Euan McColm in the Scottish Daily Mail on Graham Linehan and the deranged ideology that trashed his life:

By rights, Mr Linehan should be revered, just as contemporaries such as Ricky Gervais and Simpsons creator Matt Groening are, as a visionary in his field. Instead, his career has been destroyed and his personal life upturned after years of relentless harassment by trans activists.

For rejecting an ideology –still hugely fashionable in the showbiz world from which Mr Linehan is now an outcast – he saw projects cancelled and friends turn on him. A long-planned musical based on Father Ted, the hit show Mr Linehan created alongside his one-time writing partner Arthur Matthews, was called-off while former colleagues denounced him as a bigot.

The nature of the campaign against Mr Linehan is disturbing, indeed. What makes it doubly so is the fact the police have been complicit in his harassment.

Complicit and downright helpful.

On Monday it emerged that not only had the Metropolitan Police decided no crime had been committed but that the force would no longer investigate so called ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHI). This was good news not only for Mr Linehan – who plans to sue the Met for wrongful arrest – but for anyone who cares about freedom of speech in these increasingly censorious times.

Graham Linehan’s recent arrest is understood to have followed complaints from members of a network of trans activists who have been allowed to weaponise police forces across the UK by making spurious criminal reports against those who reject the mantra that ‘trans-women are women’.

Spurious is putting it politely. It’s completely deranged. “Arrest that witch, she says there is no god!!”

If these complaints are rejected, activists then demand judicial reviews which often result in the reinstatement of charges not because the decision is justified but because chief constables are shamefully cowed by activist networks in their forces.

There are activist trans networks in police forces? I did not know that.

The Met’s announcement that it will no longer waste precious time indulging in the pointless, performatory investigation of non-crimes must be followed by a similar statement from Police Scotland Chief Constable Jo Farrell. Her force has allowed itself to be used as a private security force by activists for quite long enough. The Tory MSP Murdo Fraser has spent almost two years locked in a legal battle with Police Scotland over its handling of a complaint against him.

Mr Fraser committed the crime of refusing to take trans activists seriously by posting on X that ‘choosing to identify as ‘non-binary’ is as valid as choosing to identify as a cat.

Now you could make an argument that in fact choosing to idennify as a cat is either more or less valid than choosing to idennify as non-binary, but that’s an argument, not a police matter.

What misery these activists wish to inflict and what energy they possess. Not only do they recklessly encourage confused young people towards unnecessary medical pathways which will leave their bodies disfigured, they seek to destroy anyone who speaks up about the dangers of their ideology.

Plus, they’re boring and they don’t know how to think.

Clever people who know Mr Linehan is right cannot bring themselves to be seen in the same room as him lest they be infected. Like that other great hate figure of the trans movement, JK Rowling, Mr Linehan has done nothing but bring joy to others throughout his professional career.

As in the case of Ms Rowling, there is no incongruity between the warmth of his work and the position he takes on trans issues. Graham Linehan’s opposition to the demands of activists is not, as his critics claim, cruel. It is profoundly compassionate and, given the number of public figures who have run scared on this issue, impressively brave.

And so say all of us.