The vandalism of Scrooge's gravestone could be a hate crime, says columnist Toby Neal

And so it came to pass. 

It's not even December until tomorrow and the great modern secular festival has already been interminable.

Until the culprits are detected, we cannot know the motive of the person or persons who smashed up Scrooge's grave in Shrewsbury, but we can surmise that it was a targeted attack, rather than random vandalism.

As such it can be classed as a hate crime. But hatred of what? Dickens' Scrooge was famously devoid of Christmas cheer, a miserly grump. 

"Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart," he declares.

In a world in which celebrating diversity should surely include celebrating a diversity of views, such an opinion should be respected. But the Christmas Carol story was written in unenlightened times and that Victorian reactionary Charles Dickens clearly felt that Scrooge was a wrong 'un who needed a touch of redemption.

In the story, he is visited by three ghosts who bully him into changing his outlook using methods of psychological torture. On awakening on Christmas morning to find he is still alive Scrooge lightens up and is transformed into a generous and happy chap.

Thankfully, grave-smashing has not caught on in the way statue-toppling  did, and we can only speculate whether the smashers who singled out Scrooge's resting place believed they were acting in the furtherance of the spirit of Christmas, or in the spirit of anti-Christmas, or more likely neither, and they were just yobbos who took a sick delight in destroying an unusual visitor attraction.

By the way, if you are scratching your head because you thought Scrooge was a fictional character, you are of course right, the gravestone being a prop which was left in place after being used during the making of the 1984 movie of A Christmas Carol which was filmed on location in Shrewsbury using locals as extras.

Incidentally there is locally another grave of a fictional Dickens character, Little Nell, but I'd better not mention where in case the Scrooge grave-smashers are able to read.

BBC Verify has come under scrutiny itself in the last few days as a result of its "factchecking" into the number of farmers who will be hit by Rachel Reeves' inheritance tax regime.

As a journalist I have from the outset found the concept of BBC Verify to be odd, as surely reporting facts as facts, and opinion and claims as opinion and claims, is the bread and butter business of journalism and doesn't need some specialist department to be set up to tell people what to think. 

The idea that the Beeb should act as a referee and issue an edict to the public on what constitutes The Truth sends a shudder down the spine.

In an era of rampant falsehoods and fake news it's well meaning, but sadly misconceived. It has already led to politicians invoking BBC Verify to try to shut up opponents and discredit criticism.

It also puts the BBC's journalists in the invidious position of being in effect beholden to the rulings of the corporation's in-house factchecking department, and having to call out anybody or anything which challenges its wisdom.

An example. You'll remember that during the election campaign there was a fuss about how much Labour's tax plans would cost people. The Tories claimed that they would amount to £2,000 during the course of a parliament.  

Good old campaign trail to-and-fro to be thrashed out in the public domain and for voters to listen and weigh up the arguments from the squabbling politicians and make up their own minds on the matter in the traditional democratic way.

Enter the BBC's Ministry of Truth. It waded in and said the claim risked misleading people. This then became the institutional BBC position. On the back of the BBC Verify ruling, Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner called the Conservatives "liars" and said they should stop making the claim.

So much for open debate. 

Contrary to the X-Files, the truth isn't necessarily out there.