By Ben Pensant

As a died-in-the-wool regressive it’s not often I have anything good to say about the filth. When they’re not harassing the black community or choking drug-dealers to death they’re pepper-spraying peaceful protesters and arresting Corbynites for sending evil BBC reporters parcels stuffed with pig livers. (If you think snitching to the rozzers will keep you safe: think again, Cuentssberg.)

And you know we’re in trouble when even Spanish police – who you’d expect to be a cut above their British counterparts due to the fact that they’re not British – are shamelessly executing marginalised Muslims on the streets of Barcelona in broad daylight.

To be frank, until recently I was quite content for PM Corbyn to abolish the police altogether and introduce voluntary ‘community peacekeepers’, an idea floated earlier this year by socialist demigod Dan Arel which basically involved replacing experienced law enforcement officials with untrained, unpaid social workers.

Presumably this fleet of cops-who-aren’t-cops would be lead by people like Dan, brave leftists who love to talk of punching Nazis but whose arses would drop out before my grandma could say ‘aall taalk and nee troosers’ if they had to tackle and arrest one. A bold vision for a better future in other words, and one I was more than willing to embrace fully until I became aware of a magical phenomenon energising police forces nationwide.

Because something wonderful is stirring among Britain’s bizzies; an exciting new era which eschews archaic practices such as solving real crimes and catching genuine criminals in favour of tracking down people who say mean things on the internet and monitoring the tampon aisle in Tesco. And one of the branches at the forefront are Wiltshire Police – the recent stars of Channel 5’s hard-hitting fly-on-the-wall series 911 Have I Got An Emergency For You! – who have abandoned the messy business of actual police work to jump aboard the hate-crime gravy train.

Not having seen the show I can’t comment on the no-doubt heinous crimes featured, but judging by the effort and resources they’ve thrown into combatting the scourge of people saying nasty stuff on social media I’d wager the sound of South-West crimelords shitting bricks can be heard all the way from Dorset to Trowbridge.

‘You can’t hide from us if your spewing abuse from behind a computer screen. Our boys and gals in blue will find you’, they warned on Twitter, clarifying their priorities in style. Though I sincerely hope in future these priorities include a) learning the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’, and b) reining in their transphobic rhetoric before some well-adjusted non-binary reads an exclusionary Tweet like the one above and hangs theyself.

Still, Wiltshire’s finest are clearly new to the whole identity politics game so we’ll let them off (for now). Their collective heart is clearly in the right place, which is more than can be said for their sense of humour judging by the brilliantly catty reply to Tory trolls who cruelly pulled them up on their poor punctuation skills:

‘We will not tolerate any abuse or discriminatory remarks made on any of our social media platforms. We are reviewing the posts and will consider any potential criminal offences which might have been committed’. Masterful. I may not be the coppers’ biggest fan but it’s impossible not to admire people who think scouring light-hearted ‘grammar police’ gags to ascertain if any laws ‘might’ been broken is a good use of resources. I look forward to a golden future in which no lolly stick is safe from the long arm of the law.

Unless that lolly stick has just turned over someone’s property in which case it will be safe as houses (no pun intended. Honest, officer). Because while Wiltshire Police’s dedication to censoring adults is second to none, they also have the worst record in the UK for solving burglaries, hitting an all time low of just one in 12 in 2014/15. That’s more like it. Because you can’t expect police officers to waste their time arresting people who break into houses when there is linguistic-based hatred being spread all over the internet. Yeah, let’s utilise our manpower sending petty thieves who destroy people’s lives to jail while trainee officers are routinely traumatised because someone on Twitter took the piss out of their spelling. Hell, why not just come around the station and cut their ears off like Tim Winstone in Straw Dogs?

Funnily enough, another constabulary near the top of the same list was Sussex PD, who have themselves made waves in PC circles after their Hate Crime Sgt. and Trans-Equality Advocate Peter Allan electrified social media with a series of bold Tweets detailing the two most pernicious crime-waves afflicting Britain today – kids calling each other names and supermarkets using phrases like ‘feminine hygiene’ to describe feminine hygiene products.

Take this grim despatch from the mean streets of Lewes: ‘6/5/17 #Transphobic #Hate #Burgess Hill – Non-crime hate incident – Name calling between children. Under investigation’. Shocking stuff. And as if it wasn’t worrying enough that police are being forced to take time out from solving real crimes to investigate non-crimes, it should deeply concern us all that children in Brexit Britain are now so full of hate they think nothing of mis-gendering middle-class kids and using vile phrases like ‘tranny’, ‘she-male’ and ‘Danny La Rue’s Uglier Sister’.

