THE HOOK.
British police forces recorded 13,200 “non-crime hate incidents” last year. That’s 13,200 investigations into things that aren’t crimes - based purely on someone’s perception of hostility.
You know what gets recorded? A nine-year-old using playground insults. Two secondary school pupils said another student “smelled like fish.”
Meanwhile, the NHS is collapsing. People are dying on waiting lists. A&E departments are warzones. Mental health services have vanished. And East Lancashire NHS Trust has identified the priority: making sure you know that Rae’s pronouns are they/them.
Bristol City councillors walked out of meetings rather than answer constituents’ questions because their feelings were hurt.
Trump positions himself as a Middle East peacemaker to chase a Nobel Prize whilst thousands die.
This is bullshit. We’ve created a fetish for labels, and it’s destroying every institution it touches.
THE SETUP.
Let me show you how this works in practice.
East Lancashire NHS produced mandatory training where Rae, in three different outfits, explains why you need to learn ze/zem pronouns, or you’re a bully. They use a cat - an actual cat - to explain how pronouns work to NHS staff who navigate complex drug interactions and life-or-death decisions daily.
Not because it improves patient care. Because the label requires institutional validation.
This isn’t isolated. From police databases to NHS training rooms to council chambers to international diplomacy, the same pattern emerges: subjective feelings override material reality, and institutions reorganise around ego validation whilst actual problems worsen.
The term “identity politics” emerged from legitimate 1960s civil rights fights - people who couldn’t vote, couldn’t work, faced actual violence. Then it shifted. “Standpoint theory” (1983) completed the transformation: your identity determines what you can know. Subjective experience became an unchallengeable authority.
From fighting actual discrimination, it evolved into infinite identity categories - each demanding institutional restructuring, each subordinating material reality to subjective claims.
Non-binary. Genderfluid. Genderqueer. Gender flux. Ze/zem. Perception-based hate incidents. Nine-year-olds in databases.
And probably anyone who identifies as a frog.
THE EVIDENCE.
The Police: The NCHI definition is magnificent: “ANY non-crime incident perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility.”
Not just the victim. Anyone. Someone overhears you, gets offended on behalf of someone else - boom, police database.
You know what gets recorded? A nine-year-old using playground insults. Two pupils said someone “smelled like fish.” Dog excrement outside someone’s house.
Chelsea Russell, 19, quoted rap lyrics in tribute to a dead friend. The lyrics - from Snap Dogg, available on all streaming platforms - contained the n-word. She was convicted, fined £585, given an eight-week curfew, and fitted with an ankle tag. For quoting song lyrics.
Mark Meechan taught his girlfriend’s pug a Nazi salute as a joke video. Fined £800 for being “grossly offensive.”
An Asian man joked with his Asian friend that a drawing made him look like a terrorist. The friend laughed. Someone overheard. Police recorded it and made him write an apology letter.
The system: No evidence required. No right of appeal. No way to expunge. Appears on employment checks. You may never be informed it’s recorded against you.
Essex Police dealt with 702 NCHIs in one year whilst burglary response times are abysmal and rape prosecutions have collapsed. Their Commissioner asked: “Is that necessarily a good use of time?”
The Director of Public Prosecutions admitted in November 2024: “I had no idea what NCHIs were.” The College of Policing CEO told chiefs the guidance has been “weaponised.” The Metropolitan Police stopped investigating them entirely in September 2025.
The NHS: They tell staff “mistakes will happen, apologise and move on” - then immediately add: “Persistently and wilfully misgendering someone is bullying.”
Who decides what’s “persistent”? Who determines “wilful”? You can be accused of bullying for using standard English. The video cost money, production resources, and staff time for mandatory completion. Meanwhile, 7.6 million people are on NHS waiting lists.
Bristol City Council: When constituents asked about trans policies at council meetings, Green councillors didn’t engage. They walked out. Like toddlers.
Council Leader Tony Dyer defended it - councillors have the right to walk out if the public “offends” them. Some held placards in front of women asking questions.
Former Green councillor Paula O’Rourke resigned, calling it “a refusal of democratic duty” creating a “chilling effect” deterring citizens from raising concerns.
Meanwhile, Bristol has a housing crisis. Youth clubs promised by the Greens are being demolished.
Trump: Currently styling himself as Middle East peacemaker. Not because he cares about Palestinian suffering or Israeli security. Because a Nobel Prize validates his ego.
This is the man who moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, whose “Abraham Accords” excluded Palestinians entirely. Now he’s positioning for Oslo whilst thousands die and millions are displaced.
THE ANALYSIS.
Let’s test this against reality.
Is it practical?
Police are investigating 13,200 non-crimes whilst actual crime victims wait days for a response. Training NHS staff on pronouns whilst 7.6 million wait for treatment. Bristol councillors walking out doesn’t solve the housing crisis. Trump’s Middle East photo opportunities don’t address occupation or blockades.
None of it solves actual problems. All of it diverts resources to ego management.
Is it logical?
They tell you gender identity is complex and “may change over time.” But if it’s that changeable, how can institutions operate on purely subjective self-declaration requiring constant accommodation?
