The police should chase down theft, not thought crime

West Yorkshire Police hit the headlines twice this week. First we learned that the fourth-largest force in England and Wales has decided to ‘screen out’ 46.5 per cent of cases a year, i.e. not investigate them. And these aren’t minor crimes, but things like theft, assault and burglary. Apparently, West Yorkshire Police’s 5,671 officers will spend their time on ‘more complex’ offences instead. What do they mean by that? A clue was provided by the second story which concerned the verbal harassment warning the force has given to Graham Linehan, a television comedy writer, after a Twitter dispute resulting from Linehan referring to a transgender activist as ‘he’ rather than ‘she’ — and using their original, male name — even though the person in question is biologically male.

Many people will think this is poetic justice for Linehan and, by rights, I should be one of them. The co-writer of Father Ted is a socialist zealot with more than half a million followers on Twitter, and for years he has used this platform to denounce anyone to the right of Jeremy Corbyn.