The slot machines were quiet, and rock music boomed louder than necessary in the half-empty bar. It could have been a scene from any casino on a dirt road in an unforgiving stretch of desert, but this was, in fact, the Hard Rock Hotel, one of the premier gambling and party destinations in America.

Welcome to Las Vegas at the turn of 2008 – possibly the most depressing and alarming year in the hard-living city's short history. A town that was once considered recession-proof, as people continued gambling and drinking away their sorrows during the bad times, is proving to be anything but.

Until now, gaming revenues in Las Vegas have dropped significantly only once since 1970, and that was in the aftermath of 9/11. In October this year they dropped a staggering 25.5%. Visitor numbers to Las Vegas dropped 10% last month compared to the previous year – and those that are visiting are thought to be spending less than in previous years.

Many who once viewed Sin City as an invincible boomtown, which would party on through any storm, are quickly revising those opinions.

One consequence of the current downturn can be seen in the Vegas strip clubs and lap-dancing bars, which according to reports have seen a sharp rise in the number of girls trying to make a living there.

Shai Cohen, the marketing manager at the world's largest gentleman's club, Sapphire, said he has seen a remarkable increase in the number of girls working as lapdancers in Vegas. We used to get between 250 and 300 girls turning up here to work on weekends, said  Cohen. Now we are getting between 350 and 400. This started happening in the last six months or so.

A British woman fighting jail in Dubai after being convicted for adultery insisted she had been wrongly accused by her ex-husband.

Marnie Pearce has been sentenced to six months in prison by an Arab court. She may lose the right to custody of her two sons after being found guilty at the end of November.

She launched an appeal on Christmas Day, backed by the Tory MP Andrew MacKay, who raised her case with the Foreign Office. Pearce cannot leave Dubai until her conviction is quashed and is desperate to leave with her sons Laith, seven, and four-year-old Ziad: I am so scared that if I go to jail I will never see them again.

In Dubai, non-Muslim adulterers cannot be punished by flogging but can face up to 18 months in prison.

The British expatriate met her Egyptian husband Ihab El-Labban in Oman in 1992. The couple married in the Seychelles, had two children and moved to Dubai, where they have lived for the last 15 years.

Pearce said the marriage had been in difficulty for some time but fell apart last year and the couple separated.  She claimed that subsequently she was falsely accused of adultery on the basis of evidence purportedly showing she had cheated on El-Labban.

Pearce then claimed that he burst into her home with several police officers in March: The police came in the front and back door with my husband who accused me of having an affair.

Pearce, who finally received her divorce decree absolute last month, said she was arrested, placed in handcuffs and interrogated by police. Nearly four months later, she claims she was told by police that they had gathered evidence - including used condoms, a man's underpants and a man's jacket. Pearce was ordered to give a DNA sample but she claims the man alleged to have been involved was never contacted and has been free to travel back and forth to Dubai ever since.

She said her husband took possession of the family home and she and her sons were forced to stay in a shelter before seeking refuge with a friend.

On November 27 Pearce was convicted of adultery and sentenced to six months in prison. She launched her appeal on December 25 and the case was adjourned until January 8.

Schools have installed CCTV cameras and microphones in classrooms to watch and listen to pupils.

The Big Brother-style surveillance is being marketed as a way to identify pupils disrupting lessons when teachers’ backs are turned.

Classwatch, the firm behind the system, says its devices can be set up to record everything that goes on in a classroom 24 hours a day and used to compile evidence of wrongdoing. The equipment is sold with Crown Prosecution Service-approved evidence bags to store material to be used in court cases.

Data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner has warned the surveillance may be illegal and demanded to know why primary and secondary schools are using this kind of sophisticated equipment to watch children. Officials said they would be contacting schools to seek proper justification for the equipment’s use. A spokesman said the system raised privacy concerns for teachers, students and their parents. The use of microphones to record conversations is deeply intrusive and we will be seeking further clarification on their use in schools and, if necessary, we will issue further guidance to headteachers.

Classwatch is set to face further scrutiny over the role of Shadow Children’s Minister Tim Loughton, the firm’s £30,000-a-year chairman.

The systems cost around £3,000 to install in each classroom or can be leased for about £50 per classroom per month. The firm says the devices act as impartial witnesses which can provide evidence in disputes and curb bullying and unruly behaviour and protect teachers against false allegations of abuse – plus provide evidence acceptable in court.

Schools are required to inform all parents that microphones and cameras are monitoring their children.

A London teacher who won £250,000 compensation after a pupil tried to strangle him has criticised a can't touch culture in schools after other staff initially refused to intervene.

Colin Adams was attacked by a 12- year- old boy, who knocked him to the floor before punching and kicking him, and grabbing his neck. But despite other teachers yelling at the boy to stop, no one stepped in to help.

Adams's ordeal ended only after another teacher eventually came to his aid by forcing the boy's thumbs back to release his hold. Later, the unnamed teacher admitted to Adams that he was afraid the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, would accuse him of assault.

The police informed the school they could have kicked the boy in his back to make him let go, but I am not sure there is any teacher anywhere who would be willing to do that for fear of repercussions.

Internet sites could be given cinema-style age ratings as part of a Government crackdown on freedom online to be launched in the New Year, the Culture Secretary says.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Andy Burnham says he believes that new standards of decency need to be applied to the web. He is planning to negotiate with Barack Obama’s incoming American administration to draw up new international rules for English language websites.

The Cabinet minister describes the internet as quite a dangerous place and says he wants ISPs to offer parents child-safe web services.

Giving film-style ratings to individual websites is one of the options being considered, he confirms. When asked directly whether age ratings could be introduced, Burnham replies: Yes, that would be an option. This is an area that is really now coming into full focus.

ISPs, such as BT, Tiscali, AOL or Sky could also be forced to offer internet services where the only websites accessible are those deemed suitable for children.

Burnham said: If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now. It’s true across the board in terms of content, harmful content, and copyright. Libel is [also] an emerging issue.

There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; [...BUT...] it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it.

Burnham reveals that he is currently considering a range of new safeguards. Initially, as with copyright violations, these could be policed by internet providers. However, new laws may be threatened if the initial approach is not successful: I think there is definitely a case for clearer standards online. More ability for parents to understand if their child is on a site, what standards it is operating to. What are the protections that are in place?

He points to the success of the 9pm television watershed at protecting children. The minister also backs a new age classification system on video games to stop children buying certain products.

