The very suggestion that something, be it a mildly tasteless advert, a nativity scene in a hospital foyer or a trenchant newspaper column, might conceivably offend somebody is now enough to justify censorship of legitimate expression. Worryingly, this now includes self-censorship. Advertisers, companies, politicians, even charities must anticipate the most extreme sensitivities or riskcondemnation, controversy or ruin.

Take, for example, the case of the topless model and the breast cancer charities. Claire Tully is a beautiful, intelligent young woman who has the distinction of being the first Irish girl to appear on The Sun newspaper's iconic page 3 slot. She has been invited to take part in a reality television programme that will raise funds for a charity of her choice.

Because her mother and grandmother both suffered from breast cancer, which means she is also at risk, she wanted to give her money to one of the charities that provide support for patients and research.

She approached the Marie Keating Foundation and offered the proceeds of her efforts, with a guaranteed minimum of ¤5,000. She was turned down. A second breast cancer charity also said no. A third said yes, and then rang her on Thursday evening to say they had changed their minds.

The chances are that if they had accepted this charity offer, the Foundation and the other charities would have been criticised and suffered a loss of support.

...Read full article from timesonline.co.uk

Head of the screening department of the Nihon Ethics of Video Association (NEVA) Katsumi Ono was indicted last week on charges involving failure to screen two DVDs that did not comply with obscenity standards.

NEVA’s panel of scholars, former journalists and film experts screens adult videos produced by 90 Japanese production companies to determine if they comply with standards and regulations.

Ono was arrested, in the beginning of March, on suspicion of assisting the sale of the explicit DVDs after approving the videos. The movies, which were released in June 2006, were allegedly approved for sale without proper screening for potentially obscene content.

The two videos contained scenes showing genitalia which were pixellated, but according to authorities, viewers could still make out body parts.

Reportedly, three other men have also been indicted in the incident.

The UK's treatment of asylum seekers falls seriously below the standards of a civilised society, a report says.

The Independent Asylum Commission, led by a ex-senior judge, said the system denied sanctuary to some in need and failed to remove others who should go.

It said the treatment of some asylum seekers was a shameful blemish on the UK's international reputation.

It spent a year researching the report and spoke to former home secretaries, policy makers and asylum seekers.

The commission was established after calls from community organisations and charities for an authoritative examination of asylum after a decade of political battles over immigration.

The report praised immigration officials for recent reforms to how they manage asylum applications - but it warned that a culture of disbelief was leading to perverse and unjust decisions.

The commissioners said policymakers were at times using "indefensible" threats of destitution to try to force some asylum seekers to leave the UK.

See full article from the Scotsman

Meanwhile pressure is mounting on the UK Government to reverse its decision to deport a gay Syrian teenager from Scotland to his homeland, where he faces almost certain imprisonment and torture.

Scotland on Sunday revealed last week that 19-year-old Jojo Jako Yakob was being held in Polmont Young Offenders' Institution awaiting deportation, despite evidence he had been tortured almost to death in Syria, where homosexuality is illegal.

Shirley-Anne Somerville, a Nationalist MSP for the Lothians, has lodged a parliamentary motion in support of our campaign to let Yakob stay in the country. It has already been supported by several MSPs.

Pete Wishart MP, the SNP's home affairs spokesman, has taken up the case at Westminster and has vowed to make representations to the Home Office.

He said: After Mr Yakob's terrible ordeal in Syria, it is unacceptable that the Home Office would consider sending him back. There is a very real risk that he would suffer further ill treatment or even possibly death. He has sought asylum in Scotland and I will make an immediate representation to the Home Office in an effort to overturn their ruling before his final hearing in May.

Yakob has appealed against the Home Office deportation order and has instructed top Scottish QC Mungo Bovey to fight his case. Yakob will appear before a full immigration hearing in Glasgow on May 7, when his fate will be determined.

Jojo fled his homeland two years ago after surviving a harrowing ordeal at the hands of Syrian police and prison guards, when he was arrested for distributing anti-government leaflets. Following his transfer from police interrogation, prison guards soon discovered that Jojo, a member of the repressed Kurdish minority in the Arab state, was homosexual. He then suffered horrific beatings and was assaulted so badly that he fell into a coma.

An Internet campaign to ban Britain's treasury chief from the country's pubs seems to be striking a chord.

Earlier this month, treasury chief Alistair Darling raised taxes on cars and cigarettes.

But it is his new alcohol duties - which raised the price of a pint of beer - that have Britons' backs up.

So when a pub landlord in Darling's home town of Edinburgh barred the chancellor from his establishment, drinking holes across the country followed suit.

Many are posting pictures of the white-haired, bespectacled treasurer above the big red word "barred."

Bar manger Andrew Little at the Utopia pub, which kicked off the campaign, says the poster is "tongue-in-cheek." But, he says, it seems to have "touched a nerve."

Hundreds have joined Internet groups devoted to running Darling out of every pub in the country, and establishments from the Tap And Spile in the north England town of Lincoln to the Plough Inn in Finstock, near Oxford, said Darling would not allowed to partake of their booze.

The government has raised taxes on alcohol by 6% above the rate of inflation, which translates to an extra 4p for a pint of beer, 13p for a bottle of wine and 55p a bottle for spirits such as whisky.

The duties are scheduled to rise by another 2% above inflation in each of the next four years.

A detailed manual overseeing the world's oldest profession is to be introduced in Western Australia soon and will explain how to run a brothel and the safest way to work as a prostitute.

The 50-page draft policy, titled Code of Practice: Occupational Health and Safety in the Sexual Services Industry, will be completed soon after long-awaited prostitution laws pass through Parliament, expected to be early next month.

The code of practice, the first of its kind for WA's sex industry, covers issues that prostitutes, brothels and escort workers encounter on a regular basis, including regular health checks and safe sex practices.

The guidelines recommend prostitutes not be on duty for more than 12 hours, have three-monthly health checks for sexually transmitted infections and be vaccinated against hepatitis A and B.

New sex workers should be given induction training on how to handle difficult clients, how to refuse services, deal with workplace violence, sexism and harassment, how to put on a condom properly and what to do if a condom breaks during sex.

Unclean or faulty equipment such as spas and sex toys, condom breakage, escort work to unknown or unsafe locations and unchanged linen are identified as industry hazards.

Industry insiders have welcomed the imminent introduction of the code, saying it is long overdue.

The draft code was developed last year by a group consisting of sex workers, medical experts, local government and Health Department representatives. Ms Forrester said the group would meet again soon after the laws were passed to finalise the code.

Push kid... I've got to get it into 34inches

The sight of men sucking in their bellies to hide expanding waistlines just got a lot more serious in Japan, where the government has introduced mandatory "fat checks" for the over-40s.

Aimed at trimming bulging annual health costs of more than $3bn, the Health Ministry says from next month 56 million people must start keeping waistlines tucked in or be asked to change diet, see a doctor and possibly pay higher insurance costs.

But critics say the plan for the potbelly police, which sets a waist limit of 85cm (34in) for men and 90cm for women, will do more harm than good. It's a comedy, Professor Yoichi Ogushi told The Japan Times. If you follow the government's logic, you can do whatever you want as long as you have a slim waist.

The fight-the-flab campaign has already claimed at least one victim. Last year, a 74-year-old local government official in rural Mie Prefecture collapsed while jogging in an effort to cut his 100cm waist. He was in the government's weight-loss programme.

We have to bring medical costs down, said Toshi-yuki Sato, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, who denied the plan would encourage crash-dieting and pill-popping. Dieting badly will eventually cause medical costs to rise even more, so we hope the metabolic tests will be properly supervised.

Plans to fingerprint millions of passengers a year at Heathrow's new fifth terminal have been put on hold hours before it opens for business.

BAA, the airport operator, took the decision after being warned by the Government's Information Commissioner that the move could breach the Data Protection Act.

It has left BAA is facing huge embarrassment at a time when it was hoping that public attention would be fixed on the long-awaited £4.3 billion terminal when it handles its first passengers tomorrow.

The controversial scheme meant that, for the first time ever, travellers would be fingerprinted before being allowed to board a plane. It would have affected about four million domestic passengers a year who use the terminal, which will become the British Airways base at the airport.

A BAA spokesman said that it will hold further talks with both the Information Commissioner and the Border and Immigration Agency before deciding its next move.

For the time being instead of leaving a fingerprint before passing through security - which is verified at the departure gate - passengers will be photographed.

Although BAA is keen to press ahead with the plans, no date has been fixed for when it will be able to do so. The decision to fingerprint all domestic passengers at the terminal was triggered by the demands for heightened security by the Home Office. With domestic and international passengers sharing the departure lounge at the terminal, it was feared that this would make it possible to bypass border controls.

The scheme hit the buffers late last week when David Smith, the Deputy Information Commissioner, questioned its necessity. He said photographing – the option now being adopted – would be far less intrusive.

Even the Home Office, which had put pressure on BAA to tighten security, distanced itself from the move. This was despite officials previously demanding some form of biometric tests in addition to photographs – and having approved the fingerprint scheme during months of negotiations.

At the Digital Living Room conference, Gerard Kunkel, Comcast’s senior VP of user experience, told me the cable company is experimenting with different camera technologies built into devices so it can know who’s in your living room.

The idea being that if you turn on your cable box, it recognizes you and pulls up shows already in your profile or makes recommendations. If parents are watching TV with their children, for example, parental controls could appear to block certain content from appearing on the screen. Kunkel also said this type of monitoring is the “holy grail” because it could help serve up specifically tailored ads.

Kunkel said the system wouldn’t be based on facial recognition, so there wouldn’t be a picture of you on file (we hope). Instead, it would distinguish between different members of your household by recognizing body forms. He stressed that the system is still in the experimental phase, that there hasn’t been consumer testing, and that any rollout “must add value” to the viewing experience beyond serving ads.

I can’t trust Comcast with BitTorrent, so why should I trust them with my must-be-kept-secrets...

The legal age for buying alcohol could be raised to 21 under proposals being examined by the Scottish Government.

Ministers are considering raising the minimum age from 18.

Shona Robison, the public health minister, is due to present a number of proposals later in the year.  Robison yesterday said nothing had yet been ruled in or out: The Scottish Government is currently in the process of developing a long-term alcohol strategy and as part of this we have been looking at a range of issues including availability, accessibility and age of purchase.

People in Scotland are twice as likely to die from alcohol-related deaths than elsewhere in the UK.

It is clear that people traveling into and out of the US have a lower expectation of privacy at the border. Perhaps more accurately, a governmental search at the border is more likely to be considered "reasonable."

The agents get to do things they can't do if, for example, they simply stop you on the street. They can question you, they can rifle through your unmentionables, and even examine documents you are bringing with you. The agents can even disassemble your gas tank, looking for hidden compartments that you could be using to smuggle things. In the Arnold case, the government argued that its search authority at the border is "plenary" or unrestricted, except that to do an invasive body cavity search, it would have to have some kind of suspicion.

But searches of things? Well, they can do whatever they want it would seem.

The customs agents' job is to protect the nation from "anything harmful," to gather intelligence, prevent terrorism, and to enforce all of the laws, including child pornography and copyright laws. The computer is no different from any other "closed container" that the agent may search. Just as the agent needs no probable cause to search your underwear, they need no probable cause to rummage through your laptop. And besides, they are doing it to protect the country and enforce the laws and prevent terrorist attacks. You don't have any privacy rights at the border anyway, so what's the problem?

...Read full article

If ever you hear of British people  enjoying themselves, let us know, and we will put a stop to it

The politician in charge of Britain's licensing regime has announced he will review legislation which has opened the door to a string of fully nude lap-dancing clubs in Brighton and Hove.

Gerry Sutcliffe, the Minister responsible for licensing, told parliament he was concerned about the situation in the city and promised to consult with ministerial colleagues over a permanent change to the law.

He made the comments following a meeting with Hove MP Celia Barlow and city councillor Gill Mitchell to discuss supposed problems with the licensing act which has left nutters of Brighton and Hove City Council virtually powerless to stop clubs opening.

He said: We continue to review what can be done. We have made the right move in delegating the matter to local government, because it is right that local councillors and local government have the right to determine what goes on in their area. It is important that we look at the planning process and its objectives, and I am particularly concerned to hear that in Brighton, six lap-dancing clubs have been established in a very short time.

That problem will start to spread throughout the country, so I appreciate my honourable friend raising the matter. I will be happy to meet colleagues again to consider what can be done to ensure that [SOME!] local people get what they want in their local area.

Since the new licensing regime was introduced in November 2005, six clubs have been granted licenses for fully-nude dancing, although only four currently put on lap-dancing. Until that point only two operated in the city and nudity was not allowed.

Spearmint Rhino added to its international empire by opening the first fully nude club on East Street last year. The licence was approved by magistrates on appeal, overturning the council's initial rejection. Magistrates ruled that police could not establish the link between strip clubs and disorder and threw out the council's decision not to grant the East Street venue a licence.

Ms Barlow and the mean minded David Lepper, MP for Brighton Pavilion, both raised the supposed problem during a parliamentary debate on Wednesday.

She said: I am extremely encouraged by the minister's announcement. The current licensing act is wholly ineffective when it comes to regulating lap dancing clubs. These clubs have sprung up in the hearts of our communities, and I also welcome the announcement to contact local authorities over what more can be done under the current law to prevent these clubs from opening.

Controversial British author Sebastian Horsley was denied entrance into the United States as he arrived to promote his memoir of drug addiction, sex and his dysfunctional family, his publisher has said.

Seale Ballenger, spokesman for HarperCollins Publishers, said Horsley was stopped by immigration officials at New York's Newark airport after flying in from London to promote his latest book Dandy in the Underworld.

He said the flamboyant writer was accused of "moral turpitude" in connection with his former drug use, pro-prostitution stance, and controversial self-crucifixion in the Philippines in 2000.

Horsley claims to have slept with more than 1,000 prostitutes, worked as a male escort, and been in and out of rehab to treat drug addiction, with video interviews of him talking about his drug use and sex life posted on the Internet.

Ballenger said after several hours of questioning by immigration officials, Horsley was put on a plane and returned to London.

The New York Times quoted a customs spokeswoman, Lucille Cirillo, saying she could not comment on individual cases. But in an e-mail to the newspaper she explained that under a waiver program that allows British citizens to enter the United States without a visa, travellers who have been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude (which includes controlled-substance violations) or admit to previously having a drug addiction are not admissible.

Publisher Carrie Kania, from the HarperCollins' unit Harper Perennial that published the book in the United States, said she found it hard to understand why Horsley would be denied entrance into the U.S. for "his notoriety."

Horsley's memoir was published last September in Britain with reviewers calling it both amusing and revolting.

If British men persist in enjoying life... we're gonna cut off their bollocks

On the 7th March all the usual Fem Nazis got together in a conference to finalise their plans to criminalise the purchase of sex

It was a radical feminist only cast list with many of the usual suspects:

• Vera Baird QC, MP, Solicitor General
• Professor Jalna Hanmer - Professor of Women’s Studies, University of Sunderland Conference Chair
• Professor Liz Kelly - Director of CWASU, Roddick Chair in Violence Against Women
• Julie Bindel - POPPY Project Consultant and Guardian Journalist
• Marianne Eriksson - Swedish MEP
• Ann Hamilton - General Manager, Policy & Development, Glasgow Community & Safety Services
• Professor Roger Matthews - Professor of Criminology, London South Bank University
• Hannah-Jo Besley - Community Safety Officer, Ipswich CDRP

The Government were represented by Solicitor General, Vera Baird and she certainly spoke giving the impression that the criminalisation of buying sex is a done deal. From her presentation:

Tackling The Demand For Prostitution And Trafficking For Sexual Exploitation

To understand the government’s developing approach to prostitution we have to look, largely, through the prism of people trafficking. I don’t call it developing because it is new, recently the Home Office held a consultation under the direction of then Minister Fiona Mactaggart, which produced “Paying the Price” – a forward policy document.

Since then we have decided to look again at some aspects only largely because of the advent of trafficking and, for me, because of new research from Liz Kelly and others causing a refocus onto the issue of demand for prostitution.

...

Our measures on trafficking will be futile if we do not tackle the demand for sexually exploited women and children. Otherwise in reality once we have closed one trafficking network, another may move in and take its place; once we have rescued one victim another one is put in her place.

I know that some may argue that there is an element of choice, where those that have worked in the sex industry in their home countries come here to make more money. Though personally I have reservations about accepting the concept of choosing to be a prostitute at all. No doubt this may occur.

However let me be clear; for trafficked women there is no real informed choice. How many of them have a realistic impression of the situation they will end up in? How many are told just how many men they will have to have sex with? Or that they will be sold from one exploiter to another; moved around the country; be subject to never-ending debt bondage or that they will be kept isolated and forced to live in squalid conditions?

This cannot continue to happen. So what are we doing about it?

