Category Archives: BBC bias

Why is it that when Jon Pienaar admits that ‘a tough line on migration – the single greatest influence underlying the vote to leave the EU ‘ the BBC ran the Remain camp’s narrative throughout the referendum campaign that it was all about the economy…and even now their Director of News insists the economy was the main issue?….

‘Inasmuch as the EU referendum was about the economy…’

The Remain losers are out in force though you might never know there was an orchestrated campaign to undermine Brexit if you relied solely on the BBC’s ‘analysis’.

Osborne came out declaring he was the voice of the liberal mainstream….that ‘mainstream’ that was so mainstream it couldn’t get a majority, he’s now claiming that there is no mandate for a ‘Hard Brexit’…but of course there is…the vote was precisely about that…stopping immigration and wresting political control from Brussels. Osborne conjures up strawmen as he suggests Hard Brexit means cutting all ties and cooperation with the EU, or ‘Europe’ as he calls it….naturally that is complete alarmist nonsense…lies.  And oh yes…the results of many of Osborne’s own policies, such as the living wage and stamp duty changes?…pretty disastrous in the effects they have in business and the housing market and tax receipts.

Clegg told us that he couldn’t leave politics to the extremes, left or right.  He then told us that politics was broken and that what he saw drove him to become a radical who wanted wholesale change of the political system. Radical then but not ‘extreme’.

His replacement, Timothy Farron, is equally deluded as he claims Brexit was a ‘howl of anger‘ from the electorate about the state of the political system, the answer they sought being a LibDem government.  Really?  Four million UKIP voters, 11 million Tory voters and 9 million Labour.  What did the LibDems get?  Two million.  Clearly the voters have no idea what’s good for them.

Indeed LibDem Norman Lamb told us on the Today programme (08:34) that we have no idea what the voters wanted when they voted for Brexit, we know what staying in the EU meant [sweets and happy days all round] but the voters had no idea what leaving the EU meant, therefore May has no mandate to negotiate, therefore we need a second vote to clear this up…and if May’s deal is not accepted then no more votes, we stay in the EU….er wouldn’t the vote be about the content of the deal not the principle of Brexit, leaving the EU?  So another deal and another vote until we get one acceptable to the Leave camp.

Justin Webb didn’t challenge that claim that voting to leave was a vote for the unknown.  That’s nonsense, and a continued Remain narrative, that Leave voters are basically emotive, stupid anarchists [not just racist]…Leave voters knew precisely what they were voting for, less immigration, no political control by an unelected, arrogant elite in Brussels and the end to EU courts interfering in British sovereign law.  As for knowing what staying in the EU meant….Lamb thinks it is the land of milk and honey, the BBC refused to explore this important issue…because the real truth is that the EU is heading for ever closer integration, the only way it can survive, along with an EU army…and you only have to look at Deutsche Bank right now to understand the problems of the EU economy as it crashes and will possibly sink the Euro. Which may be no bad thing...The euro has destroyed the EU and led directly to Brexit

The BBC itself often pushes that same narrative from Lamb…that the vote was merely a vote against something rather than for something.  Which is tosh.  For less immigration, for an independent Britain, for control of our own laws and borders.

Now we have the pro-EU Sunday Times and Remainer and BBC plant [you have to think] Craig Oliver [in the pro-EU Sunday Mail] both churning out anti-Leave books.  Oliver was so upset at the result of the referendum he was sick…he thought holding the referendum was madness.  Can’t think what possessed Cameron to employ him.  Oliver claims May was an enemy agent for the Leave camp, good chance Oliver was an enemy agent for the BBC, gone from their employ but still onboard and reporting back from the heart of the Tory government…taking copious notes and then rapidly turning that into a reveal-all book.

Dominic Lawson in the Mail examines the latest Remain propaganda in a way that the BBC fails to do...No 10 spin doctor who scribbled notes for his memoirs in meetings and a cry of rage from Brexit losers.

Fraser Nelson in the Spectator also suggests there is mischief afoot….David Cameron can’t blame Theresa May for his awful “deal” with the EU

The BBC sees nothing underhand in these attacks on May and Boris and gives them full, uncritical credence.

The Sunday Times claims that May was soft on immigration controls and that her stance stopped Cameron from getting a better deal with the EU [in his utterly failed negotiations  that the BBC reported as a success]…however it admits that May wrote twice to Cameron in the period on question demanding tougher immigration controls….but you know what? Cameron didn’t feel he had her support for a tough line.  Poor lad.  Just who was it really that didn’t want tough immigration controls?  Cameron.

