Thought Police
On a Sunday morning, the Essex police showed up at the home of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson to interrogate her because she had tweeted a photo of Manchester police officers posing with the Islamist Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, some of whose leading members were recently charged with terrorism offenses. Pearson’s crime, which resulted in the formation of a “gold group” normally used for dealing with major crimes, was tweeting “look at this lot smiling with the Jew haters” about the ugly photo. The Essex police claimed that “a complaint of a possible criminal offence was made” of “potentially inciting racial hatred online”. Criticizing the friendliness of the police with Pakistani “Jew haters” had become a “possible criminal offence” while Islamists hating Jews was not. According to the Essex police, “we police without fear or favour”. In truth, they appear to hardly police anything except speech. The Essex police have stopped answering calls about drug dealing and a Sun colum