At the end of 2007 we announced a six month review to explore what more we can do to tackle the demand for prostitution. The review began earlier this year with a visit to Sweden and will include a review of the approach taken by a range of other countries, including the Netherlands.

On 10 January, I visited Sweden with Home Office Minister, Vernon Coaker, and the Deputy Minister for Women and Equality, Barbara Follett, and a small team of officials.

The trip was set up so we could talk to the Swedish authorities specifically about their legislation which criminalises those who pay for sexual services – including the debate in Sweden that led up to the change in their legislation in 1999 and its implementation.

...

We are also intending to visit the Netherlands soon to meet with their Ministers and law enforcement agencies. The Dutch legislation is in direct contrast to Sweden - prostitution was legalised in the Netherlands in 2000. Controlled “tolerance zones” have been set up away from residential areas and there are licensed brothels.

However, it is increasingly clear that prostitution has not been restricted to the policed areas and rendered safe but these arrangements have, if anything, increased demand and there is a “twilight” sex industry too. The Dutch Government has recently announced that they are to review their legislation this year and we are very interested in talking to the Dutch authorities about their experiences and the issues they are facing.

As part of our Tackling Demand Review, we will research the legislation in other jurisdictions, particularly those with contrasting approaches to prostitution, including New Zealand. In New Zealand, the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 decriminalised prostitution. The Act requires every operator of a prostitution business to hold a certificate and removed the requirement for massage parlours to be licensed. It is not illegal for a person under the age of 18 to be a prostitute but it is illegal for anyone to have sex with them.

...

So, as you can see, there is a diverse approach to prostitution from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and it is right that on behalf of the public we consider these various approaches, and the impact they have had, very carefully, so that we can learn from them and use their experience to inform our own policy.

In particular, we are looking at how our current policy can be strengthened to ensure we robustly tackle the demand for prostitution – and this includes considering the impact that it will have on sex trafficking.

We will consult with stakeholders as part of the review. We also intend to conduct an audit of enforcement, prosecution, and sentencing practice, and in particular we will be interested in identifying any regional variations. We will also be looking at the options for using existing legislation to tackle those who pay for sex.

...

As many of you will be aware the clauses concerned with prostitution in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill have just been removed from the Bill. They were firstly to end use of the term “common prostitute” and secondly to introduce a sentence for someone convicted of soliciting, which required her to attend three sessions with a counsellor or crisis worker to seek to assist her to exit prostitution. This is unfortunate but was necessary in order to help the passage of the Bill through the House in the available Parliamentary time. However, the removal of these clauses from the Bill in no way indicates a lack of commitment from the Government to tackle prostitution.

As soon as parliamentary time allows, we will look to reintroduce the legislative changes that have now been withdrawn, along with any new proposals for legislative change we feel to be necessary following the review into tackling demand.

...

I can see the argument that it is unpleasant to criminalise people we see, generally, as victims. However, there is something to be said for the leverage that retaining the offence can offer, in the context of these policies and the availability of diversion and so I would suggest that this is not entirely oppression by the state.

Further, we also have a responsibility to local communities and the wider public, and I believe that decriminalising prostitution altogether would send out the wrong message. It would imply that street prostitution is acceptable and in doing so remove an important safeguard.

So our overall aim must be to reduce street prostitution and all forms of commercial sexual exploitation, including trafficking.

Tackling demand is one of the areas where we think we can have the greatest impact. However, experience in Sweden appears to show that it is not just legislation that can tackle the demand for prostitution. It is also about challenging social attitudes and raising awareness about the realities of prostitution and trafficking. And specifically it is about changing the attitudes of men.

In the context of the review, we are considering a small scale targeted marketing campaign to raise awareness among sex buyers about the levels of exploitation in prostitution, including trafficking, violence, and the involvement of people under 18. The aim will be better to understand how to change attitudes towards buying sexual services.

By penalising those who organise prostitutes and make a living from their earnings and by targeting those who are persistent kerb crawlers, with the aim of preventing repeat offending, we are already deterring those who create the demand for prostitution. The penalties being applied in some parts of the country to persistent kerb crawlers include disqualification from driving, kerb crawler re-education schemes and fines, and the naming and shaming of those convicted in the local media. We will be examining the effectiveness of these approaches, and seeking to share “best practice”.

As part of the wider set of actions to tackle demand and trafficking, we felt it was important to address the issue of small advertisements in the back of newspapers which can fuel the demand for trafficked women.

In November, with other ministerial colleagues, I met with representatives from the newspaper and advertising industry and discussed with them how they could support our work to tackle the demand side of the problem of human trafficking for sexual exploitation. As a result, the Newspaper Society are updating their guidance to editors of local papers, which can help them avoid accepting personal advertisements which are, in effect, advertising this despicable trade in women.

Work is also under way on call-barring schemes aimed at eradicating prostitute carding. This will involve negotiations with the Mobile Broadband Group, British Telecom and OFCOM.

...

Returning to demand, I want to stress the importance of ensuring we drive home to the users and potential users of those exploited in the sex industry the real consequences of their actions. If they are knowingly buying sex from a trafficked woman, someone who they know has been forced to do something against their will - they should be under no illusions that they are committing rape.

And even if they do not know that the woman is trafficked, just by paying for sex they are contributing to organised criminality and their actions are keeping particularly vulnerable women trapped in exploitation.

And, of course, the pursuit of an end to the evils of trafficking is raising the issue whether in the 21st century a government, totally committed to gender equality with all the concomitant mutual respect and dignity that connotes, ought in any way to be permitting or sanctioning women being bought and sold for sex.

We look forward to working with some of the people present at this conference on our stakeholder group as we continue our review into demand and it is cheering to see that this event on prostitution is a sell out. I am sure that if we work together we can come to clear conclusions and start to make a difference.

Comment: Wimmin

Thanks to Alan, 21st March 2008

Interesting to see that Julie Bindel was among those consulted by the government for the punter-bashing proposal. I have often been tempted to think (hope?) that "Julie Bindel" was the invention of a comic genius, since the column appearing in the Grauniad under that name was so reminiscent of the lamented "Wimmin" column in Private Eye.

Her lack of self-awareness is extraordinary: she is happy to accept the benefits of society's current positive attitude towards her own lesbianism, but takes the attitude of a Victorian prude towards the sexual peccadilloes of men.

Since the kerb-crawling legislation came in, nobody’s drug dependency or rent arrears or benefit delays have magically cleared up overnight.

Women are still working on the streets, but with many of their regular clients avoiding the scene for fear of legal repercussions, they are seeing a greater proportion of unpleasant and violent clients, with a rise in requests for sex without a condom and services at insultingly low prices.

Some are resigned to being out all night, since business is slow, they still need to make money, and in some cases they haven’t a hope of meeting their curfews in homeless accommodation.

Clients want them to leave their traditional areas and meet them elsewhere, so that the clients won’t be targeted by police; as a consequence sex workers are working in greater isolation with a significant threat to their personal safety.

Bikini-clad pole dancers, mini-skirted hostesses and a deal on foreign exchange await customers at Passapoga, a Santiago nightclub, who pay with U.S. dollars.

At banks and foreign-exchange bureaus, $1 fetches less than 430 pesos. Passapoga pays 600 pesos.

This campaign has had considerable success, said Jaime Retamal the club's manager: Customers come from all over, but a lot from the U.S.

The dollar has lost a quarter of its value against the peso in the past three years. Passapoga is discounting the exchange rate to discourage Americans from cutting back on nightclub visits.

Drinks and exotic dances cost customers the same price in dollars as in 2004, when the demand for copper, Chile's biggest export, surged.

Passapoga's special exchange rate means a 14,000-peso drink with one of the club's 50 hostesses costs $23, instead of $32 at the market rate.

Patricia Kart, a Passapoga hostess for 2 1/2 years, said workers agreed to the plan even though it reduces their commissions. The promotion is bringing in more customers, she said.

We have to take what the house gives us, and our job is to do what it takes to make the clients happy, Kart, 28, said in a telephone interview from the club: They are very content.

Internet pornography, foreign prostitutes and a growing number of cheap dance clubs have been blamed for the closure of the oldest brothel in one of the world's most famous red-light districts.

Hotel Luxor, a family-run establishment set up in 1948 in the port-side district of St Pauli, will shut next month, its owner, Waltraud Mehrer, told the German press yesterday.

It's no longer possible to make much money from real sex here in St Pauli, said Mehrer, who has run the business for 21 years. The table-dance clubs are still in operation, but otherwise there's not much business to be done here any more. I blame it on the rise of internet porn, the popularity of call-girl services and the noisy discos and dance clubs, she said.

Customers were no longer willing to pay high prices for sex, and an influx of eastern European prostitutes had also caused prices to fall, she said.

n the 1970s demand was so high that Hotel Luxor stayed open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and employed 12 prostitutes. Now it has four prostitutes and is open four nights a week.

Dutch council officials will permit gay sex in public areas but fine dog owners who let their pets off the leash in Amsterdam's Vondelpark.

Paul van Grieken, an Alderman in the Oud-Zuid district of the city, has startled many Amsterdammers, despite their famously liberal attitudes, with plans to allow public sex as part of this summer's new rules of conduct for the country's best-known park.

Why should we try to impose something that is actually impossible to impose, which also causes little bother for others and for a certain group actually means much pleasure?, he said.

The park's rose garden has become famous as a trysting spot for gay men looking for uncomplicated sexual encounters. Mr van Grieken stresses that tolerance to "cruising" gays, aimed at protecting homosexuals from violence, will have "strict rules attached".

Thus, condoms must always be cleared away, it must never take place in the neighbourhood of children's playgrounds and the sex must be restricted to the evening and night-time, he said.

The new park rules have the blessing of the Dutch police, who have urged all Dutch parks to follow Amsterdam's lead.

Glasgow city leaders want Scotland to introduce some of the world's strictest prostitution laws. Council nutters have launched a campaign urging the Scottish Government to turn the spotlight on punters by introducing legislation banning the "purchase of sex".

Street prostitution is already illegal and new laws introduced last year targeted men by making kerb crawling and loitering for prostitution a crime. But Glasgow City Council says brothels are still not adequately covered by legislation as it's not illegal to visit a prostitute and pay for sex.

Deputy council leader Jim Coleman says the solution is to bring in an across-the-board ban on paying for sex. A similar system has been in place in Sweden since 1999 and is said to have led to huge falls in prostitution. This approach has also now being adopted by neighbouring Norway.

A delegation of Swedish law enforcement officials visited Glasgow to explain how similarly nasty legislation might work here. They met with nutter Coleman and officials and volunteers who work in support services for prostitution, trafficking and addiction.

Coleman says the council will now try to pull in support from as many different bodies as possible and lobby the Scottish Government. He said: A new law would send a clear message to men that it is wrong to buy sex. It would also directly target brothels.

Coleman said the laws which came into force last October and outlawed kerb crawlers, was a step in the right direction: For the first time we have a law that targets the men who fuel the demand for prostitution. There can be no question that prostitution is exploitative and abusive of the women involved

Do you mind answering a few questions? Splendid. Are you dressed revealingly? Is there a large toy crocodile in your hand luggage? While on this flight, do you intend to read pornography, emit offensive body odour or perhaps sing a topical football-based ditty?

If so, the chances are you’re going to get slung off. All the above offences have recently resulted in passengers being escorted from the plane by stony-faced airport-security bods. In fact, over the past few years, cabin crew have taken to turfing us out of planes in unprecedented numbers.

Only a few days ago, the otherwise blameless Dr Paolo Tomasi from London was unceremoniously dumped off a Ryanair flight for the heinous crime of talking to his eight-year-old son during the safety briefing.

Here is our guide to involuntary deplaning, all based on real and recent episodes.

• SING ABOUT FOOTBALLERS’ UNDERWEAR
  
  After a fine win over Cardiff last year, fans of Sunderland AFC boarded an EasyJet flight in buoyant mood and sang the praises of their chairman in time-honoured terrace fashion. In case you’re not a regular at the Stadium of Light, the lyrics, to the tune of ’Ere We Go, ’Ere We Go, ’Ere We Go, are as follows: “Niall Quinn’s disco pants are the best.
  
  They go up from his arse to his chest. They’re better than Adam and the Ants, Niall Quinn’s disco pants.” EasyJet staff, unused to Wearside poetry, called the police and had all 100 fans thrown off. Quinn himself shelled out £8,000 for taxis to get them home.
   
• PAY INSUFFICIENT ATTENTION TO PERSONAL HYGIENE
  
  A German man was chucked off a plane in Honolulu in 2006 for being excessively whiffy. After two hours’ chasing around a hot airport with heavy luggage, he took his seat, only to be asked to leave it when fellow passengers complained. He tried to sue the airline in a Düsseldorf court, and lost.
   
• BLOCK THE EMERGENCY EXIT WITH A HUGE STUFFED CROCODILE
  
  Last November, a woman on a Ryanair flight from Rome to Milan refused to move her metre-long cuddly toy crocodile, which the crew said was blocking the emergency exit. Both were removed.
   
• WEAR THE WRONG CLOTHES
  
  American Lorrie Heasley took her seat sporting a T-shirt that featured pictures of George Bush and friends, with a slogan based on the hit film Meet the Fockers – but with one crucial vowel altered. Airline staff were not amused, and she was dumped halfway through her journey at Reno, Nevada.
   
• DON’T WEAR ENOUGH CLOTHES
  
  That was the crime of Kyla Ebbert, a 23-year-old waitress at the subtly named Hooters chain of restaurants. She was removed from a Southwest Airlines plane in San Diego for being dressed too provocatively, in micro miniskirt and tight T-shirt – though she was let back on when she rearranged them to cover as much as possible. (It took a while. She’s a big girl.) “I was embarrassed and humiliated,” she said. To regain her dignity, she took everything off again for Playboy.
   
• ATTEMPT SEX
  
  A flight made an unplanned landing last November to eject a couple who were intent on joining the mile-high club. After “fooling around” in front of other passengers in their economy seats, the pair made for the lavatories. Instead of ending up in Las Vegas, as planned, they were dumped in Portland, Oregon. It is not known whether their love was consummated.
   
• SAY ‘BYE-BYE, PLANE’
  
  Last July, 19-month-old Garren Penland – who’d just endured an 11-hour delay at Houston airport – said those words repeatedly (as children will) during the safety briefing on a Continental flight. “The flight attendant said, ‘Okay, it’s not funny any more. You need to shut your baby up,’ ” claimed his mum, Kate. Unfazed, Garren kept going, and mother and son soon ended up on the tarmac.
   
• READ PORN
  
  In 2005, South African carrier Nationwide Airlines called a taxiing flight back to the terminal to eject AC Hoffman, a Cape Town businessman. He’d been perusing Loslyf, a local publication of liberated bent. “The air hostess snatched it off me, I told her she was f ***in’ rude, and they chucked me off,” he said. “This will not be the end of the matter. My hand luggage has not even been returned.” We think he meant the periodical. The airline’s chief executive, Vernon Bricknell, commented helpfully: “If you want to look at this kind of stuff, go and do so in the toilet.”

Britishness is... Emigrating to somewhere better

Young people leaving school would take part in ceremonies to mark their move from students of citizenship to active citizenship, says a Government review by Lord Goldsmith.

The former attorney general said the events would involve swearing an oath either to the Queen as head of state, or to the nation: The ceremony should be seen as a key stage in engaging a young person in the life of the community and the responsibilities of citizenship.

As an incentive to making this transition, students would be encouraged to join a National Citizens' Corps and take part in civil activity.

There is also a suggestion to add an additional public holiday to celebrate Britishness.

Although the United Kingdom's constituent nations each has a saint's day, only St Patrick's Day (March 17) is a public holiday, in Northern Ireland.

But Lord Goldsmith does not want a date laden with historical significance. His preferred model is Australia Day, which is used to celebrate what it means to be an Australian, the achievements of the country and…to identify the improvements that can be made.

Eliot Spitzer, the crusading New York Governor often tipped as a future American president, suffered a spectacular fall from grace yesterday when he was implicated in a prostitution ring.

Mr Spitzer, whose eight years as New York State’s Attorney-General earned him a reputation as “the sheriff of Wall Street”, reportedly told senior aides that he was a client of an international escort service that charged up to $5,500 (£2,750) an hour. Court papers hinted at risky sexual practices. He cancelled all his public appearances and met officials in his Fifth Avenue apartment before making a public apology to his family and the public.

I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and in a way that violates my or any sense of right and wrong, he said, with his wife Silda at his side. I apologise first and most importantly to my family. I apologise to the public, whom I have promised better. I am disappointed I have not lived up to the standards I have set for myself.

He did not immediately step down, but said that he needed to dedicate some time to regaining the trust of his family.

A source told The New York Times that Spitzer was one of the men identified in court papers as a client of the prostitution ring. Court papers say that the man identified as Client 9 had arranged to meet a prostitute in Washington on the night of February 13. An affidavit lists six conversations between Client 9 and a booking agent for the Emperors Club.