Oliver tells us that his book is a sincere, eyewitness account of what actually happened…however the crucial messages that he claims were sent by Boris that Oliver says indicated he actually wanted to vote to Remain are missing….

Sir Craig also claims Mr Johnson, now foreign secretary, was “genuinely in turmoil” about supporting the Leave campaign and had been “flip-flopping within a matter of hours” of declaring his intention.

Sir Craig writes that, the day before throwing his weight behind the Leave campaign, Mr Johnson sent a text to Mr Cameron warning him that he would be campaigning for Brexit.

However, he says Mr Johnson later sent a second message suggesting he could back Remain. [So where is it?]

“I ask DC what makes him so sure Boris is wobbling. He reads out some parts of the text including the phrase ‘depression is setting in’, followed by a clear sense that he’s reconsidering.

“Neither of us is left in any doubt,” he added.

Well I have a few doubts.  So Boris was down in the dumps….but where is the message that he was thinking of voting Remain?  ‘A clear sense that he’s reconsidering’ is just meaningless twaddle, pure invention, where’s the proof?

Still the BBC accept it as proof, so good enough eh?

But rest assured, the BBC is absolutely impartial and a vital balance in the nation’s political debates…so says James Harding, BBC Director of News…

A truly balanced view from the BBC: don’t blame us for Brexit

LOL.  Harding is either a fool or a fraud.  My take is that he is completely and wilfully dishonest.  Just read his piece and laugh aloud at the brazen lies and delusions that pour off the page.  The title is a good place to start.  But there’s more, lots more…

There have been two strands of criticism of our coverage. On the one hand, some Leavers have said the BBC reported impartially and accurately through the course of the campaign, but, since the vote of 23 June, we have returned to what they say are our true EU-luvvie colours and our reporting of the prospects for Brexit Britain has been gloomy or hysterical.

On the other, some Remainers have complained that we have been too impartial – that our unthinking insistence on balance meant we treated Remain and Leave arguments with equivalence, giving the same treatment to respected experts as to know-nothings and lightweights. Worse, the criticism has gone, we abandoned our duty to inform the public: the Leavers’ exaggerations, distortions and downright lies, they say, were given the same airtime as the Remainers’ evidence-based judgments. Impartial reporting, this argument goes, is contributing to the problem of post-truth politics.

Note how Harding words that as if the Remain camp’s claims about Leavers’ exaggerations, distortions and downright lies are true whilst Remain had ‘evidence base judgements’.  Well post-referendum the facts seem to indicate that the Remain camp’s ‘experts’ were vastly wrong…the ONS, the Treasury, the OECD and many other organisations now backtrack and tell us that all is calm, Brexit has not resulted in a meltdown…the main problem is the world economy and the EU’s economy not the UK’s.

He tells us that ‘In the months ahead, our job is to understand what Brexit actually means – without relish or alarm.’   Well not so far….the apocalyptic and alarmist tone that the BBC adopted pre-referendum has continued as it cherry-picks every negative story that it thinks it can connect to Brexit in some shape or form.

Laughably he says…‘Unsurprisingly, the BBC did not carry water for the government: our job is to challenge politicians, not to serve as a rebuttal unit or advocate the alternative argument.’

The BBC spent all its time rebutting the Leave camp’s claims but spent little effort in challenging the government’s…nor the fact that Cameron had hijacked the ‘Government’ for his campaign.

Harding even admits the BBC favoured the Remain camp…‘Inasmuch as the EU referendum was about the economy, it was about forecasts more than facts. It was not a contest of hard truths but an argument over whose predictions of the future you preferred. The BBC was abundantly clear that the overwhelming weight of expert economic opinion advised people to vote Remain.’

Trouble is those ‘experts’ were sp often in hock to the government…Carney and Lagarde owing their jobs to Osborne.  And as for the referendum being about the economy…no it was not.  The BBC decided it was going to concentrate on the economy as did the Remain camp…but the referendum was about immigration and sovereignty, political control.  The economy was a secondary issue.  The BBC pushed the Remain camp’s message.

