This is getting silly!

We talked a little while ago about hate crimes - well now we've gone even further down this murky road with the invention of what is called a "hate incident".  So just what is that?  Good question, but it seems it's anything which somebody says or does which somebody else takes exception to alleging it has "hate" overtones.  And the real farce of all this is that the police are obliged to record as a hate incident any occurrence "... which may or may not constitute a criminal offence, which is perceived by the victim or any other person, as being motivated by prejudice or hate" (the emphases are mine). So you can get the ridiculous situation (which actually happened) where someone took exception to a speech made the Home Secretary at the Conservative Party Conference last year where she discussed the possibility of requiring employers to give precedence to British applicants when filling a vacancy. Somebody saw this as racist and reported it to the police who, as they were bound to do, recorded it as a hate incident.  Totally bonkers! Where will this stop?