Written on February 24th, 2008 by adminno shouts
The government is carrying out a review of the laws about prostitution and Harriet Harman has said that selling sex should be made illegal.
It seems somewhat hypocritical that politicians should be concerned about prostitution. Politics is, perhaps, the second oldest profession and they prostitute themselves at every election. Another similarity is that once the act, either the sex or the voting, has taken place they have little further interest in the ‘customer’.
There is no doubt that curb crawlers cause distress to women going about their normal daily activities and ways should be found to prevent this. Nor is there any doubt that foreign women are forced into prostitution by being misled into thinking they are being brought into the country to work as bar and hotel staff. Nobody should be forced into this trade against their will but it is already illegal to kidnap women in this way.
Women have always used sex to obtain money and wealth. Business continues to use sex to sell anything from newspapers to cars by using implied sex in pictures relating to their products. Politics is perhaps the only exception to this practice but it is common to most industries.
The suggestion that you can make it illegal to pay for sex seems rather ridiculous. If you pay me to use my brain to make you money or you pay me to use my hands to make you a pair of shoes is that really so different from somone paying me to use my talents as a sex worker?
I’m not about to offer my services for that but nor would I want to be a boxer or a politician but freedom of the individual surely includes the opportunity to use your talents as you see fit. We should be enabling people to become sex workers just as much as we allow people to do any other job but we should offer them the full protection of the law and prevent their activities affecting others.
How many marriages have their been that offered sex in return for security, wealth or power? There are more than likely several in the Houses of Parliament just as there are in many other walks of life. Would those marriages have to be ended if selling sex were made illegal? There are probably many divorced ex-husbands who feel they were unwittingly made to pay for sex.
Written on February 23rd, 2008 by adminno shouts
The news that several teenagers have apparently committed suicide in Bridgend will have come as a shock to most of us. When I think back to my teenage years I recall having so much enthusiasm for life as all my friends appeared to do.
What has changed? Teenagers are still similar human beings to the kids we once were. Life has changed a great deal but people are still people so we cn be fairly sure that it is society and experiences of life that are different.
We now live in a society where there is a feeling that we should be given everything from financial support for everything. We hear suggestions that the government will be paying children to stay at school for longer. Entertainment comes prepackaged, we are the tv generation. Sit on the sofa and play computer games or watch tv and chat online to people you will probably never meet in person.
We lack hands on experience of life. We lack aspirations to achieve things in life or if we do have those aspirations we see life is tied up in government regulation and red tape. We are told we cannot do anything remotely dangerous because of health and safety rules and your car can be towed away and crushed if you forget about renewing your road tax.
Nobody can feel in control of their lives anymore. We may not live in a dictatorship and we do not need to fear the knock on the door in the way people do living under despotic dictators but there is a huge feeling of lack of control over our own lives. Depression is a huge health problem in our society but previously it was generally thought that it was not affecting young people.
Our society is without doubt somewhat sick. Money and possesions seem to have taken over as the important things in life. Deep down we all know this is not the case. Advertisers encourage us to want things and the government and sales departments of the world are eager to supply our demands but the truth is that what we really want and need is a sense of purpose, a sense of direction and a sense of fulfilment which is missing in modern western society.
Written on February 22nd, 2008 by adminno shouts
Alcohol has been known to cause problems for society for many years. The pub opening times we had until recently had been brought in to attept to reduce the problems but that never really worked and led to the charge that having a closing time caused people to drink even more as closing time approached.
Drinking binges have helped create no-go zones in city centres for anybody that would rather avoid getting involved in a fight. The police battle a constant war against troublesome youths fueled by alcohol.
Drink is causing doctors increasing concern about the ability of the health service to deal with the growing numbers of people developing liver disease as a result of excessive drinking. What are we to do?
Well, we banned smoking in pubs and public places so it is no great leap to ban drinking there too. Turn all the pubs into lovely smoke free restaurants and let the clubs serve orange juice. It would cut the cost to the taxpayer almost overnight. The streets would be safer places to walk down and the health service would save a great deal of money.
We’ve banned smoking in public so now lets ban drinking in public places too.
Now, what could we ban next?