Yes indeed…the BBC’s non-alarmist reporting…

EU referendum: Brexit ‘would spark year-long recession’ – Treasury

Harding goes on…

If you go back, you will see that the squeakier claims made by politicians were challenged again and again by our presenters and correspondents. Go back and look at Evan Davis take on Douglas Carswell over the claim that voting Leave would bring £350m a week back into UK coffers; watch David Dimbleby take on Michael Gove’s dismissal of the IFS; read what Reality Check said about George Osborne’s forecast that voting Leave would cost each home £4,300; watch Andrew Neil pick apart Nigel Farage’s numbers on immigration. Or Kamal Ahmed on the 6pm and 10pm bulletins saying: “The economic consensus is on one side of this debate.” I could go on and on.

So the examples he gives are nearly all ones where the BBC challenges the Leave camp…and the one he gives for the Remain camp?  Well we’ve looked at the BBC’s Reality Check and found it somewhat unchallenging when it comes to Remain claims.  Kamal Ahmed was decidedy pro-Remain and uncritical of their economic claims.

Funny old thing…it looks like the BBC’s Kamal Ahmed is a one man hit squad for the Remain camp out to neutralise any Leave campaign ‘good news’.

We’ve already noted his immediate rebuttal to Steve Hilton’s claim that all economic forecasts about Brexit are so much bunk and now as James Dyson tells us that it is ‘cobblers’ that the EU won’t trade with us Kamal again slips in a spoiler.  Just a week or so ago he was painting a gloomy picture of the economy on Brexit…

Have no fear though, the Remain camp didn’t suffer from BBC bias…

No one who watched the BBC during the campaign could have been left in any doubt that President Obama, the governor of the Bank of England, the IMF, OECD, IFS, CBI, prime minister, chancellor and, yes, both David Beckham and Jeremy Clarkson believed Britain should remain in the EU.

But did the BBC ever challenge any of their claims and their credibilty?  No.

Here’s the BBC ‘fact-checking’ claims about the NHS...Facts, Facts, And BBC Facts.

Is the BBC biased? also has doubts about the BBC’s Reality Check:

George Osborne’s bogus ‘families will be £4,300 poorer if we leave the EU’ claim a couple of days ago wasn’t debunked during the BBC One News at Six, despite being cited five times during the course of the bulletin. In fact, it wasn’t even questioned (not even by the BBC’s economics editor Kamal Ahmed).

As for Reality Check, the nearest we got to that was:

And the BBC’s Reality Check team has been going through the claims and today’s document in more detail on our Reality Check pages. That’s at bbc.co.uk/realitycheck.

 I have to say I that’s pretty inexcusable.

Harding finishes with this piece of self-delusion:

The BBC’s job is not to preside over the democratic process – it is to report, to host the argument and to interrogate the participants. We aim to inform our audiences, not seek the approval of politicians or pundits. That is what we sought to do in this difficult and contentious contests. And it is what we continue to do.

The BBC of course sees its job as precisely that, over-seeing the democratic process, guiding the voters to the ‘right’ conclusions…even if that means shutting out the ‘unacceptable voices’ from the debate, hiding the facts and promoting only the narrative, views and ideas that the BBC approves of.

Rarely does a day go by without the BBC running one if its strange freak family stories. Take this one currently in the limelight.

The transgender family where the father gave birth. (He didn’t – “he” is a she despite the BBC running with the nonsense. DV)

Meet one of South America’s most high-profile transgender families. “We don’t have a name yet – or rather we do – we are just waiting to announce it,” Diane tells me, not looking up from tapping at her mobile phone with her perfectly manicured false nails. The choice will be controversial and she and her partner want to wait until everything has calmed down.

It’s Pride Week in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city. I’m driving Diane Rodriguez, her partner Fernando and their six-week-old baby – known affectionately for now only as Caraote – which means “the snail”. Tomorrow is the big march and they are whizzing around town finalising paperwork for their float.  Diane and Fernando are South America’s most high-profile transgender couple. For many, they are a symbol of growing tolerance in the region.”

Why does the BBC obsess over these poor mentally disturbed people? Why are they on mission to laud every form of family unit but one man and one woman? Why do they approve of a family when it is not a heterosexual one? I believe the BBC is marinated in anti nuclear-family rhetoric and so it embraces these “gender fluid” and Trans free shows.

