Peter Rhodes: A non-crime hate incident?

A READER turned to his favourite website for his daily slice of culture and found: "Shakespeare quote of the day: An SSL error has occurred and a secure connection to the server cannot be made." Ah yes, Macbeth, innit?

ANYONE taking bets on President Trump not completing his first four-year term? I'm not talking about assassination or impeachment but Trump simply getting fed up. Today, he is the star of the world. Tomorrow he will discover how little power he actually has, how much money he is losing, how he and his family's every move and every careless word or Tweet is dogged by the press and social media. Being president is like being a punchbag in a goldfish bowl. I would not be surprised if Trump walks away from the White House.

IN a speech at the Tory Conference, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said she wanted to ensure foreign workers were not "taking jobs British workers could do." Nothing odd about that. It is pretty much what Gordon Brown said a few years ago. But an academic who didn't even hear Rudd's speech thought it might inspire hatred of foreigners. So he called the police. The cops investigated and ruled that no crime had been committed. Following official guidelines, the police then logged the event as "a non-crime hate incident." What the hell is that supposed to mean? It seems to imply that this was a hate incident and Rudd was damn lucky not to be nicked. What passes into the internet, and is there for all time like some unofficial criminal record, is the suggestion that Rudd was somehow guilty of something.

WHEN Parliament decided to get a grip on racist crimes, did it really intend that one isolated complaint, even if not upheld, could result in this sort of albatross hanging around someone's neck for the rest of their life? And if you think this is just a Westminster fracas, think again. As the law stands it seems that anyone can make a complaint, no matter how frivolous, about anything you say or do and even when the complaint is dismissed you will be associated with "a non-crime hate incident." If ever a law needed re-writing, this is it.

THAT great social observer Will Self suggests waspishly that the Army should be scrapped and replaced by giving weapons and training to all 30 million British adults. An assault rifle in every home. What could possibly go wrong?

MEANWHILE, the British Army is looking for thousands of recruits. Good luck with that. The snag is that the softer and more self-centred society becomes, the harder it is to attract people to the military. I recall interviewing an old soldier who joined up in the 1930s. The fading photos of his barracks looked grim but he came from a poor family in a bleak back-to-back during the Depression. "When I joined the Army," he smiled, "for the first time in my life I had my own clothes and a bed to myself."

* PETER Rhodes will be presenting a lecture, Talking to Tommies, at 11am on Sunday, January 29 at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, as part of Wolverhampton Original Literature Festival. Admission is free