Burnham also wants new industry-wide take down times. This means that if websites such as YouTube or Facebook are alerted to offensive or harmful content they will have to remove it within a specified time once it is brought to their attention.

He also says that the Government is considering changing libel laws to give people access to cheap low-cost legal recourse if they are defamed online. The legal proposals are being drawn up by the Ministry of Justice.

Burnham admits that his plans may be interpreted by some as heavy-handed ...BUT... says the new standards drive is utterly crucial. Mr Burnham also believes that the inauguration of Barack Obama, the President-Elect, presents an opportunity to implement the major changes necessary for the web: The more we seek international solutions to this stuff – the UK and the US working together – the more that an international norm will set an industry norm.

An advertising billboard proclaiming Want Longer Lasting Sex? has prompted nutter complaints.

The medical reference is in the bottom left-hand corner, in much smaller type, which reads: Nasal Delivery Technology- Call the Doctors at Advanced Medical Institute.

Almost 200 hoardings in bold red on yellow print have appeared in and around London. The adverts will soon be rolled out across the UK.

The campaign from the Advanced Medical Institute in Australia has already been
banned in its native country.

Last night the Advertising Standards Authority said it had launched a formal investigation into the campaign, which has provoked 249 complaints in eight days. An ASA spokesman said the number of complaints was a high volume for such a short space of time.

The general nature of the complaints is that the ad is offensive, gratuitous and inappropriate for public display, especially as it is unsuitable to be seen by children, he said.

Last night nutter Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe said she was dismayed when she noticed one of the billboards near her London home.

What do you say to a child if you are driving along and the child says “what does that mean mummy?". Advertisements are supposed to be decent and truthful – and these billboards are not decent.

Susan Hall, a prude councillor in the London borough of Harrow, which complained about the billboards, said they make the Club 18-30 package holiday company adverts look
like nuanced triumphs of understatement. We are no prudes, ...BUT... there is a difference between adverts which are a little risque – like the Wonderbra commercials – and billboards like these which are just crass.

Dr Michael Spira of AMI said: We’ve said all along that we’re not out to offend anyone – the purpose of our direct advertising is to let men who are suffering sexual problems know that help is available.

Half of Amsterdam's prostitute windows must be closed, the mayor has told The Times.

The Continent's most open red-light district, which sprawls over Amsterdam's historic canal district, will be reduced to two main streets under a dramatic downsizing plan drawn up by Job Cohen, the city's mayor.

Cohen, who is also closing a fifth of the city's cannabis cafés and a number of sex clubs. He claims that he wants Amsterdam to become better known for its art, chamber music and museums rather than as a hotspot for sex and drugs.

There are currently more than 400 of the distinctive neon-lit prostitute windows from where scantily clad women beckon passers-by and about 70 coffee shops selling ready-rolled cannabis joints.

The tolerance, which we in Amsterdam are proud of, is not the same as indifference, said Cohen, the former Rector of Maastricht University, who resigned as the Deputy Justice Minister in Wim Kok's Labour Government to become mayor of the city in 2001.

The prostitutes' union, the Red Thread, has accused Cohen of using a crackdown on criminal activity as an excuse to close the windows and reverse years of tolerance. It has been drawn up at the same time as the Government is taking a tougher line on soft drugs, banning the sale of magic mushrooms and forcing the closure of all coffee shops near schools, as the Netherlands rethinks its anything-goes attitudes.

The union argues that the prostitute windows are much safer because women can deal with clients directly without having to rely on pimps.

A man shot and wounded a saleswoman in a Russian sex shop after the impotence tablets he bought failed to have the desired effect.

The man walked into the Intim shop in a Moscow suburb and demanded a refund for the tablets he had bought there a day earlier.

He shot the shop assistant with a pistol when she refused to give him back his money.

Russia

This year Humanitarian Action decided to hold our actions on the streets, in St. Petersburg, Irkutsk and Chelyabinsk...one of the leading Moscow newspaper published an article on the protection of the rights of sex workers!

Amsterdam, Netherlands

A small quiet street action in the red light area of Amsterdam. 200 printed tags with if you are here to look, then do it with respect were attached to bridges, fences, and bicycles in the area. Flowers were laid at the statue of Belle in honour of strong, sexy, smart sex workers everywhere.

Skopje, Macedonia

Yesterday we had one successful campaign. We started with street action with symbolically opening red umbrellas at the open area where Sex Workers joined us. We are very happy because this year, there were much more people than last year. Most of the people were SW. One hour after that we had exhibition, with video projection and promotion of the song "Sex workers Army" which we accepted as the hymn of Sex Workers.

Vienna, Austria

Austrian press publishes a press release from Sophie - support organisation for sex workers - outlining the importance of 17 December and the need for recognising rights for sex workers.

Also coverage that Scarlet Aliance organised a public event to draw attention to the issue of violence against sex workers.

USA

In San Francisco: Hall of Justice, there was a 5pm vigil, procession + memorial

Sex Workers marched in Washington which made the Washington Post

Italy

The Italian Government have been asked to create a Parliamentary Forum for sex workers in the country to discuss and approve their Charter of Rights.

Member of European Parliament Vittorio Agnoletto made the call while addressing the national demonstration of Sex workers in Italy who came together in Rome on 13th December to protest against the proposed bill outlawing street prostitution in the country. The so-called Carfagna Bill was prepared by Ms. Mara Carfagna, the Minister for Equal Opportunities.

Labour's Take on Britain

Police estimate that they will close up to 1,200 brothels and prosecute 300 men a year under new laws designed to crack down on prostitution. The figures are contained in official Home Office impact assessments produced to accompany the Policing and Crime Reduction Bill, due to be debated by MPs in the new year.

The Bill allows officers to close brothels and leave them sealed for up to three months. Previously, a 'loophole' meant officers could stage a raid and make arrests but were powerless to close down the establishment.

Estimates published yesterday suggested that between 780 and 1,200 closure orders would be served each year.

Critics say the policy will drive prostitution further underground and leave women more vulnerable to abuse.

Wishing you a miserable christmas from all at Norwich Council

Police have used anti-social behaviour laws to stop shopkeepers handing out mulled wine to customers as part of a village's Christmas celebrations.

Traders are angry that officers from Fife Constabulary moved in to stamp out a practice that has been a tradition in Anstruther for 17 years.