You have to laugh at the shining bias of the BBC’s Norman Lamb. He was on the Today programme this morning to tell us all about that divided and strife torn political party. Labour? Oh no – the Conservatives! He was doing his level best to big up the allegations in the book by Tim Shipman that Theresa May she was “lily livered” over immigration. Meanwhile the all too obvious rancour and despair at the Labour party conference was casually swept under the carpet as all “unite” under the dear leader Comrade Corbyn. Lamb stuck the boot into May and her Party at every opportunity. One assumes that THIS poll must drive Lamb and his associates to despair! The BBC seethe against May and are rallying under Corbyn’s Red Flag.

Here you go, a new Open Thread to commence the fresh week of BBC bias.

The BBC famously preferred this picture on their newsroom wall….

“I mean in our office there’s a picture of Bush as Hitler.  I don’t know where they got it, but yes, Bush as Hitler.  It’s quite a serious thing comparing Bush to Hitler! So did anyone in the newsroom in question object?  No.  Nobody did.”

In the last post I noted the BBC’s failure to fully represent the true demographic make-up of the UK by not having a good many Fascist’s in the ranks of its presenters. What you cry…what about Gemma Arterton who channelled Hitler in a 5 Live interview as she compared refugees to Zombies and told us that her life philosophy was that of the survival of the fittest…She suggests that if migrants [sorry… Zombies] outnumber you you must surrender your country to them….it’s only fair….if the new ‘normal’ is Zombies then the previously normal people have no right to stop the Zombies…she takes her recent film role and tells us that it is very redolent of today as the massed armies of refugees are at the gates…raising questions about who has the right to live where and other very relevant issues for today.  Naturally the BBC’s Simon Mayo far from disagreeing went with her and agreed.

The story tells us that as long as there are uninfected humans and Zombies there will be war therefore the uninfected humans must be infected or die.  Very redolent of course of the Left’s ideas on race and immigration and indeed the EU…the celebrators of diversity ironically working to stamp out national and cultural differences in the name of ‘peace’…as the Arabs say…they make a desert and call it peace…..and it sounds like the story is channelling Labour’s immigration policy…attempting to wipe out the Whites by ‘browning’ Britain.

The Zombie girl in the film starts off as sweet and timid and by the end……hmmm…sounds familiar.  Not sure how Arterton then thinks such a scenario demonstrates that the vicious and deadly ‘Zombies’ should be allowed to take over just because there are more of them.

You may have noticed in the past few months the increasing number of BBC presenters who are non-white, a disproportionately large number of them obviously Muslim.  Apparently this is because the BBC’s output must reflect the ethnic make-up of Britain….BME people will supposedly only watch other BME people on the BBC.  The ever rising number of Muslims is of course the BBC’s attempt to normalise Islam.  Let’s have a few Far Right, Fascist supporting presenters then….surely they also must be represented on the diverse BBC.

A BBC spokesman explained: ‘Everyone pays for the BBC so it’s important we reflect all audiences. ‘

Let’s normalise Fascism too.

Luckily for the BBC Chris Packham is considered a freelancer by the BBC Trust and anyway, he’s not involved in news programmes nor public policy-related output from the BBC….therefore he can say whatever he likes in BBC magazines….such as declaring that  hunting and shooting fans are the ‘nasty brigade’ as he campaigned to stop grouse shooting.

The BBC gives us a short report of the Trust’s findings but fails to mention comments from Ian Botham such as ‘This decision is a risible whitewash.  Yet again it shows the BBC’s metropolitan elite insulting the intelligence of the countryside by allowing Packham to continue to use the BBC as a platform for his extreme views.’

The BBC’s decision kind of flies in the face of reality…Packham to all intents and purposes is employed by the BBC...he is constantly presenting BBC programmes year in year out….and of course he made his claims in a BBC magazine.

If this were Sports Direct and their ZHCs the BBC would be all over it declaring him an employee with full worker rights…and responsibilities.

The Trust says that even if he were a ‘regular’ presenter as he doesn’t present the news or public policy-related output he is not covered by BBC rules on impartiality.

So….not doing the news or output related to public policy (however the BBC defines that) and you can say whatever you like…BBC employee or not.

No wonder the BBC Trust is being canned.