Police claim NCHIs prevent hate crimes - but there’s no empirical evidence, the Court of Appeal ruled it unlawful in 2021, and the Met just abandoned the entire practice.
Here’s where the logic collapses entirely:
If “I identify as non-binary” requires institutional accommodation with no objective standard... why not someone identifying as a frog?
You can identify as a gender that doesn’t exist biologically. Multiple genders simultaneously. Pronouns that aren’t words. You can be recorded as a hate incident victim for something not directed at you. But NOT a frog?
Different species? Male and female are different sexes, but you’ve rejected that as a valid institutional distinction. Absurd? Dog excrement is recorded as a hate incident. No biological basis? Neither is genderfluid.
The frog example isn’t hyperbole. It’s the logical endpoint.
Think about Elvis impersonators. They dress, walk, and talk like Elvis Presley. Doesn’t make them Elvis. They don’t demand birth certificates, say “Elvis Presley.” Don’t call the police when someone points out they’re tribute acts.
They enjoy the performance without requiring constant institutional validation of their internal Elvis-ness.
But that’s not how the label fetish works. The label isn’t personal expression - it’s a demand for institutional reorganisation, constant validation, and punishment for non-compliance.
What’s the likely outcome?
You’re watching institutions collapse in real-time.
The NHS has catastrophic morale problems. The response: create ways to accuse people of wrongthink if they don’t adopt evolving language protocols. This makes the staffing crisis worse.
Bristol has a housing crisis. The response: walk out, wave placards. This makes trust in democracy worse.
Police forces are overwhelmed. The response: investigate nine-year-olds for playground insults whilst burglaries go unsolved. This makes public safety worse.
If Sigmund Freud were alive today, he’d be having a field day with this.
His entire career was built on understanding how the ego functions - how it demands validation, how neurosis develops when internal fantasy collides with external reality. He’d take one look at this circus and see textbook pathology being institutionally encouraged.
Freud understood that healthy psychological development requires accepting external reality, not demanding reality conform to internal states. The whole point was helping people navigate the gap between their internal world and external constraints.
What we’ve got is the exact opposite: institutions telling people that external reality - language, biology, democratic process, criminal law - must conform to internal subjective states. That’s not mental health treatment. That’s enabling delusion as policy.
And here’s the kicker: this makes people more fragile, not less.
When your psychological stability depends on constant external validation, you’re in perpetual vulnerability. When your safety requires police investigating playground insults, when your sense of identity needs strangers to learn your pronouns, when your participation in democracy requires never being challenged - you’re not empowered. You’re trapped.
Every interaction becomes a test. Every institution must perform validation. Any failure becomes an attack requiring state intervention.
The NCHI system trains people that hurt feelings require police databases. It creates a population unable to tolerate disagreement, distinguish actual harm from emotional discomfort, or navigate normal conflict without calling authorities. That’s learned helplessness dressed as protection.
And once subjective feelings override observable reality, there’s no shared basis for anything. One person’s playground insult is another’s hate incident. Without shared empirical standards, there’s no justice - just competing subjective claims with police validating whoever complains first.
THE KICKER.
The promise was simple: validate identities, accommodate subjective claims, protect people from hurt feelings - and we’ll create a kinder, safer, more peaceful world.
Here’s what you actually got:
Children aren’t protected by police records for playground language - you’re teaching them that words require state intervention and hurt feelings justify permanent consequences. Trans people aren’t safer because NHS staff learned ze/zem whilst mental health services collapsed. Palestinians and Israelis aren’t closer to peace because Trump needs a legacy moment.
This isn’t kindness - actual kindness doesn’t require cat demonstrations or pronoun policing. This isn’t safety - actual safety requires investigating crimes, not recording nine-year-olds. This isn’t peace - actual peace requires addressing material conditions, not ego theatre.
Children are getting police records for playground insults, whilst burglaries go unsolved. People are dying waiting for treatment whilst NHS staff learn ze/zem. Constituents are ignored whilst councillors wave placards. Civilians are killed whilst Trump poses for photos.
The fetish for labels hasn’t made the world better. You’ve just demanded that institutions, strangers, and society reorganise around subjective states. And once you abandon material reality as the basis for institutional function, there’s no logical place to stop.
This is what happens when ego becomes policy.
It doesn’t create kindness, safety, or peace.
It creates chaos.
And you’re living in it.
SOURCES:
The Times - NCHI investigation, children’s cases (November 2024)
Policy Exchange - “Non-Crime Hate Incidents” report by David Spencer (November 2024)
The Christian Institute - 13,200 NCHIs recorded, June 2023-June 2024 (November 2024)
Al Jazeera - “What are non-crime hate incidents which have become so hated in the UK?” (December 2024)
Wikipedia - “Non-crime hate incident,” Metropolitan Police announcement (September 2025)
LBC - Original reporting on children’s NCHIs
The New Conservative - “Policing Children’s Speech” (November 2024)
Free Speech Union - NCHI data analysis and campaign materials (September 2024)
UK Parliament Hansard - Non-Crime Hate Incidents debate (January 2025)
Court of Appeal - Miller v College of Policing (2021)
Spiked - “Literally anything can be a hate crime now” (November 2018)
