Category Archives: current affairs

Fictional Flying Carpets

Magic carpets are GO! According to a report in the Daily Telegraph of 19 December magic carpets are no longer a flight of fancy confined to the realms of the Arabian Nights. Professor Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan of Harvard has shown that the flying carpet is possible under the laws of Physics, although to be useful a lot of work will have to be done on the power to weight ratio. Good news for those of us who hate wasting time travelling.

Sex for Sale

Oh dear; oh dear! They just do not understand do they! Harriet Harman, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, has decided to boil the ocean. According to various news items yesterday (including on BBC News) she has said she wants to make it illegal in the UK to buy sex. This seems to be on the grounds that it is (a) abuse of women and (b) it’s been done successfully in Sweden. At the very least Mistress Harman (and it seems safe to assume she speaks for the disreputable control freaks we have for a government) wants a major open debate on the subject.

The very idea of making payment for sex illegal I find totally abhorrent. And no that’s not because I use (or ever have used) prostitutes. It is a purely open-minded and pragmatic approach.

So here is my (first?) contribution to the debate:

  1. Objection the first is that the whole thing will be unworkable. So it will be illegal to pay for sex. Bystander, over at the Magistrates Blog makes a good point: how is it possible to prevent the oldest profession. He observes: “As a lawyer you [Harriet Harman] will be aware that you belong to the world’s second-oldest profession. What chance have you got of outlawing the oldest?”
  2. No-one doubts that abuse happens within the prostitution trade. Equally everyone will agree it shouldn’t happen. But criminalising payment for sex isn’t going to make it go away; it’s going to make it worse: the protagonists will feel that as they’re already the wrong side of the law they have nothing to lose and that will just make the abuse and violence go underground. So everyone is actually worse off.
  3. Similarly with the drugs problem which many prostitutes are feeding, especially at the lower end of the market. If they’re engaging in a criminal activity already then they become even more vulnerable and potential prey for drug dealers. And there will be less funding etc. for those organisations who try to help the girls by providing needle exchange, condoms and sanity.
  4. There is also a major logic problem with the thinking. Apparently the idea is not to make it illegal to sell sex but illegal to buy for sex. What? How can you sell something legally when it is illegal for someone to buy it? Currently it is legal to sell and to buy sex; prostitution in the UK is not of itself illegal. But many activities associated with prostitution (kerb-crawling, soliciting, pimping, etc.) are illegal.
  5. Moreover there are ways round the “payment” restriction. As we know many “hostess clubs” already take large payments for bottles of champagne (or other food or drink) for which one gets the attentions of your chosen handmaiden. Said handmaiden is paid a wage by the club as a member of staff. How are the lawyers going to prevent such scams. John says he didn’t pay Kat for sex, he just bought an expensive bottle of champagne and some sandwiches; the fact that they had sex was because he came onto her ’cos she was gagging for it and so was he. Kat says she received no money from John, she had sex with him ’cos she fancied him and he seemed like a decent bloke. Case dismissed, M’Lud.
  6. In another BBC News article (from February 2007) they look at how the Swedish system – on which Mistress Harman proposes ours should be based – has actually worked. Answer: patchily at best. While it does appear to have reduced abuse and trafficking, it has also reduced the level of support for those prostitutes still working who have drugs habits; and the supply of condoms has also dried up.
  7. A third BBC News item (this one from December 2006) looked at the more liberal approach of the Netherlands, where they openly allow prostitution and protect their working girls. This works. Prostitution is legal (as long as the girls are registered), they can advertise their services, most work from rooms and few need to work the street. Those who do work the streets are looked after in safe zones. As one Dutch interviewee comments: “Prostitution is a reality … and in order to protect those women and men who engage in it, it should be given equal status to other occupations”. Incidentally for even further enlightenment read the readers’ comments to this article.
  8. “Equal status” is an interesting point. What is the human rights position on (the illegality of) prostitution? Is it not a basic human right to be able to sell ones body if one chooses to. And if that means a woman chooses to sell her vagina, mouth or hand in return of cash, or a pig, or loaves of bread, then why should she not be allowed to? I can sell my brain to the company I work for; I don’t get abused because the law says it’s illegal. If prostitution were legal then it would be easier for working girls to turn in those who abuse them, because that is already illegal. At the end of the day all work is prostitution of one form or another!
  9. Finally, something governments always seem to forget. If you make something legal, you can regulate it and tax it. In the case of prostitution this means that the girls would be paying tax and National Insurance, which is ultimately good for them and for the Treasury. It also means that if they’re regulated (as in Holland) then they can be licensed only if they have regular health checks, which should be good for the girls and ultimately save stress on the health service.