They have been told they must apply for an alcohol licence in future for the event, which begins the East
Neuk community's festive season.

Police said shopkeepers were sending out the wrong message when officers were trying to tackle alcohol abuse and underage drinking in the area.

The festive tipple was handed out by several shops when they stayed open late two weeks ago.

Martin Dibley, the secretary of the Royal Burgh of Kilrenny, Anstruther and District Community Council, said: It's a bit of 'bah, humbug'.

Another trader said: Giving adults a glass of spicy mulled wine to celebrate Christmas can hardly be compared to throwing vodka down a teenager's throat. The whole thing was hardly done in the Christmas spirit.

Elizabeth Gordon, who lives in the village, said police were telling shop owners they would nick them if they gave out mulled wine.

Inspector David Brown said: Preventing misuse of alcohol is a key commitment of Fife Constabulary and requires rigorous enforcement of the by-laws banning drinking and carrying of open containers of alcohol in public places.

While our emphasis is on using the by-laws to target alcohol abuse and underage drinking in the Anstruther area, it would send out the wrong message if we were to permit drinking in public for other groups of people.

Love your neighbour... unless he's gay, And as for lady boys...

The Pope has declared that saving the world from homosexual behaviour is as important as saving the rainforests.

In a Christmas message, Benedict XVI stressed the importance of traditional marriage and condemned gay acts as against God's will.

He also attacked transsexuals, saying: It is not man who decides who is a man or woman but God.

The pope said: The Church must defend not only the earth, the water and the air as gifts of creation belonging to everyone, but it must also protect mankind against the destruction of itself. The tropical forests deserve our protection, but man as a creature deserves it no less. In a clear reference to homosexuality, he said the failure to respect the union between a man and a woman amounted to the auto destruction of mankind.

Humanity needed to listen to the language of creation to understand the intended roles of man and woman, he added. Anything that deviated from this was a destruction of God's works.

The relevant section about paid for sex from the recently published Policing and Crime bill:

Section 13: Paying for sexual services of a controlled prostitute: England and Wales

After section 53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 insert

53A Paying for sexual services of a prostitute controlled for gain

(1) A person (A) commits an offence if—

(a) A makes or promises payment for the sexual services of a prostitute (B), and

(b) any of B’s activities relating to the provision of those services are intentionally controlled for gain by a third person (C).

(2) The following are irrelevant—

(a) where in the world the sexual services are to be provided and whether those services are provided,

(b)  whether A is, or ought to be, aware that any of B’s activities are controlled for gain.

(3) An activity is “controlled for gain” by C if it is controlled by C for or in the expectation of gain for C or another person (apart from A or B).

(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.”

UK courts are being prepared to handle Jacqui's Smith's version of justice

The Policing and Crime bill was published yesterday.

The legislation will require sex workers who are repeatedly caught soliciting to attend compulsory rehabilitation classes, but will remove the "stigmatising" term common prostitute 184 years after it was put on the statute book by the Vagrancy Act 1824.

The Home Office minister Vernon Coaker acknowledged that the bill's most controversial proposal, to criminalise men who pay for sex with exploited women, will prove legally fraught and will require the courts to clarify it.

The main source of contention is the new power to criminalise men who buy sex from women who have been trafficked or otherwise exploited. The wording of the bill introduces a strict liability test, under which a person who pays for the sexual services of a prostitute controlled for gain by a third person is liable for prosecution. It says it will be irrelevant where in the world the sexual service is to be provided, or whether the man is aware that the woman is being controlled for gain.

The police have already warned this will be difficult to enforce, but Coaker said yesterday that it would be for the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts to thrash out exactly how the law will work.

Off with their bollocks!... Any man found enjoying a sex life will be liable to the 'appropriate' summary penalty

Lap dancing clubs may be closed if they are located too near supposedly inappropriate sites such as schools, under transitional powers contained in the policing and crime bill published yesterday.

On lap dancing, the introduction of transitional powers to threaten existing lap dancing clubs goes further than originally billed. The man hating home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has already indicated that she expects the legislation to curb the growth in the number of lap dancing clubs, which has doubled to 300 over the last four years.

But Coaker indicated that the transitional powers contained in the bill would give local authorities the power to refuse to renew the licences of existing clubs if there are local objections that they are sited inappropriately.

Despite the recent protests of the lap dancing industry that what goes on in their clubs is not sexually stimulating, the legislation proposes to categorise lap dancing clubs as sex encounter establishments and remove them from the existing 2003 entertainment licensing regime, which classed them along with bars and pubs. A sex encounter venue is defined as one in which relevant entertainment is provided before a live audience for the financial gain of the organiser. An audience can consist of only one person.

The effect will be to allow local authorities to take far more account of the views of nutters in granting new licences and to ban the opening of further clubs by declaring that a particular town or city centre has reached saturation point.

For evidence that nothing is recession-proof, look no further than the imminent demise of that Manhattan landmark and one-time host to the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, the Scores strip club on Upper East Side.

Scores will not see out the year, its owners have declared, attributing its closure at least partly to the failing economy.

The economy is not entirely at fault. The Scores chain took a big hit this year when its West Side club lost its liquor licence after a police raid resulted in prostitution charges. Undercover police were offered oral sex and more exotic acts for $300 to $1100. Authorities are believed to be preparing to revoke the liquor licence of the more prominent East Side location as well.

Scores's menu of nudity and sex has not always guaranteed its financial success, at least not accounting for the under-the-table cost of forking out for mafia protection. Scores sought to trade out of bankruptcy a decade ago after making pay-offs of $1.6 million.

But until this week Scores had survived the police raids, rezoning attempts to curtail adult entertainment and the killings of a waiter and a bouncer during an early morning party in 1996.

Even if it was always on the periphery of prostitution and touched by violence, Scores managed to glamorise and even normalise tabletop dancing with a publicity campaign of gossip column sightings of celebrities.

The actors Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell and Lindsay Lohan were reported as regulars in the self-proclaimed man's paradise of juicy steaks, fat cigars and naked women. George Clooney had a birthday party there. Madonna was a regular in its early days.

Rudd was introduced to this masculine fantasy by the Australian editor of the New York Post, Col Allan, in 2003. Rudd was the opposition spokesman on foreign affairs at the time.

One of the most famous symbols of prostitution in Beijing has reopened in another signal that the city's bustling vice industry has roared back to life following an Olympic crackdown.

