All posts by Keith

I’m a controversialist and catalyst, quietly enabling others to develop by providing different ideas and views of the world. Born in London in the early 1950s and initially trained as a research chemist I retired as a senior project manager after 35 years in the IT industry. Retirement is about community give-back and finding some equilibrium. Founder and Honorary Secretary of the Anthony Powell Society. Chairman of my GP's patient group.
personal

Five Questions, Series 4

Back in March I promised that we’d have another round of “Five Questions”. Why? Well because thinking about them keeps us on our toes. Besides, I have to have something inane to write about and you really don’t want me writing about tennis, now do you!?

In series four we’re back to the old mix of difficult and slightly silly questions. Well you can treat them all as silly if you wish; they’re chosen so they can be open to daft responses. So take the questions as seriously, or not, as you like.



The five questions for series 4 are:

  1. What happens after we die?
  2. Why are manhole covers round?
  3. If you could be the opposite gender for a day, what would you do?
  4. Is it even possible to create a Utopia?
  5. What is the biggest obstacle that stands in your way right now?


Again, like the previous series if you take them seriously I think they’re going to be deceptively tricky. I certainly don’t know exactly how I’m going to answer them all, although I have a few ideas up my sleeve.

Anyway I’ll answer them one at a time over the coming weeks; the first probably later this week.

And as I’ve said before, if anyone has any more good questions, then please send them to me. I’d like to continue to do this two or three times a year so good, but potentially fun, questions are needed.

Watch this space!

current affairs, sexuality

On Sex Work

The latest New Scientist (dated 6 July 2013) carries a short but interesting article under the headline “One minute with … Laura Agustín”. Her thesis is that banning prostitution does not make women safer, in fact it does exactly the opposite.

As New Scientist is behind a paywall, I’m naughtily going to reproduce the complete item here as I believe Agustín’s ideas should have a wider audience before our politicians make ever more hasty and ill-considered rules. And because I happen to agree with her.

Most of what we think we know about sex trafficking is wrong, says Laura Agustín, who has spent 20 years investigating the sex industry

There is a proposal in the UK to clamp down on prostitution by criminalising the purchase of sex. Why do you object?
Millions of people around the world make a living selling sex, for many different reasons. What are they expected to do? This would take away their livelihoods. Selling sex may be their preference out of a limited range of options. In the UK, migrants may have paid thousands of pounds to get here. This debt has to be paid off somehow, whether it is by working in the back of a restaurant or selling sex. Migrants who sell sex can pay off the debt much faster.

But prostitution is dangerous, especially for those who work on the street …
Women who work on the street are a small proportion of all the people who sell sex. Many more work through escort agencies, brothels or independently from home.

It is disrespectful to treat them all like victims who have been duped into what they are doing. In the UK, there are thousands of articulate sex workers who say, “Leave me alone, I did know what I was getting into and I’m okay doing it.”

Isn’t the “happy hooker” a myth? Doesn’t research show it is a miserable existence?
Given the millions of people selling sex in the world, generalisations are impossible. Much research has been done at medical clinics or shelters for victims. If you go to a trauma centre, you meet traumatised people. When people tell me they have never met anyone who wanted to be selling sex, I ask where they did their research.

Why do you think anti-prostitution laws can make life more dangerous for sex workers?
If you think what sex workers do is dangerous, why insist they do it alone? It is legal in the UK for individuals to sell sex, but they may not work with companions or employ security guards. Brothels are illegal. If you prohibit businesses but people run them anyway – which they do – then workers must please bosses no matter what they ask. That is why this is a labour issue. Also, targeting kerb-crawlers makes things more dangerous since sex workers may have to jump in cars without getting a good sense of the driver.

What about trafficking of unwilling victims?
The numbers of trafficking victims reproduced by the media have no basis in fact. There is no way to count undocumented people working in underground economies. Investigations showed that one big UK police operation failed to find any traffickers who had forced people into prostitution. Most migrants who sell sex know a good deal about what they are getting into.

If there is no proof it is common, why is there widespread belief in sex-slave trafficking?
Why do moral panics take off? Focusing on trafficking gives governments excuses to keep borders closed. Perhaps it is easier to campaign moralistically against prostitution than to deal with the real problems: dysfunctional migration and labour policies that keep large numbers of people in precarious situations.

There are other augments too. By legalising sex work, as the Dutch have done, means it can be regulated, the workers given regular health checks, and also have their income taxed. It takes sex work out of the grey economy, whereas criminalisation pushes it ever further into the murky depths of the blackest of black economies.

Laura Agustín studies gender, migration and trafficking. She is the author of Sex at the Margins (Zed Books, 2007) and blogs as The Naked Anthropologist at lauraagustin.com

ramblings

Awareness Days etc.

As you may have noticed, there has been a bit of a hiatus in my postings of interesting awareness days/weeks, curious festivals etc. There are two reasons for this. The first is that there don’t seem to be quite so many happening in the the last few weeks.



Secondly I have been thinking about how I select what to write about and updating the rules I use. Going forward this may mean slightly fewer postings, but hopefully about better quality events. Although the rules are not rigid I will mostly be obeying the following:

  1. The event must be either UK-based or international in nature
  2. I will not cover anything medical, literary, social welfare-related, or to do with schools; nor will I cover music festivals.
  3. And I will not cover anything overtly commercial. (Some events are run by companies as a cover for marketing, eg. National Shed Week, and will not be covered. Sponsorship is fine but the event needs to be independent of a single commercial entity.)
  4. The event must have a functional and useful website, to which people can be referred for further information. (I’ve found that far too many don’t!)
  5. The event has to engage my interest in some way, however marginal.