The BBC is at the forefront of the campaign to blacken the Brexit referendum as a ‘racist’ campaign, the Leave voters being dubbed as xenophobic little englanders which is all a bit of an irony as the BBC and the Left complain loud and long about an apparent rise in hate crimes…what they do themselves would be considered a hate crime as they drum up hate, anger and abuse towards anyone who voted Leave.  Indeed only on Saturday we had the BBC’s News Quiz likening Leave voters to Nazis and expressing the hope that their faces would all melt…along with the thought that Britain is quietly racist…that’s of course everyone who is white.  The BBC fails to note how many non-whites were keen to vote Leave and that the man who was in court for swiping Eddie Izzard’s pink beret was Polish and an out voter.  We were also told that Trump ranted ‘angry, petulant nonsense‘…I thought that a good description of the News Quiz panel as they vented their bile about Brexit and Trump clearly unaware or not caring that so many other people outside the Bubble don’t subscribe to their left-wing views and that they also realise something the BBC does not…that Trump junior’s use of Skittles to talk about immigration was a metaphor.  All those english degrees must seem like such a waste.  But then if you’re a bigoted pro-mass immigration, pro-EU BBC extremist reason probably isn’t your strong point.

From the Mail:

The great Brexit hate crime myth: How claims of an epidemic of race crimes since the referendum are simply false

A fully-loaded gravy train clattered into the Grange City Hotel in central London on Thursday morning, when around 50 smartly dressed men and women shuffled across deep-pile carpets into its air-conditioned conference centre.

The group — or rather their employers — had each paid between £359 and £575 to attend the day-long event.

Some of these people were civil servants, others charity workers and academics. A handful worked in the private sector, though rather more appear to be employed by the taxpayer, via local councils, British police forces, and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The event bringing this eclectic and well bankrolled crowd together was the sixth annual Tackling Hate Crime Conference — an expensive and painstakingly organised shindig staged each autumn by the £6.5 billion FTSE 100 corporation Capita.

Its purpose, according to promotional literature, was to provide a forum to discuss how best to ‘respond to the surging growth of hate crime’ in the UK, which (the same literature breathlessly insisted) has ‘risen 57 per cent since the EU referendum vote’. With this in mind, speaker after speaker waxed lyrical about how violent and intolerant the nation has become in 2016, or called for Draconian measures to combat the ‘rising tide’ of bigotry on our streets.

Modern Britain, delegates were repeatedly told, is a country riven by homophobia and racism, where to be foreign, disabled or belong to a religious or sexual minority is to fall blamelessly into the firing line of virulent abuse.

‘There is more hate crime in London than in the whole of the United States,’ claimed a ‘keynote’ speaker called Mark Hamilton, who is Assistant Chief Constable of Northern Ireland.

Another speaker, from Southwark Council, talked vividly about the extraordinary bigotry she encounters on a daily basis, making the shocking claim that the ‘youngest perpetrator of hate crime’ she’d come across lately was ‘a four-year-old child who harassed a lesbian couple’.

All very sobering. Or so you might think. But behind the lurid rhetoric, not everything was quite as it seems. Take, for example, the conference organiser’s headline claim: that hate crime has ‘risen 57 per cent since the EU referendum vote’.

This eye-catching figure has certainly done the rounds in recent months, regularly bandied about by liberal commentators, the BBC and Left-wing newspapers.

Yet dig into its provenance and things soon start to smell distinctly whiffy. For the ‘57 per cent’ number was actually plucked from a single press release issued by the National Police Chief’s Council on June 27, four days after the EU ballot took place.

The document in question specifically stated that police forces had recorded ‘no major spikes in tensions’ since Britain went to the polls.

However, its footnote added that 85 people had logged hate crime ‘incidents’ on True Vision, a website that records unverified allegations of such behaviour, during the four days in question, up from 54 during the corresponding period a month earlier.

What exactly did this mean? The police press release made things clear. ‘This should not be read as a national increase in hate crime of 57 per cent but an increase in reporting through one mechanism’ over a single 96-hour period.

Fast forward three months, however, and the number was being used very differently.

As we have seen above, organisers of the Tackling Hate Crime Conference were using it to allege that hate crime had risen by 57 per cent across Britain during the entire period since the Brexit vote.

This is demonstrably untrue. Or, to put things another way, Capita was shamelessly promoting its £600-a-head event by falsely representing unverified raw data that had been collected over the internet during a single four-day period in June.

When the Mail put this to Capita, the firm instantly deleted the 57 per cent claim from its promotional literature, describing its inclusion as ‘an innocent error’.

All of which may sound a bit rum. Yet spend an extended period of time exploring ‘hate crime’ and the growing and lucrative industry that increasingly surrounds it, and you’ll find such cavalier behaviour par for the course.