Maggie's and another bar in Beijing's diplomatic quarter that used to fill nightly with Chinese and foreign prostitutes reopened this week after having been closed since before the August Games.

Maggie's doors opened again on Monday, staff there said, and the bar was crowded this week with its usual assortment of Mongolian working girls flirting with foreign men.

The two venues were among the countless casualties of a Beijing police crackdown aimed at preventing the city's rollicking sex industry from tarnishing the August Olympics.

The campaign saw hostess bars and dodgy massage centres around the city closed for months, and many of the city's street-walkers cleared away. However, vice establishments have been reopening recently and street-walkers have been sighted again as the security grip ebbs.

Prostitutes had said during the clean-up operation that many sex workers had been driven out of Beijing by police and some of the foreign ones deported.

Basically stamped out during the puritanical Mao Zedong era, prostitution flourishes in today's more open China, with estimates of the country's sex workers ranging as high as 10 million or more.

Sex workers ply their trade with virtual impunity in bars, massage spas, karaoke parlours and the barber shops that are found in many Beijing back alleys and which have nothing to do with haircuts.

Playboy magazine issued an apology after it put a nude model supposedly resembling the Virgin Mary on the cover of the Mexican edition of the publication at the time of a festival dedicated to the mother of Jesus.

The magazine, which hit newsstands on Dec 1 as ceremonies began leading to the pilgrimage to the Mexico City shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, showed a model wearing nothing but a white cloth over her head and breasts.

The model, Maria Florencia Onori, is pictured standing in front of a stained glass window with the cover line, We Love You, Maria in Spanish.

In a statement, Chicago-based Playboy Enterprises Inc said the Mexican edition of the magazine is published by a licensee, and the company did not approve or endorse the cover: While Playboy Mexico never meant for the cover or images to offend anyone, we recognise that it has created offence, and we as well as Playboy Mexico offer our sincerest apologies.

Playboy Mexico printed 100,000 copies of the issue.

Many prostitutes are seeing red over the planned closure of many of the brothels.

Many of the girls are from Eastern Europe while others are native Dutch.

We will fight this attack on our livelihood, we will use legal means, we have a right to make a living and we don’t want to be crowded into a reduced number of brothels or forced out remarked one working girl in the area that identified herself as Annia.

Already a number of civil rights and liberal groups are planning to support the working girls in their fight to oppose the closures. This has to do with Bible-bashers in government a reference to the Christian Democrat party that are part of Holland’s ruling coalition. This is an assault on modern values and has nothing to do with cleaning up the city one activist commented.

We will oppose this and offer all assistance to the women affected by this regressive plan. We know the girls of De Wallen and we are aware of their inner strength. Many people oppose this, some are also worried about Amsterdam’s tourist industry going up in smoke.

Some tourists are concerned as well I’ve been coming here for years and if this place get’s closed down it will be a pity, look at drab, boring Britain: do you want to become like that?asks Ian, a tourist from Leeds in the UK.

A 'offee drinker with the glazed eyes said: This is an attack on the very essence of Amsterdam, and the essence of being Dutch.

Sex is free at Big Sister, which calls itself the world's biggest Internet brothel, but that is not cheap enough for some men. Customers get the cut rate in return for signing a form that allows the brothel to film their trysts.

Even with this financial incentive, Big Sister's marketing manager, Carl Borowitz, lamented that the global financial crisis had diminished the number of sex tourists in Prague.

Sex is a steady demand, because everyone needs it, and it used to be taboo, which made a service like ours all the more attractive, said Borowitz. But the problem today is that there is too much competition, too many free pornography sites, and people are thinking twice before making impulse purchases, including paying for sex.

Big Sister is not the only brothel suffering the effects of a battered global economy, brothel owners in Europe and the United States say belt-tightening caused by the global financial crisis is undermining a once-lucrative industry.

Egbert Krumeich, manager of Artemis, the largest brothel in Berlin, said the recession had helped dent revenue by 20% in November, usually peak season for the sex trade. In Reno, Nevada, the multi-million-dollar Mustang Ranch recently laid off 30% of its staff.

Big Sister is not struggling as much as some; its revenue is largely derived from the $48 monthly fee each of the company's 10,000 clients pay for access to its website. But Borowitz said Big Sister hoped to offset a 15 per cent drop in revenue over the past quarter by expanding into the United States. Big Sister also produces cable TV shows that air in Italy and Britain, as well as DVDs.

In the Czech Republic, where prostitution operates in a grey zone, the sex industry is big business, generating nearly $650 million in annual revenues, 60% of which is derived from foreign visitors, according to Mag Consulting, a tourism research company in Prague.

Dozens of cheap flights to Prague have also ensured a steady flow of bachelor parties. In 2005, an average of 30 flights arrived in Prague every day from Britain alone, a figure analysts said has dropped by a third.

The strength of the Czech crown against the euro, lower spending power and competition from even lower-cost sex capitals like Riga, Latvia, and Krakow, Poland, were threatening one of the country's thriving sectors, said Jaromir Beranek, director of Mag.

Many Czechs are more than happy to see Prague shrug off its reputation as one of the world's top-20 sex destinations, but some in the hotel industry are so alarmed by the drop in tourists that they are lobbying the government to legalize the trade.

Jiri Gajdosik, manager of Le Palais, one of Prague's top hotels, argues that regulating prostitution would help attract business by making prostitution safer: We must ensure that the city loses its bad reputation of a city where foreigners are afraid that they will be robbed.

The Czech government is considering passing legislation by the end of this year that would require the Czech Republic's estimated 10,000 prostitutes to register with local authorities. Not everyone is enthusiastic, including the prostitutes themselves, who warn that being issued prostitution identification cards would further stigmatize them.

People are being urged to keep Preston free of litter, dog fouling and anti-social behaviour as part of the Safer Preston Partnership's latest campaign.

The campaign, called Respect Our City, begins on Monday 8 December and will run throughout the Christmas period and beyond. It will see eye-catching signs placed on buses, lampposts, litter bins, shops, restaurants, and pubs and clubs across Preston.

These signs will contain the Rules round town, which set out that anti-social behaviour such as swearing, spitting, dropping litter, dog fouling and aggressive behaviour will not be tolerated in Preston - and that anyone caught breaking these rules could be arrested or face a fixed penalty fine.