Client 9 was captured by a telephone tap setting up an appointment with a prostitute called “Kristen”, who travelled by train from New York to Washington to meet him.

In 2004 Spitzer voiced revulsion as he announced the arrests of 16 people for running a prostitution ring out of Staten Island.

See full article from Game Politics

Update: Resigned

13th March 2008

Eliot Spitzer, confirmed what had seemed all but inevitable since the news exploded of his illicit dalliances with high-price prostitutes: he is resigning his post and leaving politics.

I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me. To every New Yorker and to all those who believed in what I tried to stand for, I deeply apologise, he said in a brief statement. He added: The remorse I feel will always be with me... For those to whom much is given, much is expected.

Holidaymakers are ignoring environmentalists' calls to limit their air travel and are taking more "indulgent" long-haul mini-breaks than ever before.

Despite recommendations that they holiday closer to home, the number of Britons flying thousands of miles to spend less than a week in far-flung destinations was 3.7 million last year, according to a survey by Halifax.

The travel insurer is predicting that the number of what it has dubbed "breakneck breaks" will increase by more than a third this year, and expects 4.9 million British tourists to travel in 2008 to destinations including Thailand, Hong Kong, New York, and Rio de Janeiro for just a few days.

The Far East was the second-most popular destination, followed by the Indian subcontinent. Biggest takers of breakneck breaks last year were those living in South-east England, while those in Wales and South-west England were least likely to go off on such a trip.

However, Friends of the Earth was quick to criticise what it believes is an "indulgent" trend. Its aviation campaigner, Richard Dyer, said: These kinds of habits are going in exactly the wrong direction from what we need.

Exotic locations for stag and hen parties were cited as one factor for increasing travel.

Sweden's state-owned pharmacy chain Apoteket said it plans to help satisfy Swedes by adding sex toys to its shelves.

The one-year sales trial will start in June at 50 selected Apoteket stores around the country. It was not clear what type of products would be available.

Apoteket said customer surveys had showed that many Swedes found Apoteket a natural vendor for sex-related products. We want to de-dramatize the use of sex help tools, and help people to a better sex life, with or without a partner, Apoteket spokeswoman Eva Fernvall said in a statement.

The selection of sex toys has been developed in cooperation with the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education.

Millions of British airline passengers face mandatory fingerprinting before being allowed to board domestic flights when Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opens later this month. For the first time at any airport, the biometric checks will apply to all domestic passengers leaving the terminal, which will handle all British Airways flights to and from Heathrow.

The controversial security measure is also set to be introduced at Gatwick, Manchester and Heathrow’s Terminal 1, and many airline industry insiders believe fingerprinting could become universal at all UK airports within a few years.

All four million domestic passengers who will pass through Terminal 5 annually after it opens on March 27 will have four fingerprints taken, as well as being photographed, when they check in.

To ensure the passenger boarding the aircraft is the same person, the fingerprinting process will be repeated just before they board the aircraft and the photograph will be compared with their face.

BAA, the company which owns Heathrow, insists the biometric information will be destroyed after 24 hours and will not be passed on to the police. It says the move is necessary to prevent criminals, terrorists and illegal immigrants trying to bypass border controls. The company said the move had been necessitated by the design of Terminal 5, where international and domestic passengers share the same lounges and public areas after they have checked in.

Without the biometric checks, the company says, potential criminals and illegal immigrants arriving on international flights or in transit to another country could bypass border controls by swapping boarding passes with a domestic passenger who has already checked in.

They could then board the domestic flight, where proof of identity is not currently required, fly on to another UK airport and leave without having to go through passport control.

Most other airports avoid the problem by keeping international and domestic passengers separate at all times, but the mixed lounges exist at Gatwick, Manchester and Heathrow’s Terminal 1.

Civil liberties campaigners have raised concerns about the possibility of security agencies trying to access the treasure trove of personal data in the future.

There are also fears that fingerprinting will add to the infamous "Heathrow hassle" which has led to some business travellers holding meetings in other countries because they want to avoid the sprawling, scruffy airport at any cost.

Dr Gus Hosein, of the London School of Economics, an expert on the impact on technology on civil liberties, is one of the scheme’s strongest critics. He said: There is no other country in the world that requires passengers travelling on internal flights to be fingerprinted. BAA says the fingerprint data will be destroyed, but the records of who has travelled within the country will not be, and it will provide a rich source of data for the police and intelligence agencies.

Simon Davies, of campaign group Privacy International, suggested the photograph alone would be a perfectly adequate - and much cheaper - way of identifying passengers.

Massachusetts residents could spit on the sidewalk, give a tattoo, even commit blasphemy or adultery without fear of a fine or jail time under a bill being considered.

The bill would repeal nearly two dozen so-called "blue laws", laws that often deal with moral or religious issues. The laws are often considered outdated or even unconstitutional, but have remained on the books.

One of the laws mandates a $300 fine or year in jail for anyone who wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world.

Another sets a $20 fine for spitting. And even though tattooing is now legal in Massachusetts, there's still a law on the books mandating a $300 fine for anyone giving a tattoo who's not a doctor.

The bill also would eliminate laws declaring the Communist Party a subversive organization, making adultery a criminal offense punishable by three years in jail or a $500 fine, and barring anyone from acting in a suspicious manner around any steamboat landing, railroad depot, or any electric railway station.

The bill's sponsor, state Representative Byron Rushing, said there's more than just legal house-cleaning behind the legislation: There was a feeling that we shouldn't have laws that we never use. And there were a few laws that could be used and shouldn't.

Kris Mineau, a nutter of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said his group opposes removing the laws banning adultery and fornication, saying it sends the wrong message: If we remove these laws we are telling young people that adultery and fornication are acceptable.

Four days after a sex gadget shop that promised “guaranteed satisfaction” opened at a new Bacolod City mall, Philippines authorities raided the establishment.

Vibrators, condoms, sex dolls, and other paraphernalia were seized by police and City Legal Office personnel.

Police commander, Senior Inspector Luisito Acebuche, said they coordinated with the CLO to stop the sale of the sex gadgets after receiving complaints.

The police bought a gadget for P500 from Luigi Tan before they moved in and confiscated the shop’s merchandise, Acebuche said.

The display and sale of the sex gadgets are in violation of the Article 201 of the Revised Penal Code, prohibiting the show, sale, and distribution of pornographic materials, Acebuche said. Penalty for the offense ranges from a prison term of six years or a fine of P6,000 to P12,000, or both, he added.

Lawyer Vicente Petierre of the CLO said that aside from violating national laws, the shop was also operating without the necessary permits from the city’s permits and licensing division. Petierre said the mall management could not be held liable for the offense because it did not know of the actual products that the shop owners would sell when they rented them space since they did not declare them in their application.

Father Aniceto Buenafe, head of the Social Action Center of the Diocese of Bacolod, said business proprietors must be sensitive enough and respect the highly conservative and religious culture of most Filipinos.

Such commercial ventures promote extreme liberalization and they could send the wrong message to consumers, especially the youth, and contribute to moral degradation, he spouted.

Buenafe also called on parents to inculcate the right and correct moral values in their children.

A Blackpool lap-dancing club has been fined £14,000 after admitting breaching its licence by allowing supposedly indecent acts between performers.

One dancer who performed at Wildcats on Clifton Street told a police officer that there were "no limits" to what went on.

Blackpool Magistrates Court was told that when police visited the club they saw extensive physical touching between two female dancers, one of whom they later talked to.

Vicki Cartmell, prosecuting on behalf of Blackpool Council, said the dancer told an officer: No, there are no limits about what we can do, we can do what we want.

The club's owner Provocative Leisure of King Street, Leeds, admitted the offence. It was fined £14,000 and ordered to pay £415 costs.

Solicitor Tracy Langfield said: The club faces the suspension of its licence for four weeks and that could lose £40,000 in revenue and affect the jobs of 40 dancers and 13 door and bar staff. This club has a new manager and the police and council say there are no problems now.

A council licensing panel suspended the venue's licence for four weeks last month but it has appealed meaning it can remain open until the appeal is decided.

A 32-year-old man has been arrested in Wiltshire for allegedly simulating a sex act with a lamp-post.

A police spokesman said officers were called to a road in the town of Westbury on February 16 after they received a report of a man acting indecently outside a block of flats "occupied by several young women".

When they arrived they arrested him on suspicion of outraging public decency.

The man was released on bail, but following an investigation into the incident and several interviews with witnesses - including children - he was recalled for questioning. He has since been re-released pending further inquiries.

The Wiltshire police spokesman said: We are awaiting a decision as to whether there should be a prosecution.

Comment: Social Engineering?

Thanks to Steve

Note that the Boys in Blue questioned children about the event, no doubt concerned that the lamppost may have been under 16 years old.

I seem to have missed the sex with a Henry Hoover vacuum cleaner incident also mentioned in the article. This is probably a result of the government policy to stop people using prostitutes. Perhaps regular sex with domestic appliances will soon become the norm for men.

They are putting something in the bread, and it isn't folic acid.

Meretz MK Zehava Gal-On is set to unveil legislation that will potentially ban all media - including promotional pamphlets and "business cards" - from advertising prostitution services and providing possible clients with access to the sex industry.

Gal-On's introduction of the bill coincides with International Women's Day on March 8th.

The current law [on prostitution] gives legitimization to the advertising of sex clubs and prostitution in all variety of media, commented Gal-On, who heads the Knesset subcommittee on Trafficking in Women. Her bill has the backing of more than 20 other lawmakers from across the political spectrum: Such promotion in newspapers or with pamphlets and business cards are an inseparable part of the trafficking in women chain.

She continued: Allowing potential clients to receive information about the sex industry only increases women's suffering and generates millions of shekels a year for criminals.

Drafted by the Hotline for Migrant Workers legal adviser Nomi Levenkron, the legislation is intended to widen the existing scope of punishment for those who advertise and promote prostitution; increase jail time from six months to three years for those found guilty of advertising sex services; and up fines meted out.

These new restrictions have been created in order to protect the public sentiment on the basis of moral justice and not to eradicate prostitution completely, said Gal-On: The law will not ban prostitution but only makes it criminal to... promote the services."

Gal-On noted that despite a 2004 ruling against the country's three largest newspapers for advertising sex services, such ads were still regularly published: Ten years have passed since the original law banning the advertisement of sex services was implemented and nothing has changed.

The campaign group Rape Crisis Scotland is urging the Scottish Government to create a new definition of rape that includes having sex with trafficked prostitutes who work for pimps or in licensed saunas.

The SNP government is expected to publish a new bill this spring which will propose one of the biggest reforms of sexual offences laws in Scotland. The bill will be based on proposals drawn up the Scottish Law Commission. They include, for the first time, a clear definition of consent, which will require there to be "free agreement" to sex.

The proposals are currently out to consultation. In its response to the consultation, Rape Crisis Scotland has effectively called for a widening of the definition of rape. It claims that if rape is to be defined as the absence of "free agreement" to sex, this should include women forced to work in the sex industry. Circumstances in which the complainer had been trafficked for prostitution should be included as a situation where consent is absent, and intercourse constitutes rape, the submission states.

Sandy Brindlay, the national co-ordinator of Rape Crisis Scotland, said: Men who use trafficked women for sex are sometimes aware the women doesn't want to go through with it. In those circumstances, it's obvious the woman isn't consenting to sex. Men who have sex with women who have been trafficked are committing rape.

Last night, however, legal experts expressed concerns that such a law would be unworkable and would offer no protection for British prostitutes who were suffering the same kind of violence and intimidation.

John Scott, a human rights lawyer, said: (The new law] would mean the men could be guilty even if they didn't realise the women had been trafficked. It is unworkable.

Margo MacDonald, the Independent MSP for Lothian, who has campaigned for changes to prostitution laws, described the proposals as "impossible". She said: (The women] may have been trafficked and have paid to come to Britain, and some know they are going to work as prostitutes. You could hardly bring a (rape] charge if the woman has come to work in the sex industry in this country.

Extending the definition of rape to include sex with trafficked prostitutes would be controversial, as some men would claim they were unaware the women were working against their will.

The karaoke bar scene may not be uncommon in many parts of Asia, but was until recently rare here in isolated Burma, where economic desperation is increasingly pushing young women into a sex trade that hides behind the facade of karaoke bars and massage parlours.

At the bars, known locally as KTVs for "karaoke television," young women in their late teens and early 20s entertain clients in private air-conditioned rooms furnished with sofas and karaoke equipment.

Waiters enter only when customers order food and drinks, or if the women ring a bell to alert the management that a client is getting out of hand.

Workers at KTVs say sex is not necessarily on offer, but they add that in the private rooms boundaries can be vague. It's hard to control men in this kind of room, 22-year-old Kay Kay says: They are so wild when they get drunk. I need to hold both his hands to protect myself. Sometimes I need to ring the bell to call for help from the waiters.

Customers vary from teenagers to adults. Sometimes they come with friends, occasionally even with family, to venues that blur the line between casual entertainment and brothels.

Ostensibly hostesses are paid to keep customers company, encourage them to buy drinks, and to sing for them.

Prostitution is illegal in Burma, but it began to take root underground after the ruling junta abandoned socialism for a market economy in 1996.

Myanmar is one of the world's poorest countries, where even urban professionals scrape out a living on less than a dollar a day. Salaries for civil servants, for example, start at about 20,000 kyats (about $17.50) a month. Many industries have been decimated by decades of economic mismanagement by the military, coupled with the effects of Western sanctions imposed over the regime's failure to make good on promises of democratic reforms.

KTV girl, Cherry, says she decided to work in the karaoke bar after quitting her low-wage job at a garment factory. Girls can earn more in tips in one night at the karaoke bar than they earn in a month in factory jobs.

Many of the girls working in Rangoon's KTV bars have come from Burma's impoverished countryside in search of better opportunities in the city.

The bar that employs Cherry and Kay Kay provides them with free room and board, and a base salary of 20,000 kyats, or about $17.50. The basic salary is similar to what I earned at the factory, but here we get tips from customers. Sometimes we earn 30,000 kyats ($27.00) in one night just from the tips.

The women are not allowed to leave the bar before its 2 am closing time, and then they are driven back to the hostel.

The stigma attached to the bar girls remains strong, and many parents would rather see their children join the millions of Myanmar migrants heading overseas to search for work.

I can support my family well. One of my brothers will graduate from university very soon, says Cherry: I don't need to work very hard like I did in the factory but you know customers treat us just as bar girls, they look down on us. The reputation of a bar girl is not so good in this community.

House leaders from both parties and the White House reached agreement yesterday on a bill that would more than triple in size the Bush administration's global AIDS program, already the largest foreign aid initiative aimed at fighting a single disease in US history.

The bill loosens the requirement for abstinence messages in AIDS prevention strategies, a source of constant criticism of the program since it was unveiled by President Bush in 2003.

The bill authorizes $50 billion over five years to prevent infection, treat people already ill from HIV, and care for children orphaned by the epidemic. The program, known as the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), provided $15 billion over its first five years.

This historic agreement will save millions of lives, said Paul Zeitz, a physician who heads the Global AIDS Alliance, a vocal critic of some original PEPFAR provisions. With bipartisan support, Congress is beginning to fix aspects of the AIDS program that were clearly not working.

The original PEPFAR law's requirement that one-third of prevention dollars be used to promote abstinence set off a rhetorical war between the program's State Department leaders and much of the rest of the AIDS community. The new bill appears to signal a truce.

The reauthorized bill requires PEPFAR's chief to provide "balanced funding" for prevention and to ensure that abstinence and faithfulness activities are implemented and funded in a meaningful and equitable way. If a country spends less than 50 percent of its sexual-transmission prevention funding on the promotion of abstinence and faithfulness, the program must justify that decision to Congress.

However, a requirement that every organization receiving PEPFAR money adopt a specific policy against "prostitution and human trafficking" - which many activist groups also find rankling - remains in the new bill.

The bill now goes to the Senate.

A total of 21 men, mostly white collar workers, have been arrested and charged with kerb crawling in Edinburgh since new legislation was introduced.

Across Scotland, as many as 80 men have been charged since kerb-crawling became a criminal offence in October last year.

Many of the men lived with wives or partners, were in their mid-40s to late-50s, and were caught during the week.

Most were professionals, and worked as teachers, salesmen, doctors and accountants. A retired clergyman, a naval officer and a tourist from Kazakhstan were also caught.

Police and support agencies are studying the details of the men charged across the country to build up a more detailed picture of the people involved.

Those charged under the new Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Act 2007 face a criminal record, a fine of up to £1000 and exposure to family, friends and colleagues.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: Kerb-crawlers should be clear of the potential legal and social costs of their actions.

A doctor is threatening to take Ryanair to court after he claims he was thrown off a flight for chatting during the pre-flight safety briefing.

Dr Paolo Tomasi was travelling with his eight-year-old son from Alghero in Sardinia to London Stansted after a holiday.

