the worst) who make professors rewrite the history of ideas to correspond to the moral norm of today. This dictatorship of the small minority, to use the concept forged by Nassim Taleb, contributes to the slipping of a middle class, made up of honest people, into the nets of Fox News and Donald Trump.

It's worth reading last year’s best-seller, “Hillbilly Elegy.” J.D. Vance, a “hillbilly,” having escaped from his rural poor environment to attend Harvard Law School, tersely describes the degraded living conditions of the Irish proles, as well as the scorn they feel as victims of the media and of politics. They, too, have the right to form a community and to be proud of it, without being treated as “bigots” by New York Times editors or “deplorables” by former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

“Black lives matter,” chants one side. “White lives matter,” responds the other. Can’t everyone agree by simply declaring "lives matter"? Progressive intellectuals must urgently reconnect with the politics of the abstract individual and practice the tolerance that they preach. Otherwise, the divisions of race, sex, and class will continue to tear apart the United States, and, in turn, the whole of Western democracy.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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