Councillor Kate Calder, cabinet member for community safety and community engagement, said: We want to put a stop to anti-social behaviour such as fighting, littering and swearing around town so that everyone can enjoy a happy, safe Christmas. We're spreading the message in shops, pubs, restaurants and on buses and streets across the city.

For 20 years police and other agencies agreed to turn an official blind eye to sex being sold on the street in one small part of Leith in Edinburgh, with few complaints from anyone, except for a minority who opposed on moral grounds.

The decision in 2001 to end that – in the face of opposition from new residents moving into a regenerated old red light area – has been followed by legislation. New laws prohibiting kerb crawling were introduced last year, in an effort to drive the sex trade out of residential areas.

The combined effect, though, has been far from beneficial to anyone.

Complaints about prostitutes plying their trade near homes in Leith are shooting up again. Police appealed to residents last week to look out for drivers trawling for prostitutes.

The streets are also far more dangerous for the sex workers themselves, with reports of attacks almost doubling to 126 last year, compared to the previous 12 months, including 55 assaults and 17 rapes or sexual assaults.

The new vice laws, introduced last October, have outlawed kerb crawling, making it an offence to "loiter" in a vehicle, in a bid to target the men trawling the streets for sex.

This has led to more than 30 arrests, with the number falling sharply after an initial drive in the first ten weeks. Police have also charged 19 women with soliciting offences in Leith.

But that has not been enough to stop complaints about kerb crawlers rising dramatically. It is clear that criminalising prostitutes, or those who frequent them, is not halting the trade.

As well as returning to Leith in larger numbers in recent months, the street workers have been plying their trade in new areas, including Craigentinny and Castle Terrace.

Ruth Morgan Thomas, project manager with the prostitutes support group Scot-Pep, says that, ideally, street prostitutes prefer to work in places that are well lit, covered by CCTV and away from residential areas.

But now some women are resorting to handing out mobile numbers to potential clients in order to set up illicit meetings, leaving them vulnerable as they meet men in more isolated spots.

Ms Morgan Thomas believes that bringing back the tolerance zone is the best solution: A managed area creates a safer environment where women can work together and protect one another. A managed area for prostitutes would improve personal safety, she says, as well as enable the establishment of a drop-in service to help women access medical, education and employment services.

MSP Margo MacDonald backs the idea of bringing back a managed zone for prostitutes within Edinburgh.

She says: The idea is that street prostitution is managed for both prostitutes and the wider community. We have had one before. Every so often there would be a bit of a wrinkle or problem that needed to be smoothed out, but it looked out for the safety and wellbeing of people affected by the sex trade. It was proven that this could work. There were complaints, but those could be overcome.

Despite the potential difficulties in agreeing a suitable area, probably on an industrial estate away from homes, the independent Lothians MSP believes re-establishing a tolerance zone is the only sensible answer: I would like to see a duty of care exercised towards prostitutes. I would like to see the general public not being alarmed or offended by people trying to sell sex.

Plumber Martin Solomon was heard by neighbours as he shouted foul and offensive language at his TV, magistrates in Stroud heard.

His ranting put him in breach of an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) which had been imposed at an earlier hearing to try to stop him shouting and swearing at the television whenever he disagreed with a programme.

Simon James, defending at Stroud Magistrates' Court, said: Mr Solomon often drinks more than is good for him. He will have a drink and will return home. Then he will put on the television and if someone on the TV says something that upsets him, he will swear at the TV.

The court heard that his neighbours in Farmhill close, Stroud - among them two children aged two and 11 - were disturbed from their sleep and upset by the language.

Stroud District Council obtained the two-year ASBO order in Gloucester Magistrates' Court on September 27 last year. But Solomon broke the order on October 21 at 10.10pm, October 23 at 23.55pm and November 10 at 9.55pm, the court heard.

Solomon admitted the breach in a police interview and pleaded guilty in court.

James said: He has tried very hard to comply with the order. He said Solomon had consulted a doctor and a rehabilitation service.

Colin Peake, SDC's anti-social behaviour co-ordinator, said: It's very frustrating for the family next door who've got two young children.

He was fined £80 and told to pay £60 costs plus a £15 victim surcharge at the hearing.

The Mandaue City government in Cebu will close down all clubs and bars that stage lewd shows.

We will give them (establishments) the time (to reformat). After that, I will no longer sign their permits, Mayor Jonas Cortes said.

He said he received reports that various bars and night spots in Mandaue continue to hold lewd shows.

An appeal judge in Australia has ruled that an animation depicting well-known cartoon characters engaging in sexual acts is child pornography. The internet cartoon featured characters from the Simpsons TV series.

The central issue in the case was whether a cartoon character could depict a real person. Judge Michael Adams decided that it could, and found a man from Sydney guilty of possessing child pornography on his computer.

The defence had argued that the fictional, animated characters were not real people, and clearly departed from the human form. They therefore contested that the conviction  should be overturned.

Justice Michael Adams said the purpose of anti-child pornography legislation was to stop sexual exploitation and child abuse where images of real children were depicted. But in a landmark ruling he decided that the mere fact that they were not realistic representations of human beings did not mean that they could not be considered people.

He ruled that the animated cartoon could fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children, and therefore upheld the conviction.

Rather than jail the man, however, he fined him Aus$3,000

Visiting illegal prostitutes will be punishable by up to six months in jail if cabinet plans to reform the law on prostitution go through.

In addition, all companies involved in the sex industry – from escort bureaus and sex theatres to massage salons – will have to get an official licence to operate. At the moment only brothels require licences.

Local councils will also be able to say where and if sex companies can be situated.

The proposals, drawn up by home affairs minister Guusje ter Horst and injustice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, have been circulated to police, justice ministry officials, the tax office and other interested parties for their comments.

The proposal does not include a rise in the minimum age for prostitutes from 18 to 21, but this still may be an option, the ministers said.

A grandfather was left humiliated after being handed a £60 litter fine when his cigarette was knocked out of his hand as he walked past a scuffle between police and shoplifters.

Lazaris Michael, 76, had taken a single puff before his smoke was sent flying as officers apprehended two girls who were trying to flee a branch of Boots.

But the pensioner did not have time to bend down and pick it up before a council warden pounced on him and hit him the fixed penalty for littering in front of a large crowd.

When he begged the council to show common sense and drop the case they responded by threatening him with an even bigger fine if he does not pay up.

He has since written to the council asking them to investigate the case, which he says was the result of an over zealous council warden.

But he has been told the fee will be increased to £80 if he does not pay up.