He said he was talking to a friend while the plane was preparing for take-off and the cabin crew were giving the safety demonstration.
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I was talking normally, and a steward asked me to be quiet, in a brusque manner, he said: After five minutes, when the announcements came to an end, another stewardess came up and said that I had been warned and I should have shut up. She asked if I wanted to get off the plane.

Dr Tomasi, who is based in London, continued: I was astonished. She said: 'Yes, I am warning you, and I will not warn you again'.

The stewardess then informed the captain about Dr Tomasi and the plane was stopped to allow airport security to remove him and his son.

Dr Tomasi said he has complained to Ryanair and demanded compensation for spending £500 to fly out the following day. He said he had informed his solicitor and is preparing to take legal action: I was talking in a calm and measured way, and I have a list of a number of passengers who are prepared to give evidence supporting me. One of them could not hear a word I said and was sitting just a metre and a half away.

A Ryanair spokesman said: He refused to stop talking during the safety demonstration and was disturbing other passengers. He clearly was not listening even though he was asked to pay attention.

Men using brothels and massage parlours should be made to give DNA samples in an effort to reduce the number of prostitute murders, an MP has said.

Labour MP Denis MacShane told the House of Commons that such tests would also be a way of getting men to face up to their responsibilities.

The suggestion comes a week after Steve Wright was convicted of the murder of five prostitutes in Ipswich.

The Association of Chief Police Officers is calling for a debate on whether to expand the current database - of DNA details taken from crime suspects - to cover all people in the UK.

But the government has rejected plans for this. Currently, only the DNA of those suspected of crimes is stored.

MacShane, MP for Rotherham, asked Commons leader Harriet Harman: Would she agree that taking DNA samples from men who go to massage parlours and brothels would be a way of getting men to face up to their responsibilities in this regard? Because almost all the horrible murders of prostituted women are by men who have frequented them beforehand.

Harman, who is also women's minister, gave no commitment but said that many rapes as well as murders are able to be solved using DNA.

A sheriff conducted a hearing in the holding cells at court when the Naked Rambler refused to put his clothes on – again.

Stephen Gough – who has now spent 20 months in jail – was found guilty of another breach of the peace and now faces a further four months behind bars.

Earlier, the court heard Gough was taken into custody in January after walking free from court naked after a sheriff gave him the chance to end his "vicious circle".

The ex-marine took just six steps of freedom before police took him into the back of a van and re-arrested him.

Yesterday's sentencing was his 13th straight breach of the peace – all for appearing nude in public.

Enjoying a pint. So setting a bad example for the kids. They should be locked up. Just like everyone else in Britain.

Children caught trying to buy alcohol from Asda, one of the UK's major supermarkets will face prosecution, it has been announced.

The company says its will urge officers to take the offender to court. If they refuse, Asda says it will consider bringing a private prosecution.

The chance of an under-age drinker being punished for trying to buy alcohol was only one in 300,000 last year, when nearly 3million offences resulted in ten prosecutions.

The current system is clearly not effective enough, said an Asda spokesman. When anyone under-age is found trying to buy alcohol in one of our stores we will call the police and urge and expect the police to take action themselves. If no action is taken we will on some occasions bring our own prosecution. In most cases this will target repeat offenders."

The offence carries a maximum fine of £1,000, but Asda said its main aim in bringing a court case would be to act as a deterrent: We are giving offenders a clear message that we have the right to prosecute them ourselves even if the police decide not to prosecute.

Passengers travelling between EU countries or taking domestic flights would have to hand over a mass of personal information, including their mobile phone numbers and credit card details, as part of a new package of security measures being demanded by the British government. The data would be stored for 13 years and used to "profile" suspects.

Brussels officials are already considering controversial anti-terror plans that would collect up to 19 pieces of information on every air passenger entering or leaving the EU. Under a controversial agreement reached last summer with the US department of homeland security, the EU already supplies the same information [19 pieces] to Washington for all passengers flying between Europe and the US.

But Britain wants the system extended to sea and rail travel, to be applied to domestic flights and those between EU countries.

According to a questionnaire circulated to all EU capitals by the European commission, the UK is the only country of 27 EU member states that wants the system used for "more general public policy purposes" besides fighting terrorism and organised crime.

The so-called passenger name record system, proposed by the commission and supported by most EU governments, has been denounced by civil libertarians and data protection officials as draconian and probably ineffective.

The scheme would work through national agencies collecting and processing the passenger data and then sharing it with other EU states. Britain also wants to be able to exchange the information with third parties outside the EU.

Officials in Brussels and in European capitals admit the proposed system represents a massive intrusion into European civil liberties, but insist it is a necessary part of a battery of new electronic surveillance measures being mooted in the interests of European security.

The Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford said: Where is this going to stop? There's no mature discussion of risk. As soon as you question something like this, you're soft on terrorism in the UK and in the EU.

Britain is pushing for a more comprehensive system based on the experience of a UK pilot scheme that has been running for the past three years. Officials say Operation Semaphore, monitoring flights from Pakistan and the Middle East, has been highly successful and has resulted in hundreds of arrests.

The scheme has seen one in every 2,200 passengers warranting further investigation, with a tenth of those "being of interest". British officials say rapists, drug smugglers and child traffickers have been arrested and want the EU scheme to cover all fugitives from crown court justice.

Thousands of foreigners who want to marry a British person and move to Britain will have to take an English language test, the Prime Minister announced yesterday.

Gordon Brown said that the test would help to prevent foreign brides being exploited. He made his surprise announcement only five hours after a Home Office Green Paper on overhauling citizenship rules said that consultations on English tests for foreigners were continuing.

The Prime Minister said in a speech in North London: We will introduce a new English language requirement for those applying for a marriage visa and planning to settle in the UK — both as part of our determination that everyone who comes here to live should be able to speak English and to make sure that they cannot be exploited.

The English language test will apply to tens of thousands of spouses. A total of 47,000 spouses and fiancées, including 17,000 from the Indian sub-continent, were admitted to the UK in 2006. Ministers have for some time been concerned that some of those arriving from the sub-continent have no knowledge of English, are vulnerable to exploitation and cannot get access to the job market. It was unclear last night whether failure to pass the English language test would lead to outright refusal to come to Britain or whether a temporary visa would be granted.

Brown’s announcement came after proposals to reform citizenship rules under which migrants who want a British passport or to settle permanently in the country will have to undergo a probationary period of up to three years.

Foreigners will be expected to leave the country if they fail to take citizenship or apply to settle permanently, as the Government seeks to end the situation where migrants “languish in limbo” having been allowed to stay.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, made clear that she expected the number of new citizens — more than 1.1 million since Labour came to power 1997 — to increase as a result of the overhaul of citizenship rules. She said: I would want to see a larger proportion of those that are here moving to full British citizenship. You will not be able to languish in limbo. Once your period of temporary residence comes to an end you will need to apply for the next stage or leave.

Gaining citizenship will take at least six years from arrival in the UK instead of the current five years, and could take as long as eight years.

The probation period will last a year if the foreigner takes part in community activities such as charity fundraising, running a sports group or other voluntary work. Migrants who undertake no community or voluntary work will have to wait the existing five years plus a minimum three years on probation.

Full access to non-contributory benefits will not be granted after a person has been in the UK for five years, but only after an applicant has completed the probationary period.

A fund financed by a surcharge on immigration applications will be set up to give cash to areas that experience problems because of immigration, such as oversubscribed schools. The fund is expected to raise tens of millions of pounds a year.

Migrants who have served a prison sentence will be barred from citizenship and minor offenders given a non-custodial sentence may have to serve three years on probation.

A draft Bill based on the proposals is due this summer, and full legislation is expected in November.

A London-based television executive is facing four years in jail after an amount of cannabis weighing less than a grain of sugar was found in his bag at Dubai airport.

Cat Le-Huy, a German national and head of technology at the television production company Endemol, has been held for three weeks without charge after flying to the United Arab Emirates on 26 January.

Friends and family have been told he can expect to face the minimum jail sentence for drug possession in the tiny Arab emirate. Mr Le-Huy had been on a two-day visit to look into investing in the region. Recently, the Radio 1 DJ Grooverider, whose real name is Raymond Bingham, was jailed in Dubai for four years for possession of 2.16g of cannabis with a street value of about £10.

The Foreign Office says nine British nationals have been detained in Dubai over drugs offences this year, including Keith Brown, from the West Midlands, who was also jailed this month for four years after a speck of cannabis was found stuck to the bottom of a shoe.

Le-Huy, of Belsize Park, north London, said he was first reprimanded for possession of jet-lag pills. When these were shown to be melatonin, which can be bought over the counter in Dubai and in the US, and in herbal stores in Britain, he was asked to provide a urine sample. He said when this also proved negative, his bag was searched. Airport officials found 0.03 grams of hashish, an amount not visible to the naked eye.

Customs authorities have successfully applied to hold Le-Huy in Dubai until at least the end of March. A 5,000-signature appeal has been sent to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates.

Update: Freed

6th September 2008

A Radio 1 DJ who was jailed for possessing cannabis in the United Arab Emirates has flown back to Britain after being released in an amnesty to mark the start of Ramadan.

Raymond Bingham, who hosted a music show under the moniker Grooverider and is often credited as a godfather of the drum and bass movement, was jailed for four years after being arrested at Dubai airport last November on his way to playing a club set. He was found to be in possession of 2.16g of cannabis, worth around £10, which he said he forgot was in his trouser pocket and had not intended to take into the country. Bingham served 10 months of his sentence before his release.

Freedom from religion in Britain is becoming as important as freedom of religion, according to a United Nations investigation.

A report by Asma Jahangir, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, says that the 2001 census findings that nearly 72% of the population is Christian can no longer be regarded as accurate.

The report claims that two thirds of British people do not admit to any religious affiliation.

The report calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England. It says that the role and privileges of the Church do not reflect the religious demography of the country and the rising proportion of other Christian denominations.

The report says that there is an overall respect for human rights and their value but it gives warning of discrimination against Muslims.

Citing research that 80% of Muslims in Britain feel that they have been discriminated against, the report singles out the Terrorism Act 2000 for particular criticism. Under the Act police in some areas can stop and search people without having to show reasonable suspicion.

The report’s author also criticises terms in the Terrorism Act 2006 for being overly broad and vaguely worded.

Remember the USA Protect Act made it a Federal Felony to have sex with under 18s overseas even if legal in that country; now, in predictable fashion, the US Senate proposed the expansion of that to include ANY "commercial sex". Next will be a prohibition on all sex outside wedlock. Scary times indeed.

House Bill 3887 sponsored by Tom Lantos of San Mateo, California, (who died on 11 February 2008).

§ 2423A. Sex tourism
TRAVEL WITH INTENT TO ENGAGE IN ILLICIT SEXUAL CONDUCT:

A person who travels in interstate commerce or travels into the United States, or a United States citizen or an alien admitted for permanent residence in the United States who travels in foreign commerce, for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with another person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

ENGAGING IN ILLICIT SEXUAL CONDUCT IN FOREIGN PLACES:

Any United States citizen or alien admitted for permanent residence who travels in foreign commerce, and engages in any illicit sexual conduct with another person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

However as far as I can see the clauses did not get into the final bill passed by the Senate

A Madrid group is bent on transforming the Spanish capital's red-light district, moving prostitutes and drug dealers out and trendy clothing shops and restaurants in.

The business association set up last year, called AcTriball, has bought or leased property in the central district that was used for brothels or had been abandoned. It rents the sites at affordable rates to modern outlets willing to set up shop in this historic but run-down area.

AcTriball charges only around 20 euros per square metre for rent, compared to the 200 euros per square metre demanded on the nearby Fuencarral, whose funky stores draw youths from across the capital.

The old red-light district, a broad stretch of narrow streets with buildings not more than five storeys tall, is now plastered with white signs with bright green lettering making the retail spaces for rent under the scheme.

Most of the stores now house either sex-shops, small food stalls or boutiques offering cheap long-distance telephone calls aimed at immigrants.

The scheme has the blessing of Madrid's conservative mayor, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, who has boosted police patrols and spent 500,000 euros to have video surveillance cameras installed in the area.

Enjoying a pint. So setting a bad example for the kids. They should be locked up. Just like everyone else in Britain.

Thousands of children face having a criminal record if they are caught holding a can of beer, under plans being considered by ministers.

The proposals would mean that any under-18s found by police with alcohol would receive a criminal conviction, which would have to be declared to future employers.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said earlier this month that ministers were looking at tightening confiscation rules which allow police officers to remove alcohol from teenagers.

However, yesterday Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, took the move further by saying that officials were examining whether to make possession of alcohol by someone under 18 a criminal offence. Coaker revealed that a review of how police deal with problem drinking would consider whether children caught with alcohol should get criminal records.

It's something we are not saying we are going to do, but it is something that has been raised with us, he said.

Under the Confiscation of Alcohol (Young Persons) Act 1997, police can confiscate cans of lager or bottles of wine if they reasonably believe that teenagers are drinking, or are about to drink, the alcohol.

The most likely sanction is a fine but officials are also deciding whether these fines should become part of a criminal record.

Campaigners warned against criminalising teenagers just for having one can of lager or bottle of wine on their way to a party.

Frank Soodeen, from Alcohol Concern, said: We are concerned about the unnecessary criminalisation of young people for drinking. The fact is that large numbers of kids are getting their alcohol from older friends and relations.

When David Scott fell in love with a beautiful Filipino woman, he embraced the opportunity to escape his humdrum existence as a machine operator in Swindon and begin a new life in an exotic land.

But within weeks of leaving his friends and family to join his girlfriend in her native country, his dream of happiness has vanished - to be replaced by a nightmare he could never have anticipated.

After fathering a child with Cynthia Delfino, whose separation from her estranged husband was not complete, the 35-year-old became an unwitting victim of the Philippines' harsh legal system.

He and 29-year-old Cynthia were charged with adultery and thrown into a rat-infested prison for four days.

They have now skipped bail and have gone into hiding as the country's police search for them. If they are caught, David faces seven years in jail and having his daughter taken away from him permanently.

David's ordeal began when Cynthia became pregnant with his child before she had officially separated. Adultery is illegal in the Philippines, where it can incur a seven-year jail sentence. Now, just weeks after the birth of baby Janina, Cynthia's estranged husband - who is considered the child's legal father in the Philippines - is determined to see the pair imprisoned if they do not pay him £7,000 compensation.

Now only cash, which David and Cynthia do not have, or diplomatic pressure, can save them from jail. However, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office say they cannot interfere with Philippine law.

Philippines lawyer and women's and children's rights activist Katrina Legarda warned: I have to tell you the worst first. David Scott is in great danger if he stays here. The fact that he has a baby proves the adultery. The baby is not legally his. A child born in a marriage is considered legitimate to the marriage only. Legally the baby belongs to her Filipino husband. Frankly put, he does not have a child. He should go home.

Legarda continued: I know this sounds unfair but this is the law and whenever we try to change it there is an outcry from the religious groups.

This should not really be happening. We tried over 20 years ago to introduce a divorce law, but those who supported it were condemned in the pulpits of Catholic churches all over the country as people who would go to Hell.

For years now, ISPs have been searching for alternative revenue streams to avoid just being "dumb pipes."

A few years ago, they picked up on the fact that they have a tremendous amount of data about what you do online. A bunch of ISPs then started selling your clickstream data to companies that could do something useful with it (though, those ISPs probably neglected to tell you they were doing this).

Late last year, we heard about a company that was trying to work with ISPs to make use of that data themselves to insert their own ads based on your surfing history -- and now we've got the first report of some big ISPs moving into this realm.

Over in the UK three big ISPs, BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media have announced plans to use your clickstream data to insert relevant ads as you surf through a new startup called Phorm.

While Phorm claims that it keeps your data private by tracking individual users with an assigned number only, that's hardly assuring. After all, remember that both AOL and Netflix have released similar anonymized data where identifying info was replaced with an assigned number... and it didn't take long for both sets of data to be de-anonymized.

While it's no surprise that ISPs would want to get into the advertising business it's going to freak some people out (and potentially cause some serious privacy problems).

All the more reason to figure out how encrypt your traffic and hide your activities from your ISP.

Beginning in 1999, the US government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.”

Fraud-busters such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars should not go to taxpayer-gouging Halliburton. But the real question is: What kind of “new programs” require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people?

What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?

Campaigners with widely diverging beliefs last night called on the government to re-examine the law on prostitution following the murder convictions of Steve Wright.

Both those calling for the liberalisation of prostitution laws and those advocating increased sanctions argued that the laws as they stand are inadequate, but they suggested very different solutions.

The present position in British law is complicated: though strictly speaking it is not illegal to buy or sell sex, soliciting and kerb-crawling are both against the law.

Niki Adams, a spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes, said the Ipswich verdicts emphasised the need for the government to follow the example of New Zealand, where the laws against prostitution were repealed in 2003: The impact that people have found there ... is that it's improved the health and safety of women in the industry, which we consider the absolute priority in policy-making in this area.