For the more you investigate, the more it turns out to be a deeply cynical industry where dishonesty and hysteria reign, truth has been replaced with Left-wing dogma, and verifiable facts no longer count for very much at all.

On paper, Britain is a remarkably tolerant country. London has just elected a Muslim mayor by a whacking majority. Gay marriage is not just legal but supported by a comfortable majority of adults. Children from ethnic minorities consistently outperform white working-class counterparts at school and in university.

Surveys by the respected and politically neutral think-tank Pew Research, along with the prestigious British Social Attitudes Survey, show racial prejudice in long-term and perhaps terminal decline.

Yet despite such trends, we are routinely described as being in the grip of a hate crime ‘epidemic’ where a few high-profile incidents — such as the appalling recent murder of a Polish immigrant on the streets of Harlow (which may or may not eventually prove to be race-related) — are said to represent the tip of a sinister iceberg, and where the number of hate offences seems to grow year by year.

(In 2014/15, police recorded 52,528 of them. The previous year, the number was 44,471. In 2012/3, it was 42,255.)

So how can we explain the disconnect? Let’s start with another pressing fact: that hate crime also happens to be one of the great political buzz-phrases of the moment. To this end, virtually the first thing new Home Secretary Amber Rudd did after taking office was to launch a ‘hate crime action plan’.

The Home Affairs Select Committee is holding an inquiry into ‘hate crime and its violent consequences’.

Next month, the Government will promote ‘hate crime awareness week’. It’s spending £2.4 million on a fund for churches and mosques to protect themselves against hate crimes, while the Met is creating a £1.7 million ‘crime hub’ to target online ‘trolls’.

Elsewhere, universities such as Leicester and Sussex employ academics in ‘centres’ for ‘hate crime studies’. The taxpayer hands over six-figure grants to charities which seek to ‘combat’ or ‘monitor’ hate crime.

Police forces employ staff to log it. Councils such as Kensington and Chelsea now have a ‘community support officer for hate crime’.

The Crown Prosecution Service has a ‘hate crime co-ordinator’ in all 13 regions, plus ‘area-based Equality, Diversity and Community Engagement Managers’ who ‘contribute to the delivery of the Hate Crime Assurance Scheme’.

These people, whose leading lights spent Thursday at Capita’s conference, often owe their jobs, status and mortgages to the fashionable perception that hate crime is somehow spiralling out of control.

That, in turn, has led to two distinct trends. The first is a relentless pressure to widen the number of people able to describe themselves as ‘victims’ of such crimes.

When Tony Blair first introduced hate laws, in 1998, they applied only to incidents of racial intolerance. However in 2003, the net was widened to include religious discrimination. Over subsequent years, first homophobic and then ‘transphobic’ abuse was added to the list, along with disability hate crime and, more recently ‘crimes against older people’.

All current categories (with the exception of elder abuse) can result in ‘sentence uplift’ — in other words, a likely increase in jail time — if a case goes to court and results in a conviction. Some 15,442 such prosecutions took place last year with 12,845 convictions, of which around a third saw a ‘sentence uplift’.

Last week, a new category of potential victim emerged: it was reported that several police forces may soon treat ‘misogyny’ as a hate crime, following the alleged success of a pilot scheme in Nottingham where it was decided that wolf-whistling could in certain circumstances constitute ‘threatening behaviour’.

Women may not be the only new demographic singled out for protection, either. Consider, if you will, the annual report of Stop Hate UK, an influential charity which gets around £240,000 a year from grants, largely from the public sector.

It suggests that ‘goths’ or people who choose to wear black clothes, are potential hate crime victims. To this end, it contains a ‘case study’ of abuse supposedly suffered by a ‘goth woman [who] has five facial piercings’.

In such a febrile environment, where almost anyone seems to be a potential victim, should we really be surprised if reported ‘hate’ incidents are on the rise?

Of course it should be stressed that genuine hate crime is not to be tolerated. In Friday’s Mail, for example, the Jewish Labour MP Ruth Smeeth described being sent 25,000 abusive messages by members of her party’s Corbyn-supporting far Left, one of which referred to her as a ‘yid c***’.

The problem, however, comes when the definition of what constitutes a hate crime becomes risibly vague. After all, the subjective way in which the police (who increasingly resemble glorified social workers) now categorise such offences is hardly forensic.

Under their official guidance, hate crime is now deemed to be ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice.’