There will of course be exceptions. After all, I make the rules round here!

And I’m open to suggestions as to what to include.

Thank you!

links

You may have missed …

Another round-up of items I spotted which you may not have done …

According to the Met Office the UK’s current run of awful summers is set to continue for some years. Although they are also saying this month should be hot and sunny. Who you gonna believe?

Germ warfare, in the guise of antibiotics, may be changing the way we humans actually work.

At least one mother of my acquaintance would like words with the designer of the female reproductive equipment. Now Prof. Alice Roberts asks why childbirth is such hard labour and what science is telling us about it.

Trouble having an orgasm? Try your feet! WTF!!



On the more artistic side, the British Museum is to host an exhibition about sex in Japanese art in 2014. Excellent! We need sexuality normalised not marginalised or criminalised. Must see!

Following on from which, why are we so concerned about what might be “age inappropriate“. Surely what’s appropriate is whatever I feel like? So who cares what the neighbours or the kids think? Isn’t life there to be lived?

So modernity is nothing new; we’ve always been avant garde and there have always been old ‘uns who object to it. There was even social networking in the 17th century. Starbucks eat your heart out!

Boys… you ain’t having as much as you think you are!

So are we able to make ourselves happier? Seems we might be able to, at least up to a point.

Well we know that swearing is nothing new, it’s just that we change the swearwords occasionally. Now there’s a history of swearing.

Yes, it’s wonderful! But do we actually know what wonder is, how it works and how it contributed to civilisation? Researchers are trying to find out.



An angler reckons he’s caught a 200 year old fish off Alaska. If confirmed this will be a new record age for a fish. Just wow!

amusements

Auctionalia

Well it’s summer (allegedly) and there doesn’t seem to be a whole bunch going on to blog about. So here is one of our irregular collections of curiosities from our local auction house’s latest catalogue. As usual the eccentricity defies logic.

A full-length pastel of a girl on the seashore, by D Alvarez Gomez Domingo, signed, wearing a long white dress with a scarlet sash and holding a straw hat, modern frame
[But why was D Alvarez Gomez Domingo wearing a long white dress, with sash, and carrying a straw hat when they signed the picture?]

A small limited edition engraving of artist mice being watched by a cat, signed by the artist in the margin (illegible), two oils of cats, etc.

Three reproduction Georgian style mahogany framed wall mirrors, one with a shell and the other a Ho-ho bird surmount.
[And the third mirror? Oh and WTF is a ho-ho bird?]

A mid 20th century autograph bool (sic) with sketches, poems, photographs of the stars of the time, some signed, etc.



A pair of large George III silver shoe buckles, with openwork faceted beads between milled borders, maker’s IL, lion passant and duty marks.
[This is only one of about two dozen similar lots. Who collects this stuff?]

A musical John Peel tankard by Crown Devon, and silver plated objects including a candelabra, (sic) candlesticks, goblets, etc.

A snooker cue in metal case, inscribed on a plaque, ‘To Stumpie from Max and Buddy Bear’
[The mind boggles!]

Three shelves of mainly tribal wooden carvings including a wooden duck with brass and mother-of-pearl decoration, a lion, green painted octagonal lidded box with brass decoration, wicker lidded box, a tribal head, brass pot, etc.

A large mantel clock in exuberant pottery case … c.1900

An interesting collection of bladed weapons and associated items, 19th and 20th century, comprising 7 bayonets with 4 scabbards, a commando knife with leather scabbard, the blade signed IXL, a kris, 4 other knives with 2 sheaths, 3 powder horns, a shot flask, 2 shell cases, and gun parts

A reproduction suit of armour and four dress swords
[Anyone got a castle to decorate?]

A 4-Hatch Coaster radio controlled boat named ‘Tamara’ with a digger on the deck, in white, red and grey, approximately 40″ long, on stand

A radio controlled German WWII E-Boat, scale 1:24, approximately 57″ with three motors, also a part-built submarine approximately 67″
[These two boats are a sample of about 12 similar lots!]

A lot of old skulls, antlers and horns, and a display of small tusks

Two old tool boxes and contents, a roll of barbed wire, axle supports, a saw, level, etc.
[It’s the barbed wire that makes this a “must have” lot!]

An example of taxidermy, a mongoose struggling with an adder



A BMW motorbike combination, registration number E259 LOW, the sidecar possibly by Steil

words

Word: Vespiary

Vespiary

A nest or colony of wasps or hornets.



From the Latin vesp, a wasp and formed by analogy with apiary.

The first use recoded by the OED was in 1817.

topographical

Oxenhope Straw Race

After a brief hiatus, largely because there wasn’t a lot happening worthy of our interest, we bring you the Oxenhope Straw Race which is on 7 July.

The Oxenhope Straw Race takes place every summer in the Pennine village of Oxenhope, near Keighley. It was started by two men who made a bet about racing from one pub to the next carrying a bale of straw. The money is raised for charity by teams collecting sponsorship for completing the course, often in fancy dress, whilst carrying a bale of straw and visiting each of the local pubs in the village; £300,000 has been raised date.



This looks like a fund day out with a real carnival atmosphere! There’s more information and entry forms at www.strawrace.com.