Mark Wakeling, director of the National Christian Alliance on Prostitution, said that there was no "human right" for men to buy sex, and advocated instead the adoption of a model derived from Sweden, where buying sex became a criminal offence in 1999: Prostitution brings out the worst in men. The sad thing is that there are attacks and violence, even murders, against these women ... regularly. It's only when five are murdered in one place that all of a sudden it starts to provoke debate.

The government has been conducting a review into the laws for the past four years. In January 2006, it published a consultation document that advocated steering a middle ground between the two opposing camps, arguing for a more liberal view of small brothels combined with increased restraints on kerb-crawling.

Last month the Home Office minister Vernon Coaker announced a fresh six-month review, visiting Sweden to examine its policy. The position of the government, which at one point appeared to favour a more liberal regime, is thought to be hardening in favour of the Swedish approach. We are clear that street-based prostitution and all forms of commercial sexual exploitation must be challenged, a Home Office spokesman said yesterday. They are not inevitable; they are not here to stay.

Record numbers of Britons are leaving - many of them doctors, teachers and engineers - in the biggest exodus for almost 50 years.

There are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates, say the researchers.

More than three quarters of these professionals have settled abroad for more than 10 years, according to the study by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

No other nation is losing so many qualified people, it points out. Britain has now lost more than one in 10 of its most skilled citizens, while overall only Mexico has had more people emigrate.

The figures, based on official records from more than 220 countries, will alarm Gordon Brown as tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money is spent on educating graduates. The cost of training a junior doctor, for example, is £250,000.

The most popular destinations are English-speaking countries such as Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand and holiday areas including France and Spain.

Almost 60% of those leaving take jobs, although hundreds of thousands of retired people live abroad.

The report is a statistical analysis which does not study the motivation for leaving Britain. However, high house prices and taxes and poor climate are frequently cited.

A spokesman for the Paris-based OECD said last night: British people have lots of opportunities to move and work abroad so very highly-skilled people are travelling around. It is seen by many British people as part of their personal development to have some experience abroad."

Britain's exodus is far higher than any of the OECD's other 29 members. Germany has lost only 860,000 highly-skilled workers, America 410,000 and France 370,000.

Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, said: Ten years of Labour has re-created the brain drain. High taxes and Government interference are driving people away.

Comment: I'll Tell You Why

22nd November 2008

See full article from the Telegraph by Dave H

The Britain of 1997 almost seems like a dream now. Can you remember what it was like to feel free? To be treated without suspicion and contempt, to not be spied upon relentlessly, to live life without an avalanche of bans, fines and little Hitlers bearing down on you? When the council provided services rather than circling the community like a pack of hyenas waiting for you to make the tiniest mistake?

Remember when our values were common sense, level headedness and fair play? How could we have allowed ourselves to be hijacked by this ghastly bunch of sociopaths, authoritarians and constitutional vandals with their malevolent desire to destroy liberty?

The last 10 years has seen a country butchered beyond recognition. And we barely raised a whimper. Shame on us all.

A group of Vancouver sex-trade workers has incorporated the country's first sex industry co-operative with the goal of setting up a legal brothel.

The official documents incorporating the West Coast Cooperative of Sex Industry Professionals arrived in the mail this week. So far, the co-op has 13 directors, including prostitutes, porn stars and exotic dancers.

Susan Davis said: We're just looking for an opportunity to demonstrate what we believe will be the impact on the health and safety of the entire community by bringing it indoors.

Ultimately, the co-op would be like a safe place for prostitutes to conduct business, as well as a place to offer education and skills training to sex-industry workers.

The group will be lobbying the federal government for an exemption to federal laws against prostitution in order to open the brothel, preferably near the Port of Vancouver. Co-op directors are in the process of drafting a proposal for the federal government that would exempt the co-op from the Criminal Code prohibition on prostitution.

Davis admits the group has an uphill battle convincing the federal Conservative government to approve a brothel but she is confident. Davis believes there is support for the project, even within the political community. Ideally, the brothel would be in place by the 2010 Olympic Games, she said.

See full article from Focus on the Family

The federal government has effectively dashed the hopes of some MPs that it will decriminalize prostitution and allow Vancouver “sex-trade workers” to open a brothel to coincide with the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

We are not in the business of legalizing brothels, and we have no intention of changing any of the laws relating to prostitution in this country, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson told the Commons status of women committee.

A majority on the committee had urged the government to amend the Criminal Code so that only those who exploit or buy sex from prostitutes would face prosecution. But Nicholson refused.

Police have been given the go-ahead to use potentially lethal Taser stun guns against children.

The relaxing of restrictions on the use of the weapons comes despite warnings that they could trigger a heart attack in youngsters.

Until now, Tasers, which emit a 50,000-volt electric shock, have been used only by specialist officers as a "non lethal" alternative to firearms. Tasers work by firing metal barbs into the skin which then discharge an electrical charge.

However, they can now be used against all potentially violent offenders even if they are unarmed. It is the decision not to ban their use against minors that is likely to raise serious concerns.

Home Office Police Minister Tony McNulty said medical assessments had confirmed the risk of death or serious injury from Tasers was "low". But he failed to mention Government advisers had also warned of a potential risk to children.

The Defence Scientific Advisory Council medical committee told the Home Office that not enough was known about the health risks of using the weapons against children. The committee, which is made up of independent scientists and doctors, said that limited research suggested there was a risk children could suffer "a serious cardiac event".

It recommended that officers should be "particularly vigilant" for any Taser-induced adverse response and said guidance should be amended to identify children and adults of small stature as being at potentially greater risk from the cardiac effects of Tasers.

The Government scientists were also asked to test whether the weapons could cause a miscarriage if used on a pregnant woman. While not saying whether police would be allowed to Taser an expectant mother, the Home Office said the DSAC committee had "specifically asked" for computer simulations to be carried out to analyse the effect on "a pregnant female".

Amnesty International claims Tasers have been responsible for 220 deaths in America since 2001. Many cities and police forces there have banned their use against minors. Two years ago in Chicago a 14-year-old boy went into cardiac arrest after being shot with one. Medics had to use a defibrillator four times to resuscitate him.

Amsterdam, previously famed for its red light prostitution district, on Wednesday gave escort services six weeks to apply for official city licenses.

The order is part of a campaign against the sex industry, which was legalized in the Netherlands in 2000.

To obtain a license, escort agencies must have a fixed address and telephone number, and must guarantee that prostitutes are healthy and work in safe conditions, the city said.

Escort agencies have six weeks to comply — or face being shut down.

Council spokesman Edwin Oppedijk said the city estimates that 120 escort agencies, which until now have escaped monitoring, will be affected by the licensing order. Around 1,200 prostitutes who operate solo won't be affected.

So far only a handful of the estimated 60 escort services have requested a license. It was unclear how the new ordinance would be enforced.

Entry Denied! It says here that you were caught taking a drag on a spliff behind the bike sheds

All 14-year-old children in England will have their personal details and exam results placed on an electronic database for life.

Colleges and prospective employers will be able to access students’ records online to check on their qualifications. Under the terms of the scheme all children will keep their individual number throughout their adult lives. The database will include details of exclusions and expulsions.

The introduction of the unique learner number (ULN)  will be seen as the latest step in the Government’s efforts to computerise personal records.

Last night teachers’ leaders, parents’ organisations, opposition MPs and human rights campaigners questioned whether this Big Brother approach was necessary and said that it could compromise the personal security of millions of teenagers.

The new database — which will store a “tamper-proof CV” — will be known as MIAP (managing Information Across Partners). To be registered on the new database every 14-year-old will be issued with a unique learner number. Unlike the current unique pupil number now given to children in school but destroyed when they leave, the ULN will be used by government agencies to track individuals until they retire. Ultimately, it will create a numbered database for every citizen aged 14-plus in the UK.

The MIAP is part of a push for more government departments to share information on ordinary citizens with each other.

Margaret Morrisey, of the National Association of Parent Teacher Associations, said that plans for MIAP, which will be compulsory for all 14-year-olds throughout the UK, would fill parents with horror: I suspect there will not be more than two parents in the land who would have faith in the Government that this information will be secure.

Original plans for MIAP drawn up by the Government in 2003 suggested that the database could be linked to identity cards, raising the prospect that once pupils were in the system they might be forced into accepting an ID card.

White candidates should be barred from standing for Parliament in up to eight constituencies in order to get more black and Asian MPs elected, says a controversial report commissioned by Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman.

Positive discrimination is illegal in the UK, but the report concludes that, without a change in the law allowing parties to impose all-black shortlists, it would take more than 75 years for Britain's ethnic make-up to be fairly reflected at Westminster.

Harman is understood to be still considering the report's findings in detail, but has expressed personal support for a change.

Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote and the author of the review, said talented candidates were not 'getting past go' at the moment.

His report is understood to conclude that all-black shortlists would be needed for two decades, after which talented candidates could be expected to make it on their own. It identifies 100 constituencies with large ethnic minority communities as prime targets for shortlists, but concludes that positive discrimination would be needed in only four to eight of those seats for four elections in a row to ensure that the proportion of ethnic minority MPs matches the proportion in the population.

Woolley's findings are likely to be controversial, with any proposal to change the law risking a rough ride in the Commons. Last week, former minister Keith Vaz introduced a backbench bill proposing all-black shortlists, which was instantly condemned by Tory backbencher Philip Davies as 'politically correct' and divisive.

However, Vaz is lobbying Harman for the measure to be included in a bill on equality issues later this year - meaning it could be on the statute book by 2009. She is the person who has a huge history of supporting these issues, he added.

Woolley's report was commissioned by Harman last autumn to examine the merits of positive discrimination. Only 2% of MPs are black or Asian, compared with more than 7% of the general population.

The father of a Canadian killed in Thailand last month wants stronger warnings issued about the Southeast Asian country in the wake of another violent attack this week.

Ottawa should "red flag" Thailand to try to prevent more Canadians from getting hurt or killed in the country, Ernie Del Pinto said.

His son, Leo, was shot in the head and chest in the northern town of Pai during an altercation with an off-duty Thai police officer in early January. Leo's friend, Carly Reisig of Victoria, was also wounded.

Earlier this week, Ontario physician Erik Griffioen was shot in the back while riding in an open-sided taxi with his wife in the tourist city of Chiang Mai.

And last week, 48-year-old Dale Henry was shot to death at close range in his house in Ranong as he slept in front of his television. His 27-year-old wife, her lover and an alleged hit man have been arrested in the killing.

Eight people have now been arrested and two charged in Hong Kong in what many netizens are calling the “white terror,” police response to the Edison Chen sex photo scandal, explained by Police Commissioner Tang King Shing last weekend when he said possession of the photos alone is now illegal.

On 4 February 2008, A 29-year-old man became the eighth person to be detained in connection with the internet posting of nude photos. The man arrested is being detained at Ma On Shan police station. On the same day, the 23-year-old man, Sze Ho-Chun, arrested in Central on 2 February 2008 was charged with the dishonest use of computers with criminal intent, which has a maximum penalty of five years of imprisonment. The man appeared in Eastern Court on 5 February 2008. He denied the charge and was released on HK$50,000 bail. The case has been adjourned to 22 February 2008.

Pornography is openly sold by many street newspaper vendors in Hong Kong and versions of the photographs have been seen on the covers of most Chinese-language dailies every day since the first batch of photos appeared online two weeks ago, despite that under the city’s Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance, distribution is prohibited.

Hundreds of netizens came out to protest [zh] the arrests today, calling for Tang’s resignation and accusing Hong Kong police of inconsistency in their arrests.

With the League of Social Democrats in the lead, a group of several hundred netizens marched this afternoon from Victoria Park to police headquarters, protesting police double standards in assigning large numbers to investigate the celebrity obscene photos as well as launching criticisms at Police Commissioner Tang King Sing, shouting in unison slogans calling for his resignation. Organizers say more than 500 people took part, but the police count was at 230.

UK Smokers could be forced to pay for a Government tobacco licence in order to carry on buying cigarettes under draconian proposals being considered by ministers.

Government advisers have drawn up plans for a smoking permit - similar to the one needed to watch TV - which all smokers would have to carry.

Health experts have welcomed the move, pointing out that Britons are more likely to die from smoking-related diseases than those in any other European country. But the idea has triggered a furious backlash from smokers' groups, who claim it is evidence of a "bully state".

Under the plans, anyone who refused to pay for a permit would be banned from buying cigarettes from any outlet.

Although a licence could cost as little as £10 a year, forms would be made deliberately complex to deter people from applying.

Smokers could also be forced to obtain a doctor's signature, declaring their health was not at "massive risk" from their habit.

The scheme is the brainchild of Julian Le Grand, a professor at the London School of Economics, who heads the ministerial advisory board, Health England. He claimed the idea would help many smokers break the habit if they had to make a decision whether to "opt in".

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, GP representative on the British Medical Association"s public health committee, said asking doctors to police the permits would be "unworkable". For each smoker to see their GP to renew a licence would mean 25million extra appointments a year, he claimed.

A case is heading for a jury trial at a crown court: the notorious mother of three Kate Badger of Wolverhampton is charged with throwing an apple core out the window of her car.

Rather, the malefactor is charged with nothing so minor, but with knowingly causing the deposit of controlled waste, namely an apple core, on land which did not have a waste management licence. If convicted, the evildoer could be fined a paltry £20,000 or be imprisoned for a scant six months.

The defiant Badger maintains her innocence. By the lady's account, she went shopping and left a friend in her car - a casual friend, she says, with whom she has since lost touch. She noticed a council worker nearby, who must have been the intrepid champion of the public good who took down her registration number and reported the vile crime to Wolverhampton council.

The 26-year-old subsequently received a lenient £60 fine by post. Our unrepentant reprobate refused to pay it. Displaying shameless disrespect for the hallowed rule of law, Badger has scoffed to reporters, I think it is a ridiculous charge because apples are biodegradable, and it's not as if we are talking about a huge bag of rubbish.

The case has already been running for 11 months and has consumed thousands of pounds in legal fees. Instead of telling everyone to grow up, go home and stop wasting the court's time and the taxpayers' money, magistrates agreed to send the matter to a higher court.

In an indictment which could have come straight from the wildest Beachcomber flight of fancy, she is accused of knowingly causing the deposit of controlled waste, namely an apple core, on land which did not have a waste management licence and of failing to provide information" as to who did throw said apple core, contrary to Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

This whole case is a complete fiasco.

But this isn't about litter, it's about the exercise of power. There's been a lot of talk about the surveillance state this week and the usual the innocent have nothing to fear platitudes. These are the same people sifting through your refuse for the "wrong kind" or rubbish and planting microchips in wheelie bins.

Now we've even got the use of cameras and numberplate recognition software to track down someone who may or may not have dropped a half-eaten apple.

This hasn't got anything to do with keeping the streets clean, otherwise they'd employ a few more road-sweepers and dustmen. They'd rather spend the money on inspectors, enforcers and elaborate spy technology.

As I've said time and again, it's about punishment, control and showing us who's boss.

They'll resort to any justification. Thus, Miss Badger isn't merely a suspected litter lout, she's an Enemy of the Earth, single-handedly slaughtering polar bears, and must be charged as if she were fly-tipping asbestos.

Update: Wolverhampton Council Rotten to the Core

20th April 2008, Based on article from the Daily Mail

A woman charged with illegally dumping an apple core has had her case thrown out of court.

Kate Badger refused to pay a £60 fine for littering, saying she was not responsible. She instead asked to stand trial before a jury at Crown Court - risking a maximum sentence of a £20,000 fine or six months in prison for a trumped up commercial offence.

But the case was dropped less than a week before it was due to go to trial, because the prosecution offered no evidence.

Last night Wolverhampton City Council faced angry criticism for wasting taxpayers' money.

A council spokesman said the charge was withdrawn after Miss Badger finally provided her legal team with the name of the friend. He said: This matter could have been easily resolved if Ms Badger had either paid the fixed penalty notice or told us who was responsible for dropping the litter. We make no apology for taking action against those who break the law.

Mark Wallace, of the Taxpayers Alliance, said: This is an appalling use of power and a complete waste of money.

Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight, she said.

The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus, two civil liberties groups in San Francisco, plan to file a lawsuit to force the government to disclose its policies on border searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic devices. They also want to know the boundaries for asking travelers about their political views, religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment. The question of whether border agents have a right to search electronic devices at all without suspicion of a crime is already under review in the federal courts.

The lawsuit was inspired by two dozen cases, 15 of which involved searches of cellphones, laptops, MP3 players and other electronics. Almost all involved travelers of Muslim, Middle Eastern or South Asian background, many of whom, including Mango and the tech engineer, said they are concerned they were singled out because of racial or religious profiling.

...Read full article

Venus has been delighting connoisseurs for almost 500 years - but she has been banned from London Underground, as they decided she is likely to offend rather than enchant the capital's weary commuters.