Thanet Council's environment chief jobsworth Shirley Tomlinson said: We are happy with the process that has been followed.

Thanet Council's campaign warns people the council will take a zero tolerance approach to anyone who drops litter, including cigarette butts and chewing gum. If spotted, no excuses will be accepted. You will be handed a fine. It is therefore important to dispose of any litter in the right way. Our wardens have been doing what they have been instructed to do and we cannot make any allowances.'

UK courts are being prepared to handle Jacqui's Smith's version of justice

New laws on prostitution could be unenforceable warn Commander Allan Gibson of the Metropolitan Police.

In a major setback for the Government's plans, Commander Allan Gibson, of the Metropolitan Police's Human Trafficking Unit, questioned how effective such a crack down could be.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced last month that men would be committing a crime if they paid for sex with a woman who has been trafficked into the UK or is working for a pimp, even if they did not know she had been forced into prostitution.

The measure was criticised by prostitutes, who argued it will force the trade even deeper underground.

In evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, Gibson said: Speaking personally, I think that is going to be very difficult to enforce. Gibson told the committee that it was very difficult even for police to estimate the numbers of women trafficked into the UK for prostitution or precisely which ones were working against their will.

Over the past two years, his unit has dealt with 54 cases, and had a further 157 cases referred to it by other branches of the Met, he said.

Committee chairman Keith Vaz told minister for women Harriet Harman: (Commander Gibson) says it is very difficult to enforce a situation where a man is expected to ask a prostitute whether or not she has been trafficked and even if he gets a negative answer he is still to be prosecuted. The police themselves... feel that the new proposals are unenforceable.

But Ms Hateman said: We have to address the demand side because this trade wouldn't be happening if men weren't buying sex...The men who are handing over the money that makes these women vulnerable have got to be made answerable for what they are doing to create this trade."

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said later: Yet again, the Home Secretary's rhetoric is defied by reality. The Government wants to rush through new criminal laws without any consideration as to whether they will work. In the meantime, it neglects the basics of law enforcement - funding for the Met's human trafficking unit has been slashed, whilst the conviction rate for trafficking for sexual exploitation has plummeted. [Because it is mostly mythical and has been massively exaggerated as propaganda for the government's man hating policies]

The Dutch Supreme Court has decided sex shows should be thought of as theatre – at least when it comes to taxes.

The Netherlands' highest court has ruled that a peep show owner is eligible to pay sales tax at a lower rate because his services are a form of theatre. The government argued that they were simply strip shows – and thus taxed at a higher rate.

The sex show owner, whose identity has not been released, is now expected to be repaid thousands of euros in taxes.

TV Interviewer: Why do you risk holidaying in Thailand at a time of unrest? Tourist: It's safer than going to America!

A Briton who has lived and worked legally in America for 35 years, married a US citizen and raised three children there, has been locked up in a New Jersey jail after falling victim to a draconian immigration crackdown.

Paul Clements, 58, a permanent US resident and former tour manager for bands such as the Rolling Stones and Dire Straits, is threatened with expulsion from his adopted homeland after his passport and green card were confiscated following a work trip abroad.

He now spends his days in a khaki prison jumpsuit as his case works its way through the US legal system and his wife and teenage daughter were reduced to tears when they saw him chained and in handcuffs in a recent court appearance.

The turmoil in their lives has its roots in a night out with friends at a local pub in 2002. On the way home, Clements, a manager at a large events production company, was arrested on suspicion of drink driving and police found a third of a joint of marijuana in his car.

He was fined, put on a year's probation and ordered to attend drug information classes as punishment for possession of 0.8 grams of marijuana, an amount so small that the authorities would not prosecute in many American cities, including neighbouring New York.

The offence did not leave him subject to the threat of deportation and he thought no more of the incident, even as he flew in and out of the country on subsequent trips overseas. But in late-May, he was held for several hours at New York's Kennedy airport as he arrived home from a work trip to Italy.

For the Department of Homeland Security has been updating its computer records to include thousands of offences committed by foreign residents (known as "aliens" in official US parlance).

And although Clements could not be deported for his offence, any conviction for controlled substance is cause for immigration authorities to refuse an arriving alien entry to the US.

He was eventually allowed into the country but ordered to return to the airport for what is known as a deferred inspection. On the second such trip, on Nov 12, he was arrested, handcuffed and taken away to an immigration jail in New Jersey.

Worse was to come on Nov 24 when Mr Clements appeared in an immigration court for a bail hearing arranged by his lawyer. The room was packed with his friends, family and colleagues who hoped he would be freed pending the immigration hearing, but the judge ruled that he was subject to mandatory detention until his case is heard – in March at the earliest.

His attorney, Michael DiRaimondo, is now attempting to arrange a deal with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials for him to receive parole so that he can spend Christmas with his family.

Orchard Towers is a noted freelance sex worker mall venue in Singapore.

The going rate depends on negotiation skills but is in the range SG$100-SG$200 (£45-£90)

Drinks at the Ipanema Club, first bar on your right as you come up the escalator - and THE place to be at Orchard Toward - are expensive. A Jack Daniels and coke runs you SG$15 (£7).

But none of the girls work for the bar, everyone's freelancing, so nobody ever bugs you for drinks. Good live music too.

The girls come in all shapes, colours, types, etc. A goodly number of Vietnamese and some Thai. Lots Chinese girls and of course Filipinas.

There are 4 official red light areas in Singapore but somehow Orchard Towers is not one of them.

By day Orchard Towers is a traditional shopping mall. The shops close at 7ish and make way for the bars to open from 8pm. The bars are slow starting and generally offer happy hours to get things going. A glass of beer is then about SG$5 (£2.50). Bars will hit their peak at about 11pm.

Saturday 13 December, 15:00h
Piazza Farnese, Rome, Italy

In solidarity with International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers (17 December ) Join us in the Manifestation Against the Carfagna Draft Bill on Prostitution

Show your support and resistance to the discriminatory policies and actions of politicians and media in Italy!

Since the presentation of the Carfagna Draft Bill and together with the restrictive ordinances of several mayors concerning prostitution, a dangerous climate of intolerance has been created throughout Italy towards anybody exercising prostitution.

Copenhagen, Denmark
Wednesday 17th December 19:00-24:00

Sex Worker organisation SiO Denmark organises a film screening, debate and entertainment.