Not that that stopped an army of social media trolls abusing Allan for having the bravery to be less interested in robberies and muggings than what ten-year-olds say to each other when they’re playing Leevo. Luckily Allan batted away the attacks with ease, pointing out his concern was all about ‘education’ and re-iterating that this was a ‘non-crime’. And in these austerity-driven times it’s refreshing to know our overstretched forces are devoting valuable time and energy to investigating crimes that aren’t actually crimes.

But fear not, despite the fact that, as Allan says ‘investigations don’t always lead to prosecutions’, if reported the incidents will still be logged and recorded as hate crimes, ensuring the mythical post-Brexit spike in hate crime won’t be un-spiking any time soon. I look forward to the emergency services setting an equally good example by extinguishing fires that don’t involve any fire and rushing to the scene of car crashes in which no-one was hurt or crashed their car.

But Allan’s greatest moment came when he took to Twitter to warn Tesco and Sainsbury that their signs advertising tampons and other ‘feminine hygiene’ products breached gender equality rules. He courageously urged them to use another phrase as there were quite clearly also ‘products 4 men’ on the same shelf, suggesting ‘personal hygiene’ as a progressive way to signal respect to the 0% of the male population who bleed from their fannies.

Sadly, the trolls won the day and Sgt. Allan’s Twitter account was subsequently suspended after the hateful reaction to his insistence that men use jammy-rags too. This clearly had less to do with Allan’s common sense Tweets than it did his spineless bosses’ cowardly fear of upsetting their right-win paymasters. Unless you believe the frankly absurd idea that Allan was chased from social media because he completely destroyed his credibility as a public servant and now has about as much authority as Officer Crabtree out of Hello Hello.

Not that this minor setback will derail Allan’s dedication to tolerance, diversity and sticking his nose into non-criminal activity that has fuck all to do with him. He may have been banished by the top brass but I’ve no doubt he’s having the last laugh using his spare time to track down and arrest that old school friend who called him ‘bumface’ 30 years ago.

But despite the negative reaction from ignorant Tories and thick-as-shit Leave voters the above examples were lapped up by liberals, tapping as they do into the new left-wing censorship craze, exemplified by anti-free speech campaigns like Stop Funding Hate and all those brave souls who proudly burnt newspapers on election day so other people couldn’t read them.

It’s alarming to think that when I was a kid being on the left meant being against the likes of Mary Whitehouse and Tory MPs who wanted to ban everything from blue comedians to video nasties. Thankfully those days are gone and the left have been reclaiming censoriousness for some time now. What used to be the preserve of crusty old reactionaries has become part and parcel of being a funky young progressive, and it’s refreshing to know the police are joining the ban-party too.

Unfortunately, not every constabulary is on board with the PC revolution and I’m sad to report my local force Northumbria Police are lagging some distance behind the likes of Wiltshire and Sussex. Which is a crying shame, especially after their recent good work, when one of their officers threatened to have student Jonaya English’s place at Newcastle University revoked because she Tweeted a comment about Islam that was vile, offensive and entirely true.

Great work all round but it was sadly undone by the dark forces at Northumbria Police determined to resist the lure of identity politics. Because the shocking case of 17 harmless Muslim men from Newcastle sent to jail (by a white jury, no doubt) for having the cheek to give children with zero job prospects part-time work shows there’s still a long way to go.

See, because this part-time work involved sleeping with men for alcohol apparently that made it perfectly okay to ruin the lives of a group of marginalised Muslims based on nothing more than rumour, innuendo and cold, hard evidence. Well done, guys, at least we know we can add ‘whorephobia’ to the list of things you’re totally cool with.

Oh and well done for also ignoring the influence of the evil white woman involved who clearly egged these men on, encouraging them to sexually abuse children like a shellsuit-clad Lady Macbeth. ‘Children’ who just happen to look a lot like yo-yo knickered teenage temptresses with zero disregard for Islamic values. Hmm. And they wonder why Muslim men are left with no choice but to rape them? Jesus.

Still, we shouldn’t let Northumbria Police’s refusal to get with the times and ignore the widespread abuse of children by followers of a certain religion detract from their good work elsewhere. And the sterling effort made by PC Mohammed Khan – you didn’t think he was gonna be called Francis Fogherty, did you? – in the Jonaya English case reminds us that thankfully there are some coppers pounding the Geordie beat who know that there’s a lot more to fighting crime than simply fighting crime.

And with today’s exciting news that the CPS plan to take even greater steps to criminalise people for speaking freely on the internet, we need brave PCs like Allan and Khan on board if we’re serious about putting an end to free speech once and for all. Fingers crossed this new development and the shining example set by Wiltshire and Sussex Police sets the censorious ball rolling.

This is what you get when you mess with us.