She was intended as the main poster for the Royal Academy's show on the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, noted for his sensuous nudes.

Millions of people travel on the London Underground each day and they have no choice but to view whatever adverts are posted there. We have to take account of the full range of travellers and endeavour not to cause offence in the advertising we display, a spokesman said. [You just have to know who they are alluding to!]

London Underground advertising is vetted by a firm called CBS Outdoor, and Venus seems to have fallen foul of the guideline that advertising should not depict men, women or children in a sexual manner, or display nude or semi-nude figures in an overtly sexual context.

A federal appeals court has overturned a statute outlawing sex toy sales in Texas, one of the last of the southern states to retain such a ban.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas law making it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices, punishable by as many as two years in jail, violated the right to privacy guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

Companies that own Dreamer's and Le Rouge Boutique, which sell the devices in its Austin stores, and the retail distributor Adam & Eve sued in federal court in Austin in 2004 over the constitutionality of the law. They appealed after a federal judge dismissed the suit and said the Constitution did not protect their right to publicly promote such devices.

In its decision, the appeals court cited Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 opinion that struck down bans on consensual sex between same-sex couples.

Just as in Lawrence, the state here wants to use its laws to enforce a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct, the appeals judges wrote. The case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct. This is an insufficient justification after Lawrence.

The Texas attorney general's office, which represented the Travis County district attorney in the case, has not decided whether to appeal, said agency spokesman Tom Kelley.

Phil Harvey, president of Adam & Eve Inc., said: I think it's wonderful, but it does seem to me that since Texas was one of three states in the country — along with Mississippi and Alabama — that continued to outlaw the sale of sex toys and vibrators, that it was probably past time.

Alabama is in the 11th Circuit. But now it's unlikely that the law in Mississippi, which also is in the 5th Circuit, will be prosecuted, some legal experts said. Louisiana, Kansas, Colorado and Georgia had laws barring obscene devices, but courts have since struck them down. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Georgia law banning the advertising of sex toys, which can be sold under some approved circumstances.

Update: Mississippi Shaken

25th February 2008

It is also speculated that the Mississippi sex toy ban is now also in jeopardy as it is on the same circuit of appeal courts as Texas

Posters of scantily clad youths that were seized by police at an Abercrombie & Fitch store in a Virginia mall this weekend may be inappropriate for young children, but they are not obscene, according to legal experts.

Virginia Beach police apparently have agreed. They have dropped charges against the clothing company that markets to chic teens.

The window displays went up in 363 stores across the country in mid-January, including the Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach.

One of the posters showed three shirtless young men, one with his upper buttocks revealed. The second one revealed a woman's breast — with all but the nipples.

Was the police response to the store an overreaction? Yes, according to legal experts. Though local laws can vary, courts require that the image show sexual activity or a "lewd display" of genitals, says Lawrence Walters, an Orlando lawyer and First Amendment specialist: There is not a chance any jury in America would find the photo obscene under these standards.

Virginia police had referred to City Code Section 22.31, which says it is a crime to display obscene materials in a business that is open to juveniles, said police spokesman Adam Bernstein.

The manager of the store could have faced a fine of up to $2,000 and a year in jail.

Walters said police may have misread the standards for obscenity, as is often the case. He also said they improperly seized the posters without a search warrant, which constitutes prior restraint, which is barred by the Constitution.

The decision to ban UK competitors at this year's Games in Beijing from commenting on "politically sensitive issues" triggered protests from human rights groups.

Former sports minister David Mellor said the gagging clause amounted to "sucking up to dictators".

In the face of such criticism, the British Olympic Association agreed to look again at the wording of the contract handed out to all prospective competitors.

It had previously demanded that athletes not make political comments or engage in "political propaganda" at Olympic venues.

Mellor called the contract a timely wake-up call for all of us who thought sucking up to dictators was something we had left behind in the Thirties.

Tory culture spokesman Jeremy Hunt accused the British Olympic Association of being "heavy-handed". He added: "I think that given America, Canada and Australia are explicitly saying that their athletes can say what they want when they go to Beijing, I think it is inappropriate to put this restriction on our athletes.

Amnesty International campaigns director Tim Hancock said: People in China can't speak out about human rights without fear of reprisals - people in Britain can.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said the move would be effectively "kowtowing" to China's authoritarian regime: We have to be very clear with the Chinese - they now play a significant role in the world economy and international affairs. That brings certain domestic responsibilities with it and I think for us to sort of gag ourselves is a real abdication of our moral responsibility.

British Olympic Association chief executive Simon Clegg said: I accept that the interpretation of one part of the draft BOA's Team-Members Agreement appears to have gone beyond the provision of the Olympic Charter. This is not our intention nor is it our desire to restrict athletes' freedom of speech and the final agreement will reflect this.

One in four Britons don't believe wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill existed, according to a recent survey. Churchill is compared to Florence Nightingale and Sir Walter Raleigh, seen by many survey respondents as a mythical person, the London Daily Mail reported.

The survey, conducted with 3,000 respondents to test their general knowledge, reported other historical figures such as Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, Cleopatra and the Duke of Wellington were made up for books and films, the Mail reported.

The survey, by UKTV Gold, also found that Sherlock Holmes was a real person.

Young Britons under 20 lack a basic historical education according to the survey results, historian Correlli Barnett told the Daily Mail.

[Perhaps more likely that the Britons asked in the survey haven't had a long history in the country. All the Brits who know about Churchill have emigrated]

British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China's appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest.

The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes' contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.

It is contained in a 32-page document that will be presented to all those who reach the qualifying standard and are chosen for the team.

From the moment they sign up, the competitors will be effectively gagged from commenting on China's politics, human rights abuses or illegal occupation of Tibet.

Prince Charles has already let it be known that he will not be going to China, even if he is invited by Games organisers. His views on the Communist dictatorship are well known, after this newspaper revealed how he described China's leaders as “appalling old waxworks” in a journal written after he attended the handover of Hong Kong. The Prince is also a long-time supporter of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader.

Yesterday the British Olympic Association (BOA) confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that any athlete who refuses to sign the agreements will not be allowed to travel to Beijing. Should a competitor agree to the clause but then speak their mind about China, they will be put on the next plane home.

The clause, in section 4 of the contract, simply states: [Athletes] are not to comment on any politically sensitive issues. It then refers competitors to Section 51 of the International Olympic Committee charter, which provides for no kind of demonstration, or political, religious or racial propaganda in the Olympic sites, venues or other areas.

The BOA took the decision even though other countries – including the United States, Canada, Finland, and Australia – have pledged that their athletes would be free to speak about any issue concerning China.

To date, only New Zealand and Belgium have banned their athletes from giving political opinions while competing at the Games.

Mean minded ministers want to block the phone numbers of prostitutes who advertise their services in newspapers and telephone booths in an attempt to stifle the illegal sex trade.

Police forces would identify suspected prostitutes to the telephone companies, which would be required to cut off their numbers.

The proposal has emerged in a six-month review of prostitution laws by ministers from three government departments. They are also considering making it illegal to pay for sex.

Vera Baird, the solicitor-general, spewed bollox that it was important to curb “the industry of prostitution” and the demand for call girls if the stream of trafficked women into Britain was to be stemmed.

Critics warned that blocking telephones could drive the trade underground, making it harder to police, and would force more women to walk the streets in the search for business. They also warned that it could criminalise legitimate escorts.

It is 10 times more dangerous to work on the streets than in a flat. It will drive it underground, said Cari Mitchell of the English Collective of Prostitutes.

Last month Baird, Vernon Coaker, a Home Office minister, and Barbara Follett, the women’s minister, visited Sweden where it is a criminal offence to pay for sex. All the main Swedish telephone companies have a voluntary agreement with the phone regulator to cut off the lines of brothels and prostitutes.

The ministers have already spoken to local and regional newspaper representatives about withdrawing advertisements for prostitutes — often promoted under the guise of massage services.

Baird also wants more local newspapers to publicly name and shame men convicted of kerb-crawling as a deterrent to others. She praised local papers in Middlesbrough for identifying men who have been convicted of using prostitutes.

Other MPs fear that the measures could backfire. Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat equalities spokeswoman, said: It is a very good thing that the government is looking at this, but there is a danger that it could drive prostitution underground. Any moves to try to eradicate the client side would have to be incredibly carefully handled. In an ideal world prostitution shouldn’t exist, but we don’t live in an ideal world.

The Philippines House of Representatives has approved a bill that seeks to prohibit both print and broadcast media from using the words "Muslim" and "Christian" as a means of describing a person suspected of committing a crime.

The bill’s main authors said the measure’s objective is to penalize media practitioners by imposing a fine of at least P50,000 whenever the words Muslim and Christian are used: It is hereby declared unlawful for any person to use in mass media, the words Muslim or Christian or any other words that would denote religious or ethnic affiliation to describe any person suspected of or convicted for having committed criminal or unlawful acts."

Hataman, a human rights advocate, said the bill would go a long way as this would reduce connotations of discrimination in the practice of religion.

The bill provides, however, that only editors of newspapers and broadcast stations will be penalized.

Four other measures were approved on third and final reading at the House, including House Bill 2420 amending the Family Code of the Philippines, HB 2811 penalizing those exploiting women and glorifying sexual violence in advertisements, HB 3305 banning obscene porn materials and live sex shows.

Young drivers are to be FORCED to get ID cards when they apply for their first licences.

The People has seen sensational leaked Home Office documents revealing the secret plan.

It says newdrivers and those applying for fresh passports will be “coerced” into getting the controversial identity cards.

PM Gordon Brown has always said the scheme will be voluntary unless Parliament decides otherwise.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis stormed: “This is an outrageous plan. The Government has seen their ID card proposals stagger from shambles to shambles: Now they plan to use coercion in a desperate attempt to bolster a failed policy.

Civil rights group Liberty said: This memo confirms that compulsion is the ultimate ambition of this scheme.And it can be achieved by stealth even without the need for further parliamentary debate.

The secret document from the Identity and Passport Service is headed: Options analysis - outcome.

It says: Various forms of coercion, such as designation of the application process for identity documents issued by UK ministers (eg passports) are an option to stimulate applications in a manageable way.

There are advantages to designation of documents associated with particular target groups, eg young people who may be applying for their first driving licence. The report says: universal compulsion should not be used unless absolutely necessary because of the ID controversy.

The proposal on prostitution being legalised during the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa was described as “immoral” by several political parties.

This after an ANC MP George Lekgetho suggested that this is one of the things that would make the tournament a success during a meeting of the Portfolio Committee on Arts and Culture in Parliament.

Speaking to The Citizen yesterday, leader of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) Reverend Kenneth Meshoe described the proposal as a joke and that it was upsetting to promote something of that nature. “There is no way we as the ACDP can support this.

The main opposition party DA’s MP Sydney Opperman echoed Meshoe’s sentiments saying the legalisation of prostitution would be totally unAfrican. We can’t use sex tax because of bankruptcy. We oppose the proposal because it is immoral and we are faced with major challenges such as HIV and Aids as well as teenage pregnancy. What kind of a message is this to jobless matriculants, Opperman said.

The Archnutter of Canterbury faced calls for his resignation today as bishops joined politicians in criticising his remarks supporting the adoption of sharia law in Britain.

Dr Rowan Williams was urged to quit by angry members of the General Synod, the Church's "parliament", who claimed he was undermining the Christian faith.

To add to his woes, Lord Carey, his predecessor at Canterbury, and the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, challenged his view that aspects of Islamic law could be incorporated into the English legal system.

The strength of the backlash represents one of the most serious blows to the Archbishop's authority since his appointment five years ago, and he faces more turbulence when the Synod convenes for a five-day meeting in London on Monday.

Last night friends of the Archbishop said he was "completely overwhelmed" by the hostility of the response and in a "state of shock" at the barrage of criticism he has received.

Lord Carey said that he was wrong to believe that sharia could be accommodated into the English system because there were so many conflicting versions of it, many of which discriminated against women.

Bishop Nazir-Ali, who holds dual British and Pakistani citizenship, said sharia would be "in tension" with fundamental aspects of our current legal system, such as the rights of women.

Offsite Comment: What he wishes on us is an abomination

See article from the Independent by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

What Rowan Williams wishes upon us is an abomination and I write here as a modern Muslim woman. He lectures the nation on the benefits of sharia law – made by bearded men, for men – and wants the alternative legal system to be accommodated within our democracy in the spirit of inclusion and cohesion.

Pray tell me sir, how do separate and impenetrable courts and schools and extreme female segregation promote commonalities and deep bonds between citizens of these small isles?

What he did on Thursday was to convince other Britons, white, black and brown, that Muslims want not equality but exceptionalism and their own domains. Enlightened British Muslims quail. Friends like this churchman do us more harm than our many enemies. He passes round what he believes to be the benign libation of tolerance. It is laced with arsenic.

He would not want his own girls and women, I am sure, to "choose" to be governed by these laws he breezily endorses. And he is naive to the point of folly if he imagines it is possible to pick and choose the bits that are relatively nice to the girls or ones that seem to dictate honourable financial transactions.

Look around the Islamic world where sharia rules and, in every single country, these ordinances reduce our human value to less than half that is accorded a male; homosexuals are imprisoned or killed, children have no free voice or autonomy, authoritarianism rules and infantilises populations.

Offsite Comment: Williams is dangerous. He must be resisted

See article from the Times by Matthew Parris

...Properly understood, the effect of devolving national law and national morality to local and group level is profoundly conservative. Dr Williams's ideas really represent the wilder fringes of a bigger idea: communitarianism...

There is absolutely nothing “left-wing” or woolly-liberal about empowering it. A Britain in which Muslim communities policed themselves would be more ruthlessly policed, and probably more law-abiding than today. But it would be a Britain in which the individual Muslim - maybe female, maybe ambitious, maybe gay, maybe a religious doubter - would lose their chances of rescue from his or her family or community by the State.

The State, not family, faith or community, is the guarantor of personal liberty and intellectual freedom, and it will always be to the State, not the Church, synagogue or mosque, that the oppressed individual needs look. Some two centuries ago Nonconformism in Britain, by offering the individual an unmediated approach to a personal God, started to liberate Christians from the Church. Dr Williams seems not to understand this. Or perhaps he does, and is on the other side.

Update: Unclear & Clumsily Deployed

12th February

See full article from the Independent

The Archbishop of Canterbury has sought to defuse the bitter row over what he appeared to claim was the unavoidable adoption of sharia law in the UK by conceding that his controversial comments may have been unclear and "clumsily deployed".

He insisted that the Church of England had a "considerable" responsibility to other faith groups and asserted that it was not "inappropriate" to raise issues surrounding Islam or other religions – comments that were immediately welcomed by Muslim leaders.

The Indian Supreme Court will hear on February 15 an application seeking directions to the Union of India for blocking access to a website promoting pre-natal gender identification kits from abroad.

The Voluntary Health Association of Punjab is petitioning to seek strict implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition on Sex Selection) Act, 1994.

The application said that a website promoting sale of gender identification kits was reported in the media.

The website, according to the applicant, says the test seeks to identify the presence of male or female foetal genetic materials in the mother’s blood. The website provided the methods by which the test was conducted, the process of ordering the test kit, safeguards to be taken, etc.

Since the website was accessible anywhere in the country, a blanket blocking of this website was essential to prevent the misuse of technology and violation of the law, the application said and sought a direction in this regard.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has sparked a political storm by calling for aspects of Sharia law to be adopted in Britain.

Williams said it seems inevitable" that elements of Islamic law, such as divorce proceedings, would be incorporated into British law.

Williams said the UK had to face up to the fact that some citizens do not relate to the British legal system, and argued that officially sanctioning Sharia law would improve community relations.

Nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that has sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states, he told the BBC's World at One programme: But there are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them.

But his intervention put him at odds with Gordon Brown, who has repeatedly encouraged ethnic communities to integrate.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said that while certain allowances had been made for Muslims, British law would be based on British values and Sharia law was no justification for acting against national law.

Williams said people needed to look at Islamic law with a clear eye and not imagine, either, that we know exactly what we mean by Sharia and just associate it with... Saudi Arabia, or whatever....I do not think we should instantly spring to the conclusion that the whole of that world of jurisprudence and practice is somehow monstrously incompatible with human rights just because it doesn't immediately fit with how we understand it.

Sharia law was originally more enlightened in its attitude to women than other legal systems, Williams pointed out, but did now have to be brought up to date.

Williams's comments were welcomed by Mohammed Shafiq, the director of the Ramadhan Foundation, who said: Sharia law for civil matters is something which has been introduced in some western countries with much success.

A debate on prostitution has been called in the Welsh assembly by Cynon Valley AM Christine Chapman.

She explains why she supports calls for a law change to make it illegal to pay for sex and help prevent the "oldest exploitation in the world".