Proof of such intent is not necessarily required, the guidance adds: ‘Evidence of … hostility is not required … [The] perception of the victim, or any other person, is the defining factor.’

In essence, this means that anyone, anywhere, can force officers to treat something as a hate crime. All it takes is a vague ‘perception’. Such rules are perverse and open to abuse. They mean that, in theory, a straight white male punched in a pub fight can falsely claim his assailant thought he was gay, and therefore motivated by homophobia.

Such an incident will duly be investigated as a hate crime, with the police and CPS under pressure to prosecute.

If they fail, the ‘victim’ can potentially claim to have suffered so-called ‘secondary victimisation’ in which the ‘hate’ he or she experienced is compounded by the police’s lack of sensitivity.

Such factors may very well have motivated the ludicrous recent prosecution of Kevin O’Sullivan, a TV journalist who was involved in an altercation on a train back from a funeral a couple of years ago.

Around 24 hours after the event, the other party — a straight white man who’d initially declined to press charges — informed the police that he now wanted them to prosecute O’Sullivan for a homophobic hate crime.

The man claimed that during their argument he tried to make a telephone call, only to be interrupted by O’Sullivan shouting ‘Are you phoning your gay lover?’

CCTV of the entire incident told a very different story, however. It showed that the man did not make, or attempt to make, a single phone call during the confrontation. Unsurprisingly, when the case came to trial, O’Sullivan was acquitted.

Though awarded costs, he expects them to cover only a fraction of his £15,000 legal bill. Recounting the episode in a recent edition of the Spectator, he said the affair gave him ‘a ringside seat at the edge of insanity’.

The second great modern trend has been for the police, assorted quangocrats and other publicly funded organisations to go to extreme lengths to ensure the number of reported hate crimes is as high as possible.

Consider, in this context, the aforementioned police website True Vision. It allows anyone, anywhere in Britain, to report an incident, even if they were not the victim, have no idea of the victim’s identity, can provide no supporting evidence, and would prefer to remain anonymous.

Their claims then get logged as official statistics and, as we have seen above, used by ‘experts’ to draw sweeping conclusions (invariably negative) about the state of the nation.

Seldom has such a system been more open to abuse than in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, when Left-wing media outlets predicted a ‘surge of xenophobia’ and disheartened Remain voters attempted to prove them right. On Twitter, the hashtag #postbrexit racism went viral.

On Facebook, a forum called ‘worrying signs’ was established for ‘anyone dealing with post-Brexit fallout’ to post reports of hate crime. From here, users were directed to True Vision.

Unsurprisingly, many allegedly racist incidents they carried turned out to be anything but. On the Monday after the referendum, a mobile phone snap of a smashed window at Donde Tapas, a Spanish restaurant in South London, was posted on Facebook. Its caption read ‘Spanish and Turkish restaurants in Lewisham had their windows smashed over the weekend. Very widespread reports coming in now.’

The post soon received 1,833 shares. One commenter noted: ‘The ghost of Sir Oswald Mosley now stalks the streets of England.’

The same picture and caption soon appeared on Twitter, where Dawn Butler, a Labour MP, dubbed it ‘awful,’ and another online commenter called it ‘Kristallnacht all over again.’

The Institute Of Race Relations subsequently asked the poster: ‘Is there any chance we could use your pic for a round-up of post-Brexit racial violence?’

But soon: a reality check. On a South London internet forum where the picture was also posted, one contributor pointed out: ‘I’m no expert, but that looks like a robbery attempt.’

The Met soon admitted it was almost certainly just that, and was ‘not considered to have a hate-crime motivation’.

A second widely reported hate incident that started life on Facebook around the same time proved similarly flaky.

It began with a post on a Remain-supporting forum reading: ‘My friend works at a well-known restaurant in Mayfair, 15 people just came in to celebrate the Leave vote. The customers dismissed him and asked for a English waiter, because he was Italian!!!’

This anecdote was promptly included as case-study in an official study of post-Brexit violence by the Institute of Race Relations, before being widely cited in the Left-wing Press. Yet neither the restaurant, the supposed victim, nor any fragments of proper evidence have ever been identified.

The fact is that we may never know. Yet if the state-sponsored and increasingly powerful hate crime industry gets its way, we could all be potential suspects.

For, to quote the old saying, the Left has a supply-and-demand problem with bigotry: there isn’t enough to go around to support the apocalyptic world view they hold so dear.