As usual it seems to me that the pragmatic Dutch – who incidentally also have the lowest teenage pregnancy rate in the West; a quarter of the UK rate and 10% of the USA’s rate! – have got it right. Legalise prostitution, don’t drive it further underground. Openness and trust does actually work!

Creationists Plan British Theme Park

There’s an article in today’s Observer which, at a personal level, I find more than somewhat disturbing. It begins

A business trust is looking at sites for a Christian showplace to challenge the theory of evolution.

Apparently there are plans being laid to build an intelligent design (ID) theme park (my phrase) in NW England.

At a personal level I find this deeply disturbing. Christianity, indeed all religion and politics, is about belief. But those who believe in ID claim it as science. Science is about knowledge. Thus belief does not (and by definition cannot) equal knowledge. ID is not science, or knowledge, but belief.

What’s more I find this Christian proselytising of their (to me misguided) beliefs objectionable. For me it is a basic human right that everyone is allowed to believe (or not) whatever they choose without having someone else’s beliefs rammed down their throats, as is the Christian way. Don’t get me wrong. I find all proselytising just as objectionable; it’s just that Christians seem to have a particularly well developed, self-righteous and nauseating form of it.

But this does give me a moral dilemma: freedom of thought and speech. Everyone is entitled to their opinion/belief, however misguided. And they are entitled to be allowed to express that belief. So morally I have to allow these people that freedom. I just find their beliefs, their methods, their self-righteousness and their closed minds deeply obscene.

President Army Bush Quotes

Two excellent quotes today from the Quotation of the Day; both perpetrated by President George W Bush:

You can’t be the president and the head of the military at the same time.
Phone conversation with Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf; 7 November 2007; reported by CBC

The power of the executive branch is vested in the President, who also serves as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.
White House document explaining the role of the President of the United States

It does make one wonder how good these peoples’ grip is on reality.

They're Clearly Meant for Each Other

From online news service Ananova:

Couple divorce after online ‘affair’

A Bosnian couple are getting divorced after finding out they had been secretly chatting each other up online under fake names.

Sana Klaric, 27, and husband Adnan, 32, from Zenica, poured out their hearts to each other over their marriage troubles, and both felt they had found their real soul mate. The couple met on an online chat forum while he was at work and she in an internet cafe, and started chatting under the names Sweetie and Prince of Joy.

They eventually decided to meet up – but there was no happy ending when they realised what had happened. Now they are both filing for divorce – with each accusing the other of being unfaithful.

Sana said: “I thought I had found the love of my life. The way this Prince of Joy spoke to me, the things he wrote, the tenderness in every expression was something I had never had in my marriage. It was amazing, we seemed to be stuck in the same kind of miserable marriages – and how right that turned out to be. We arranged to meet outside a shop and both of us would be carrying a single rose so we would know the other. When I saw my husband there with the rose and it dawned on me what had happened I was shattered. I felt so betrayed. I was so angry.”

Adnan said: “I was so happy to have found a woman who finally understood me. Then it turned out that I hadn’t found anyone new at all. To be honest I still find it hard to believe that the person, Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things to me on the internet, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years.”