Statements like this seek only to stifle the debate and provide excuses. My fundamental argument is one of principle. Do we think that it is right in an age when we have made some progress with equality for women that women continue to be degraded and exploited though prostitution?

I do think that public opinion towards prostitution is changing and we should therefore grasp the opportunity to have a debate.

Most women I have talked to find it abhorrent; it is discordant with how they view themselves in the world.

I fully acknowledge that there is an argument that it would be better to legalise brothels in order to make it safer for women, but I'm not sure that that is the answer.

Prostitution is not a devolved matter: nevertheless, the Welsh Assembly Government has a responsibility to ensure that there are adequate support services. I would ask that the Welsh Assembly Government works with their Westminster colleagues such as Harriet Harman and Vernon Coaker as they seek to change the law.

The minimum age for legal prostitution may go up from 18 to 21. Netherlands Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin will have the desirability of this measure investigated.

In The Hague, sex bosses themselves have raised the prostitution age to 21 to prevent young girls running into problems. Party for Freedom (PVV) MP Fleur Agema praised that initiative and asked the minister last November to raise the legal age.

PVV's plan was earlier rejected by the Lower House. But prostitution 'capital' Amsterdam has meanwhile supported raising the minimum age. The nature of the profession demands a certain degree of maturity and a higher age goes with this, the city council executive believes.

Christian democratic (CDA) Minister Hirsch Ballin announced he would consider the measure as part of a "package of measures" whereby the cabinet wants to tackle prostitution more stringently.

Youth and Family Minister Andre Rouvoet is also positive on the PVV proposal. Prostitution has been a legal profession in the Netherlands since 2000.

North Carolina judge, Kevin Eddinger, held lawyer Todd Paris in contempt after he saw him reading Maxim magazine with “a female topless model” on the cover, according to the court order.

When Eddinger gave Paris a chance to respond he apologized and stated in his view the magazine was not pornography, was available at local stores and that he did not intend contempt, the order said. Eddinger fined Paris $300, gave him a 15 day suspended jail sentence that remains in effect for a year and placed him on unsupervised probation, according to the order.

Eddinger wrote in the order that The contemnor’s (Paris) conduct interrupted the proceedings of the court and impaired the respect due its authority. In addition, the contemnor’s actions were grossly inappropriate, patently offensive, and violative of Rule 12 of the General Rules of Practice. Courtroom staff, law enforcement, members of the Bar and the general public shall be able to conduct courtroom business in an atmosphere free of the display of offensive material as demonstrated by the contemnor, thus necessitating this action.

Sometimes, though, the bobby on the beat acts in a way that only feeds the growing belief that the police are the enemy.

At Christmas 2006, Frank Gibson was driving back from midnight mass to his home in Gravesend in Kent. He claimed he took his car, within the speed limit, into the middle of the road to avoid parked cars, as one does. A police car behind started to flash its lights. Since Mr Gibson believed he was doing nothing wrong, he assumed the officers were not trying to stop him. However, they were.

He stopped as soon as he safely could and turned off his engine. He has since told friends that he tried to wind down his window but, it being electric and his engine being off, it would not open.

The prosecution claimed he refused to get out of the car and was "persistently confrontational and argumentative". The officer opened his door, removed his car keys and hauled him out. The hauling out is important. For, you see, Mr Gibson was 81 and, having just had an operation on his ankle, he walked with a stick.

If you remain to be convinced of how small a threat Mr Gibson is to society, and indeed to the burly officer about a third of his age who hoiked him out of his car, let me also state the following for the record.

As well as being in his eighties and frail, Mr Gibson is the governor of two schools, a trustee of two charities, has a fine war record, worked as a district officer and magistrate in Africa, has been a borough and county councillor for many years and Mayor of Gravesham, and received the OBE for service to his community. As his barrister told a court, he is a man of "previous exceptional character".

None of this would have been known to Pc Steven Cole and Pc Thomas McGregor of the Kent Constabulary when he was dragged out of his car.

Mr Gibson, who was convinced he had been doing nothing wrong, who was bemused at being treated in this fashion and no doubt rather alarmed, is then alleged to have assaulted these two brave officers.

This arthritic old man allegedly twisted Pc Cole's thumb so hard that it made him "yelp". Possibly even worse, Pc McGregor was shoved in the chest.

Who can blame them, subjected as they were to such a vicious attack, for bundling Mr Gibson into their car, handcuffing him and locking him in a cell for five hours? The public - and police officers - manifestly have to be protected from savages such as Mr Gibson.

Mr Gibson claimed he was driving slowly in the middle of the road because it was the middle of the night, and he was trying to avoid hitting any of the parked cars. He passed a breathalyser. He could have been bound over to keep the peace, but refused, for it would have meant admitting guilt.

So the case went to court to, I hear, the embarrassment of the Kent police and the chagrin of the county's police authority. Still protesting his innocence and after two hearings spread out over many months, Mr Gibson was fined £910 and given a six-month conditional discharge last week.

The bench said he had "allowed his temper to get the better of him". Kent crown prosecution service said that the officers' behaviour was ''not unreasonable, but proportionate".

I would submit that no story about the apparent insensitivity of the police should cause us to hate them as a class, not even this one, though my God it comes close.

I know there will be many decent officers as outraged, shocked and appalled as I am by Pc Cole's and Pc McGregor's treatment of Mr Gibson. Is this how they train them in Kent? Do they bother to tell them that elderly people are often slow, easily confused, easily frightened, above all vulnerable?

I don't care what wonderful careers Pcs Cole and McGregor might have had. By this one act of heavy-handedness, they have raised disturbing questions about how officers are trained to exercise discretion. This case has made it that little bit easier for the respectable classes to withdraw their support from the police in general.

The Indonesian tourist island of Bali is stepping up moves to against prostitution.

The deputy-governor of the province, Alit Kesuma Kelakan, claims to have been ostracised since he raised the problem of AIDs and prostitution in Bali.

Kelakan said he had initially considered the idea of legalising prostitution on Bali - one of the most popular destinations for tourists from all over the world.

But the local community's opposition to legalising prostitution forced him to reconsider his plan and to focus on monitoring the main red light districts instead.

We have opened clinics and are offering medical checks and help for those who have contracted AIDS/HIV, he said: We have also begun to distribute condoms and are trying to teach prostitutes about the risks of sexually transmitted diseases.

We are encouraging prostitutes to change jobs and to find religion, he added.

Unlike other parts of Indonesia, where brothels are legal, prostitution is illegal on the island. Despite this, there are well known red light districts on the island, most of which are in the main tourist spots.

A study carried out in Bali last year by the Kerti Praja Foundation found that there are at least 8,800 prostitutes with some 85,000 customers.

A Colorado Representative, Amy Stephens, is sponsoring a state bill to tax adult movies ordered in hotel rooms as a means of funding child sex-abuse programs.

House Bill 1086 currently calls for a 99-cent fee on all in-room pay-per-view movies, but Stephens seeks to narrow the targeted material down to adult movies only.

Stephens said that taxing adult movies for this cause only stands to reason, as most of our sexual predators in prison are addicted to pornography.

Cathryn Hazouri, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, countered Stephens' argument, saying that her proposal would violate the First Amendment.

During the waning days of the Clinton administration, the Central Intelligence Agency published a groundbreaking study that said at least 700,000 men, women and children around the world are trafficked into slavery each year. New estimates since then have gradually increased the count. But if the Bush administration is to be believed, the actual number is closer to 7 million.

Slave trafficking victims are usually promised a good job in a distant country. But once they arrive, they are held against their will and suborned into sweatshop or agriculture labor, domestic servitude or forced prostitution. It is that last category, sex slaves, that the Bush administration has distorted to the point of absurdity.

Put simply, the administration has concocted the view that every prostitute, worldwide, is actually a slave; the very nature of the work amounts to slavery. That nonsensical position is a favorite of the Christian right, and a few years ago the administration enshrined it in law and began cutting off funding to aid groups that refused to make opposition to prostitution an official part of their charters.

Ambassador John Miller headed the federal Trafficking in Persons office when the prostitution policy was first enforced in 2003. Before he left office last year, I once asked him if he believed every prostitute is, de facto, a slave.

No, he said, drawing out the word. If you take the Melissa Farley study, in eight or nine countries including the U.S., 89% of prostitutes say they want to leave the job. So I guess you can say 11% are not slaves. Even then, he added, 50% of those are under 18. The law says they are slaves. So that means the vast majority of them are slaves.

...Read full article

All Memphis Sex Workers Must be Licensed. An ordinance that took effect January 1st requires workers at adult-oriented businesses and the owners of those businesses to be licensed annually before they’re allowed to work in Shelby County.

Bartenders, waitresses, dancers, bouncers, store clerks, movie-theater employees, and others at the county’s more than two dozen adult establishments must undergo criminal background checks and complete county license applications or change careers.

Background checks will be conducted by sheriff’s deputies and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. A history of prostitution, rape (including statutory rape), sexual battery, public indecency, pandering, sale or distribution of obscene materials, or other illegal activities can keep a worker or business owner from being licensed by the five-member Shelby County Adult Oriented Establishment Board.

Dutch Media Minister Ronald Plasterk sees no possibilities nor desire for banning public broadcasters BNN and VPRO from showing the explicit porn film Deep Throat.

Christian government party ChristenUnie appears to be accepting this decision.

On 23 February, shortly after midnight, BNN and VPRO plan to show the explicit film. ChristenUnie considers this disgusting.

Opposition party SGP, a more conservative Christian party than ChristenUnie, asked Plasterk to prohibit the broadcast - it has been the only Lower House party to ask for a ban.

According to Plasterk the public broadcasters have 100% editorial freedom. There can be no question of a ban, and no investigation of this will be mounted either. The government also has no views on any programme, moral or otherwise, said the Labour (PvdA) minister via his spokesman.

Radio programme Standpunt.nl yesterday presented a poll with the statement: The public broadcasters must drop the showing of Deep Throat. A minority of 42% of listeners agreed.

Nutter politicians in Netherlands are up in arms over an upcoming public television broadcast of the 1972 porn classic Deep Throat.

It is a historical symbol of unashamed sexual exploitation and of perverse greed, Christian Union party leader Arie Slob told Radio Netherlands. The film brought 600 million dollars into the box office, but it also ruined a human being. The so-called star, [Linda Lovelace], later declared that she was pressured into her acting.

Public broadcasting corporations BNN and VPRO plan to air the Gerard Damiano feature Feb. 23 on Dutch TV channel Nederland 3 as part of a late-night block of programming about the history of adult films. The movie will be shown along with a documentary about the movie and a discussion panel with director Pieter Kuijpers, porn actress Kim Holland and German academic Ingo Schiweck, a historian specializing in adult movies.

Robert Interlandi, marketing director for Deep Throat rights holder Arrow Productions said: I know that everyone was very surprised when HBO aired the NC-17 version of Inside Deep Throat, the documentary about Deep Throat…but screening the full movie on television…wow!

Online discussion groups have suggested that the Christian Union’s efforts might be better focused on the excessive amount of violence shown on television.

BNN television director Maarten van Dijk told Radio Netherlands that he thinks young people should be able to see the Linda Lovelace classic, particularly if the film is properly introduced by a special edition of our lifestyle program, plus a documentary on Deep Throat.

Irish airline Ryanair announced its decision to defy the orders of the UK advertising watchdog, and continue to run a controversial ad that was told to be taken out of circulation.

The airline called the order "absurd." The ad, showing a woman dressed in a provocative schoolgirl outfit, was deemed as "irresponsible" by the Advertising Standards Authority. Underneath the photo was the tagline about the airline's hottest back to school fares.

The ad appeared in the Herald, Daily Mail, and the Scottish Daily Mail, obtaining a 3.5-million circulation, according to The Press Association.

A total of 13 complains from readers cried out that the ad linked teenage girls to illicit and sexual behaviours. The ASA recently catered to the outcry, ordering the three newspapers to take down the ad and never run it again.

We considered that her appearance and pose, in conjunction with the heading 'hottest' appeared to link teenage girls with sexually provocative behavior and was irresponsible and likely to cause serious or widespread offence, the ASA was quoted as saying.

The airline responded by saying that 13 complaints out of a more than 3 million readership was an "insignificant" proportion.

It is remarkable that a fully clothed model is now claimed to cause 'serious or widespread offence', said Ryanair head of communications Peter Sherrard, when many of the UK's leading daily newspapers regularly run pictures of topless or partially dressed females without causing any serious or widespread offence. Sherrard continued by calling the ASA demanding orders for censorship's sake, and not advertising regulations.

Update: What Can They Do?

12th February 2008

See full article from Brand Republic

The ASAs decision not to invoke its ultimate sanction and refer Ryanair to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), despite repeated breaches of ASA regulations, has raised questions about whether self-regulation in advertising is really working.

The ASA claims that advertisers who persistently breach its non-broadcast advertising codes are referred to the OFT, but only after a 'longlist' of other sanctions have been considered.

A spokesman for the ASA said a referral would be made only under the Control of Misleading Advertisements Regulations, while offensive ads are governed by rules on breaches of taste and decency: Only when other sanctions have been exhausted, such as refusing an advertiser media space, invoking compulsory pre-vetting, or taking away trading privileges, do we consider a referral. In most cases, sanctions are effective in bringing advertisers into line.'

Ryanair's latest breach was of the taste and decency rules, and the sanction the ASA imposed was to issue an alert to newspapers instructing them not to run the ad.

An amateur photographer has told how police seized his film as he was out taking snaps in a Hull shopping centre.

Steve Carroll, of Kent, was visiting relatives in Hull in December when he decided to do some "street photography" in the city's Prospect Centre.

Shoppers reported him to the police, who took his film because he seemed to be operating in "a covert manner".

Carroll lodged a complaint against Humberside Police but an investigation concluded its officers acted correctly. Officers have common law powers of seizure, a force spokeswoman said.

Having developed Mr Carroll's pictures, the force conceded that none of the material was out of the ordinary.

Carroll, from Sittingbourne, said all the pictures were taken quite openly and were of people engaged in everyday activities. He stressed that none of the images was of children.

A Humberside Police spokeswoman said: Camera film was seized by Humberside Police following complaints from members of the public about photos being taken in the area of the Prospect Centre. Any person who appears to be taking photos in a covert manner should expect to be stopped and spoken to by police to enquire into what their business is. Humberside Police would expect other officers within the force to act in the same manner if given a similar situation.

New legislation should criminalise those who buy sex and not the victims of sexual exploitation, the Irish Government has been told.

Feminist nutters of Ruhama called on the Government to learn from laws passed in Sweden nine years ago. The organisation said politicians needed to examine Swedish rulings before passing the Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Bill, which is due before the Oireachtas.

Geraldine Rowley, of Ruhama, said campaigners still had concerns about the emerging legislation: We believe that Ireland needs to send out a clear message that the purchasing of women for sexual services is a crime. After drugs and arms, human trafficking is the third largest area of criminal activity in the world. Ireland needs to take a stand against organised crime and having the correct legislation in place is crucial to achieving this. [But nobody seems to be able to find the evidence that sex trafficking is as extensive as stated]

Update: Further Reading

Thanks to Donald

This article about Ireland is more detailed than the one you have linked to, once again a Swedish feminist spreading lies

See Govt urged to criminalise paying for sex

This is a good example here she says - Ms Bucknell, who has worked with victims of prostitution and trafficking, said the move to criminalise the buyer has also resulted in a significant drop in organised crime in her home country.

While in reality it is booming like never before: A new report has concluded that organized crime is putting the brakes on growth in the Stockholm region. And one of the most lucrative divisions focuses on human trafficking

Those keen on popping over to the Continent for a spot of shopping may remember the 2005 (pre-election) budget, and the resulting gushing newspaper headlines when Gordon Brown declared: I have today written to the European Commission proposing that a tax free limit on goods brought into the UK should rise from £145 to £1,000.

The proposal was so good – and popular – that Mr Brown kindly repeated the proposal in his 2006 budget, and many Britons are already thought to have begun filling their boots. However, alarm bells may have rung when no mention was made of the scheme in the 2007 budget.

Today, we learnt why. There will actually be no increase to £1,000 but actually a more modest rise to 430 euros (about £320) agreed by EU finance ministers. And, the increased limit will only apply from this December – almost four years after Brown’s fanfare announcement.

In the House of Lords, Labour are trying to defend the climb-down by claiming that budgets merely set out "aspirations". Nonsense, say former Tory Chancellors. Lord Lawson of Blaby said: Statements made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a budget statement are not just any old aspiration. They have a much more important standing constitutionally and always have done.

Many are now calling for hapless travellers pulled up at customs who may have been misled by the "aspirations" of the 2005 and 2006 budget to be shown leniency.