International
17th December

Facebook Action! Sex Worker activist He-Jin and Maj launch "Online Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers! 17th December" a facebook campaign to encourage all supporters to change their profile image to the Red Umbrella the international symbol of sex workers' rights. If you are on facebook this is a great way to spread the word and show your solidarity. Images to use are available on the campaign page or design your own!

Town Hall, Manchester, England
17th December, 10.00am to 1.30pm

The UK Network of Sex Work Projects is hosting a free half day event with presentations  to mark International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

St. Anne's CofE Church, 55 Dean Street, Soho, London, England
Wednesday 17th December at 7:30pm

The International Union of Sex Workers (IUSW) is hosting a Sex Worker Carol Singing

Skopje, Macedonia
17 December

Sex workers and allies are planning several activities including distributing posters and postcards, about 17 December as well as booklet versions of the Declaration and Manifesto, a red umbrella street action, an art exhibition My Body, My choice, and a party!

OKUBI Cafe, Paris, France
Wednesday 17 December

Film screening and debate.The film Rendez nous nos Trottoirs (Give us Back Our Sidewalks) is a documentary about the Assises on Prostitution and Pute Pride Paris, 2008, and shows all demands and working issues of sex workers in France and in Europe.

Grisélidis Réal Centre, Rue Amat 6, Genevé, Switzerland
Wednesday 17 December 19h to 22h

Boulevards-Aspasie , Centre Grisélidis Réal organise an Open House. Come have a drink, meet us and visit our brand new premises! After join us for a Red Umbrella gathering at La Place des Alpes, between 22h and 24h. There will be a fire and a drink to warm up. As a sign of solidarity with other 17 December actions around the world bring a red umbrella!

The Top Shelf Report, commissioned by Labour MP Claire Curtis-Thomas, will next week recommend that popular men's magazines and newspapers such as the Daily Sport be given age-appropriate "16" and "18" certificates.

A nationwide investigation has revealed that newsagents across the UK are flouting current guidelines and displaying what are, in effect, adult magazines at the eye-level of children aged six to 15 – which has led to a government proposal that they be subject to the same age classifications as films, with some titles off-limits to under-18s.

The display of lads' mags is currently governed by a voluntary code of practice drawn up by the Periodical Publishers Associations (PPA) and the Home Office, which recommends that retailers display them well above children's eye level and away from children's titles or comics.

The report, which has cross-party support from MPs, points out that films screened or sold in the UK are classified by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) and that TV broadcasters must adhere to a 9pm watershed that prevents programmes unsuitable for under-18s being shown before this, yet nothing similar exists for the mainstream press.

Ben Todd, the editor of Zoo, said: We should be treated like a cheeky seaside postcard. In our case, the most revealing aspect is topless pictures, which is no more than you see in The Sun or the Daily Star. So, if any sort of age-restrictions are going to be introduced, I'd expect them to include those papers, too.

The report recommends that the Daily Sport be given an "18" certificate due to the numerous adverts for prostitutes which it contains.

Amsterdam authorities say they are to halve the number of brothels and marijuana shops in the city's red light district and surrounding area.

The city announced plans to clean up the area a year ago and since then 109 sex windows, from which prostitutes attract customers, have been closed. The new measures aim to reduce the number of windows to 243 from 482 last year, a city spokesman said.

Amsterdam also wants to close half of the 76 cannabis shops in the city centre.

The deputy mayor of Amsterdam Lodewijk Asscher told Reuters: We can still have sex and drugs but in a way that shows the city is in control.

The 800-year-old red light district needs to diversify and showcase the city's history,  Asscher said: This is a nice, old part of town. We can attract different groups of tourists. You should be able to have a beer at the old church square, watch fashion, and visit Chinatown.

UK officials are to be given powers previously reserved for times of war to demand a person's proof of identity at any time. Anybody who refuses the Big Brother demand could face arrest and a possible prison sentence.

The new rules are presented as a crackdown on illegal immigration, but lawyers say they could be applied to anybody who has ever been outside the UK, even on holiday.

The civil rights group Liberty, which analysed clauses from the new Immigration and Citizenship Bill, called them an attempt to introduce compulsory ID cards by the back door.

Liberty said: Powers to examine identity documents, previously thought to apply only at ports of entry, will be extended to criminalise anyone in Britain who has ever left the country and fails to produce identity papers upon demand.

We believe that the catch-all remit of this power is disproportionate and that its enactment would not only damage community relations but represent a fundamental shift in the relationship between the State and those present in the UK.

One broadly-drafted clause would permit checks on anyone who has ever entered the
UK - whether recently or years earlier. Officials, who could be police or immigration officers, will be able to stop anyone to establish if they need permission to be here, if they have it, and whether it should be cancelled.

No reasonable cause or suspicion is required, and checks can be carried out in country - not just at borders. The law would apply to British citizens and foreign nationals, according to Liberty's lawyers. The only people who would be exempt are the tiny minority who have never been abroad on holiday or business.

A second clause says that people who are stopped must produce a valid identity document if required to do so by the Secretary of State. Failure to do so would be a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of 51 weeks in jail or a £5,000 fine.

Currently, police are allowed to ask for identity documents only if there is a reasonable suspicion that a person has committed an offence.

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said: Sneaking in compulsory identity cards via the back door of immigration law is a cynical escalation of this expensive and intrusive scheme.

LibDem spokesman Chris Huhne said: Ministers seem to be breaking their promise that no one would ever have to carry an ID card. This is a sly and underhand way of extending the ID card scheme by stealth.

Banks join benefit cheats, lap-dancing clubs and drinkers at the top of a list of targets for legislative action to be unveiled today.

Gordon Brown has made unfairness to men the theme of the second Queen’s Speech of his premiership.

Companies will be free to discriminate in favour of women and black job candidates under a proposed Inequality Bill. The move allows employers to give preferential treatment as long as applicants are equally qualified. It is designed to boost the proportion of female and ethnic staff, as well as thrusting more of them into senior posts.

Measures to toughen laws against benefit fraud, ban alcohol promotions and reclassify lap-dancing clubs as sex encounter establishments were trailed yesterday.

Plans by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, for a new Bill of Rights have been shelved.

The Prime Minister said in a document previewing the Queen’s Speech yesterday. So as Government takes action, we expect people to play their part in return, with clear consequences for those who do not.