There have been many changes in our censorship laws over the years that are to be welcomed. Allowing directors’ greater freedom, whether with sexual imagery and language, has hardly been shown to have damaged society, despite some of the fierce battles fought at the time and which rumble on today. Out of this liberalism has emerged a more creative environment and a more realistic depiction of modern life. What is challenging the boundaries now is the scale and reach of pornography on the internet. Just by the sheer ease with which it can be accessed, it is beginning to enter the cultural mainstream and impinge on the lives of children. This is clearly a development that should be abhorred and stopped as far as possible, but in the end it may simply come down to parents being evermore vigilant.

Whether this has influenced the attitudes of censors remains unclear. Asked about the film SS Experiment Camp, which is on sale in the high street alongside U classified movies, the BBFC said there is nothing in this film that anybody should have any concerns about. The film depicts women being raped, electrocuted, hung upside down, having their ovaries cut out and burnt alive in incineration chambers by guards dressed in Nazi uniforms. That does sound “concerning”.

While censorship should have to make its case, there must be a sensitivity towards survivors of the death camps and their relatives. Depicting the Holocaust as a Jewish invention rightly causes vilification. Why should depicting concentration camps as movie backdrops for sexual violence suddenly be acceptable? This film was banned 20 years ago and there seems no strong argument to have it lifted. Gordon Brown will meet a delegation of MPs to discuss toughening the laws on video nasties amid worries about the influence they have on young people. These arguments may be inconclusive but Mr Brown would be wise to restrict the market in violent pornography.

Comment: We've Heard it All Before...25 Years Ago

Thanks to Julian

Time is running backwards. This is all part of Nutter Brazier's campaign, and we can expect more of this nonsense in the press in the run-up to his Bill.

And, of course, it was the Sunday Times which sparked off the video nasty furore in the first place with articles about ... SS Experiment Camp.

Pretoria's metro police have arrested 40 people in a crackdown on brothels, sex workers and their clients. They seized heroin, crack cocaine and a variety of drug paraphernalia.

They are using the recently promulgated Sexual Offences Act, which allows the police to charge clients of sex workers.

In the past, clients of sex workers were released without charge as there was no offence to charge them with, said the unit's head, Superintendent Mark Newham. Their latest raid was on a brothel in Monument Park, in which an alleged pimp, three sex workers and two clients were arrested. The men were released on bail of R1 000 each, bringing to six the number of clients being charged after raids on brothels by the unit.

Meanwhile in Joburg, metro police spokesperson Wayne Minnaar said there were no plans to raid brothels. It is just not on our list of priorities at the moment, he says.

Nicole Fick, a researcher for the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (Sweat), saids the organisation had objected strongly to the amended Sexual Offences Act because there was very little public participation about it.

A woman who ripped off her ex-boyfriend's testicle with her bare hands has been sent to prison. Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out. A friend handed it back to Jones saying: That's yours.

Monti admitted wounding and was jailed for two-and-a-half years.

Sentencing Monti, Judge Charles James said it was "a very serious injury" and that Monti was not acting in self-defence.

The court heard that Jones had ended his long-term but "open relationship" with Monti towards the end of May last year. The pair remained on good terms and on 30 May she picked him up from a party in Crosby and went back for drinks with friends at Jones's house.

An argument ensued and Jones said there was a struggle between them. In his statement, Jones said she grabbed his genitals and "pulled hard". He added: That caused my underpants to come off and I found I was completely naked and in excruciating pain.

The court heard that a friend saw Monti put Mr Jones's testicle into her mouth and try to swallow it. She choked and spat it back into her hand before the friend grabbed it and gave it back to Jones. Doctors were unable to re-attach the organ.

Amsterdam has unveiled its "Red Light Fashion" project, having converted 16 buildings that used to house prostitutes in the city's ancient red light district into studios for young fashion designers.

But many neighbors are displeased with the high-class newcomers in an area that thrives on its seedy reputation, and even the designers say they are taking a risk.

Amsterdam politicians are convinced that radical change is needed in the red light district, and are spending lavishly to bring it about.

The city paid $40 million to buy the 16 buildings from a businessman last year. Altogether they housed about a third of the windows where prostitutes beckon to customers and take them into a small adjoining room for sex. The designers are living rent-free in the studios for the first year.

Jan Broers, who owns Royal Taste hotel and pub directly across the street, and operates several of the remaining prostitution windows, said it was unfair to force some businesses to undergo heavy financial vetting while others are given space rent-free.

The issue is still keenly debated in Sweden and public support is not as high as UK prohibitionist politicians would like us to believe.

In yesterday’s (January 24th) Debatt (Debate) Swedish celebrity interviewer Stina Lundberg Dabrowski lead a debate about prostitution on SVT (Swedish equivalent to BBC) with guests including; former prostitute Isabella Lund, researcher Petra Östergren as well as various social workers, politicians and others who are for/against “Sexköpslagen” (the law against purchase of sexual services) viewers could give their opinion and vote on SVT's site on the internet.

This weeks question:
Should Sexköpslagen be scrapped?
62% Voted YES (before the debate the figure was 60%)
38% Voted NO

From the BBC see full article

Since Sweden criminalised paying for sex in 1999, the number of prostitutes has dropped from 2,500 to 1,500 in 2002, according to government estimates. But the figures are disputed.

Social anthropologist Petra Ostergren has studied Swedish prostitutes over a 10-year period: No-one knows if there are fewer prostitutes. According to her studies, prostitutes feel more vulnerable because they now have to operate secretly.

Other figures suggest that the number of women trafficked to Sweden has more than doubled, according to Kajsa Wahlberg, a detective inspector and Sweden's national rapporteur on trafficking.

While the sex law has intensified and widened the debate about prostitution, it is not clear whether it has helped women who sell sex.

Former prostitute Isabella Lund, 45, has gone public to speak on behalf of her former colleagues. She argues that the Sexkopslagen might have led to fewer women working on the streets, but more women now have to work underground to avoid their customers being caught in the crime.

On her website, Ms Lund writes: Sex workers in Sweden advocate decriminalisation and better working conditions, because underground profiteers, pimps and traffickers flourish and we would rather avoid them.

She argues that the strict sex law has made trafficked women even more vulnerable, as the trade has been driven underground. Paradoxically, these are precisely the women the UK government wants to help, as it examines Sweden's experience.

Amsterdam's Casa Rosso theatre, one of the most famous landmarks of the "red light" district, has become the latest sex club to be threatened with closure as part of a drive to stamp out criminal activity.

Amsterdam's city council intends to withdraw Casa Rosso's licence just weeks after it forced the Yab Yum brothel, another famous sex industry stalwart, to close.

In December, the council announced plans to repress Amsterdam's historic red light district which draws thousands of tourists. It has withdrawn permits from dozens of sex businesses it accuses of links with organised crime.

Update: Bananas

16th February 2008

The iconic Banana Bar has also become a casualty of the supposed concerns of criminal activity

State Delegate Lionell Spruill has proposed a bill to the Virginia State Assembly that would outlaw replications of genitalia being displayed on motor vehicles. If the bill were signed into law, any violation would be subjected to a fine of $250.

The idea for the bill came to Spruill after his young daughter saw rubber testicles hanging from the trailer hitch of a pick-up truck and asked he father to explain.

I didn't know what to tell her,' Spruill said.

The rubber testicles are marketed on BullsBalls.com.

Update: Died

4th May 2008

A bill in Virginia, aimed at rubber trailer hitch replicas of human genitalia, died in committee this year.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker.

McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity.

Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search. Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation, he said: We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'

The infrastructure to tap into Americans' email and web search history may already be in place. In November, a former technician at AT&T alleged that the telecom forwarded virtually all of its Internet traffic into a secret room" to facilitate government spying.

Whistleblower Mark Klein said that a copy of all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.

According to Klein, that information included Internet activity about Americans: We're talking about domestic traffic as well as international traffic. Previous Bush administration claims that only international communications were being intercepted aren't accurate, he added.

In January 1999 the Swedes made it illegal to pay for sex (but not to sell it). The punishment for the crime of obtaining casual sex for compensation could be as high as six months in Scando-clink, though a fine would be more usual. The sex can be any kind of sexual act involving contact and encompasses homosexual as well as heterosexual encounters. To prosecute the (usually) male clients successfully, the Swedish police must produce evidence of a prior agreement for compensation - which need not be financial. The word “casual” here leaves open the intriguing possibility that men or women who pay their spouses for sex are deliberately exempted.

A number of Labour MPs have been so seduced by the imagined Swedish experience that they have co-sponsored an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill that would allow councils and police chiefs to set up zones in which persons buying sex could be prosecuted. And Labour's deputy leader and Minister for Women, Harriet Harman, has launched a consultation suggesting that an adoption of the Swedish system could “tackle the demand” that lies behind the sex trade. Their belief seems to be that there is something inherently bad and socially unacceptable about the purchase of sex, quite beyond the issues of trafficking and safety.

I don't buy it. We should have, and do have, laws already to stop trafficking, punish sexual abuse and to stop the sale of illegal drugs. Despite the rhetoric, it is of no use whatsoever to a woman who has been sexually abused in childhood to tell her that years later she may not offer hand-jobs for a living. And it is a fair guess that any Swedification of the law in Britain will drive the street prostitutes and low-income clients from their familiar haunts to God knows where, while leaving

Search my conscience as hard as I can, I cannot think of anything in principle wrong with a man or a woman choosing to pay for sexual contact, or to charge for it. As long as there is no coercion and no harm to others, I cannot see why I would be entitled to replace their judgment with mine. Experience - and the internet - suggests to me that there is enormous variation in human sexual appetites and interests, and that, yes, there are women who much prefer sex work to cleaning, and men who keep themselves afloat on the fantasies that they buy. I may not know why, any more than I understand why this gal is married to that loser, or why some women think running 13 sweaty miles in lace is attractive.

Oh, and Harriet. What do you think happens to that “tackled demand” once you've tackled it?

Read the full article

Organisers of National Fetish Day had revealed that MP Ronnie Campbell had promised to wear purple to support a day of awareness.

Ronnie Campbell Is he? Isn't he?

But the MP for Blyth Valley, Northumberland, withdrew his backing after the Sunday Sun explained the kinky connotations of the word “fetish” which he was supposedly not aware of.

Campbell revealed he thought “fetish” was just another word for “worry” instead of a description of people who get their kicks in unusual ways.

When we told him, Campbell said: Oh my God almighty, my God, is that what a fetish is? I thought a fetish was a worry, like worrying about backing the right horse.

When we first spoke to Campbell about National Fetish Day he said: I think my secretary must have mentioned this. I have no problem with it and I am happy to show my support. I have a purple tie and a purple shirt so I will be able to wear their colours.

Are they? Aren't they?

National Fetish Day is on the 21st January.

Using the tag line of “Perverts Wear Purple those that support this day will be wearing about their person something that is purple, like a shirt, a tie, a skirt, a hair band.

The colour purple was chosen because of its heavy use in BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism) circles.

Today's National Fetish Day is part of a campaign against a law to criminalise the possession of extreme pornography which threatens the BDSM community.

Two American nationals and a Briton were accused of white slavery and bribery by the police after authorities raided their night clubs on Fields Avenue. The raids resulted in the arrest of 57 hospitality girls, all working without permits.

DMZ Bar owner Norvel Delbert Bostick, a retired US Marine and a native of California, a certain "Daddy" Kelly of Honey Pot Bar and former UK policeman Richard Agnew have been slapped with criminal charges in court after the simultaneous raids.

Except for Bostick, who was detained at the city district jail for a direct bribery offense, police said Kelly and Agnew remain at large. They will still be facing a jail term if found in violation of Article 341 of the Revised Penal Code or the white slave trade.

Police said Bostick allegedly offered P9,000 to a member of the raiding team in exchange for the release of seven women arrested inside his bar. The policeman turned the offer and immediately handcuffed the American.

On Tuesday, police at the tourist belt area raided the Blue Nile Club, the biggest girlie bar on Fields Avenue. The bar employs more than 500 guest relations officers (GRO) including waitresses and dancers. Complaints said most of the workers there do not have permits.

Later, policemen raided the Honey Pot Bar and arrested five women, all working without the necessary permits from the city hall. Night clubs owners employing women without the necessary working permits is violation under a city ordinance, an official said.

Police said the campaign against prostitution will continue.

A campaign aimed at clamping down on kerb crawling has been launched by the Scottish government. Police in four Scottish cities will enforce new prostitution legislation, backed by a high-profile publicity campaign under the slogan Kerb crawling - it's criminal.

The posters will raise awareness of the trumped ip offences and penalties under the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Act 2007, which criminalises the kerb crawler.

Injustice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said: The Scottish parliament and government have acted to tackle this invidious practice and we will support the police and other local agencies in enforcing the law, in providing women with routes out of prostitution and in making our communities safer and stronger. The campaign we are launching tomorrow aims to highlight the new law and the consequences of breaking it - to kerb crawlers, and to the wider community who we seek to protect.

The new offence of kerb crawling carries a fine of up to £1000. The Scottish government is also working with Westminster for new legislation which will allow the courts to have the power to disqualify offenders from driving.

The campaign will run for four weeks, involving outdoor and indoor washroom advertising, centred around the four key cities in which street prostitution is a significant problem, a government spokesman said.

Posters will be distributed around Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen. The Scottish government last year gave them a total of £1 million to help tackle street prostitution.

But experts raised concerns about the legislation, suggesting that prostitution should be legalised instead.

Dr Nicoletta Policek, senior lecturer in criminology at Lincoln University, carried out research from 1993 to 2003 on outdoor sex workers in Edinburgh: To criminalise sex work, I think, is immoral. Sex work should be legalised and decriminalised. The way to solve this is to give sex workers safer areas as well as improved legislation. They also need social and health support, for example needle exchanges.

Too often the public view sex workers as responsible for the spread of disease and as the catalysts for the decline and degeneration of society, but Scotland should be at the forefront of developing legislation so sex workers can work safely and in a healthy environment. Then Scotland would finally be a civilised society.

Ministers are planning to implant "machine-readable" microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders as part of an expansion of the electronic tagging scheme.

Amid concerns about the security of existing tagging systems and prison overcrowding, the Ministry of Justice is investigating the use of satellite and radio-wave technology to monitor criminals.

But, instead of being contained in bracelets worn around the ankle, the tiny chips would be surgically inserted under the skin of offenders in the community, to help enforce home curfews. The radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, as long as two grains of rice, are able to carry scanable personal information about individuals, including their identities, address and offending record.

The tags, labelled "spychips" by privacy campaigners, are already used around the world to keep track of dogs, cats, cattle and airport luggage, but there is no record of the technology being used to monitor offenders in the community. The chips are also being considered as a method of helping to keep order within prisons.

A senior Ministry of Justice official last night confirmed that the department hoped to go even further, by extending the geographical range of the internal chips through a link-up with satellite-tracking similar to the system used to trace stolen vehicles. All the options are on the table, and this is one we would like to pursue, the source added.

The move is in line with a proposal from Ken Jones, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), that electronic chips should be surgically implanted into convicted paedophiles and sex offenders in order to track them more easily. Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is seen as the favoured method of monitoring such offenders to prevent them going near "forbidden" zones such as primary schools.

More than 17,000 individuals, including criminals and suspects released on bail, are subject to electronic monitoring at any one time, under curfews requiring them to stay at home up to 12 hours a day. But official figures reveal that almost 2,000 offenders a year escape monitoring by tampering with ankle tags or tearing them off.

The tags, injected into the back of the arm with a hypodermic needle, consist of a toughened glass capsule holding a computer chip, a copper antenna and a "capacitor" that transmits data stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic reader.

But details of the dramatic option for tightening controls over Britain's criminals provoked an angry response from probation officers and civil-rights groups. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: If the Home Office doesn't understand why implanting a chip in someone is worse than an ankle bracelet, they don't need a human-rights lawyer; they need a common-sense bypass.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said the proposal would not make his members' lives easier and would degrade their clients. He added: This is the sort of daft idea that comes up from the department every now and then, but tagging people in the same way we tag our pets cannot be the way ahead. Treating people like pieces of meat does not seem to represent an improvement in the system to me.

The US market leader VeriChip Corp, whose parent company has been selling radio tags for animals for more than a decade, has sold 7,000 RFID microchips worldwide, of which about 2,000 have been implanted in humans.

Consumer privacy expert Liz McIntyre said that one company plans deeper implants that could vibrate, electroshock the implantee, broadcast a message, or serve as a microphone to transmit conversations: Some folks might foolishly discount all of these downsides and futuristic nightmares since the tagging is proposed for criminals like rapists and murderers. The rest of us could be next.

Stephen Gough, a former Marine who has been dubbed the Naked Rambler for his insistence on his right to walk naked across Britain, enjoyed six steps of freedom yesterday. 

Gough was freed after 20 months in prison by a sheriff who gave him the chance to end his “vicious circle” of release and rearrest, but was given warning that he would be rearrested if he failed to cover up when let out of the back door of Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

Gough emerged into the rain wearing only a rucksack and an untidy beard. After he had taken only six steps in the nude, police took Gough into the back of a van and rearrested him. He will appear in court on Monday.