The speech will also announce a Crime Bill changing prostitution and drink laws. There will be proposals to criminalise men who pay for sex with trafficked women. The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has made clear the bill would include a strict liability offence of paying for sex with a trafficked or pimped woman which means that ignorance will be no defence for those accused. The Conservatives have already indicated they are likely to oppose this, making tackling prostitution one of the more unlikely flashpoints in politics over the coming months. [Saying that I didn't notice the Paying for sex provision in any of the Home Office press releases accompanying the Queen's Speech.]

Pbr on the Melon Farmer's forum notes the absence of a Bill to prohibit non-photographic visual depictions of child sexual abuse... perhaps the first bit of good news in government policy for quite a while now.

A judge has condemned a police assault on a soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lance Corporal Mark Aspinall, 24, was thrown to the ground by three uniformed officers after a night out with friends and punched eight times.

The violent arrest - caught on CCTV - shocked a crown court judge, who called it appalling.

But astonishingly, Lance Corporal Aspinall was himself hauled before the courts and convicted of assaulting the police.

He was sentenced to 200 hours' community service and even ordered to pay compensation to the officers.

His ordeal ended only when Judge John Phipps watched the damning CCTV footage and quashed the verdict on appeal.

Judge Phipps said: I am shocked and appalled at the level of police violence shown here.

Police officers had been called to the town centre to deal with a man reportedly causing a nuisance to paramedics. But when a special constable and two colleagues saw Aspinall in the road they presumed he was the cause of the trouble.

In the footage, the soldier can be seen 10ft from them in the middle of the road as they stand on the pavement. Suddenly, the officers move across the road towards him and, startled, Aspinall falls over. As he gets to his feet one officer rugby tackles him, while the other two help pin him to the ground and attempt to handcuff him.

The footage appears to show one of the officers - Special Constable Peter Lightfoo raining punches into the back of the defenceless man as he lies on the ground. Eight blows are struck in just a few seconds and the police officer stops only when a car drives past slowly.

Eventually, Aspinall was bundled into a police van in handcuffs, with injuries to his face and neck. He was taken to Wigan police station and kept in custody for 20 hours. He was charged with two counts of police assault and a public order offence.

On September 22, at Wigan magistrates' court, the officers read statements claiming  Aspinall had been behaving violently. Despite viewing the footage, magistrates found him guilty of the assaults, sentenced him to community service and gave him a suspended-prison sentence. They also ordered him to pay £250 compensation.

He lodged an appeal against the conviction and on November 13 at Liverpool Crown Court, Judge Phipps saw the footage and asked: Where is this man of violence? I am shocked and appalled at the level of police violence shown here. The judge said he had great concerns about the CCTV footage and questioned the truthfulness of the officers' statements: I would go as far as to say the statements contain untruths.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said the matter had been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. One officer has had his duties restricted and another two are being investigated.

[How about all those responsible for the prosecution and original sentencing? Surely some jail time is due to them to]

Norway’s Parliament voted for changes in the legislation on prostitution, in effect criminalizing the purchase of sexual activity or a sexual act, the Ministry of Injustice and Police have announced.

Under the revised General Civil Penal Code 202a unanimously approved in November, any person (who) engages in or aids and abets another person to engage in sexual activity or commit a sexual act on making or agreeing payment shall be liable to fines or imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or both.

At the same time, any person (who) engages in sexual activity or a sexual act on such payment being agreed or made by another person, or in the manner previously described causes someone to carry out with herself or himself acts corresponding to sexual activity is also meted the same penalty.

If the sexual activity or sexual act is carried out in a particularly offensive manner and no penalty may be imposed pursuant to other provisions, the penalty shall be imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year.

Section 202a is expected to be implemented on January 1, 2009 and will be also applicable to acts committed abroad by any Norwegian national. The provision applies to any person, regardless of citizenship, living in Norway.

Wishing you a miserable christmas from all at Norwich Council

A Hairdressers who offer their customers a festive glass of mulled wine at Christmas have been warned that they face six months in jail and a £20,000 fine.

The threat was made by council chiefs, who even announced that they will send officers into salons under cover in an effort to catch offenders. Hairdressers have criticised the move as "Scrooge-like".

Norwich City Council wrote to all hairdressing businesses in the city ordering them to get a licence if they want to serve alcoholic drinks. Sent to 104 salons in Norwich, the letter states that the practice of serving complimentary alcoholic drinks is a breach of the law and requires various licences.

It then warns: To address this issue enforcement action, including the use of undercover officers, may be undertaken in the near future.

The council also declares that anyone found guilty of unlawfully supplying alcohol could face a maximum of six months in jail, a maximum fine of £20,000 or both.

Nigel Matthews, owner of Nigel Alexandre salon, said: The vast majority of salons serve tea and coffee throughout the year and in the couple of weeks before Christmas offer a glass of wine or mulled wine or sherry. It seems very Scrooge-like to send a letter out just as we are entering the festive period. It is traditional, the clients are rewarded and it is all part of the customer service.

What struck me was the potential sentence – you get a lot less than that for a lot more than serving a glass of wine.

A council spokesprat said that under the 2003 Licensing Act sale by retail includes providing alcohol to customers as part of the service. He added that a letter of complaint was received last month about salons offering drinks.

We wanted to make sure small businesses did not unwittingly fall foul of the law while trying to spread a little Christmas cheer in the build-up to the festive season, he said.

Michael Stephenson, misery services manager, said: We accept the letter we sent out to hairdressers in the city may not appear to be in keeping with the festive mood and are sorry if it has been misunderstood...HOWEVER...we are a licensing authority and there is a serious message here about the enforcement of licensing laws and helping businesses make sure they do not fall foul of the law."

CCTV cameras which can predict if a crime is about to take place are being introduced on Britain's streets.

The cameras can alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering and unusually slow walking. Anyone spotted could then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer.

It will also fuel fears that Britain is becoming a surveillance society. There are already 4.2million cameras trained on the public. The technology could be used alongside many of these to allow evermore advanced scrutiny of our movements.

Civil rights campaign group Liberty is sceptical. A spokesman said: Bringing expensive Hollywood sci-fi to our car parks will never be as effective as having police on the street leading the fight against crime.'

The cameras, trained on public places, such as car parks, are being tested by Portsmouth City Council. Computers are programmed to analyse the movements of people or vehicles in the camera frame. If someone is seen lurking in a particular area, the computer will send out an alarm to a CCTV operator.

The operator will then check the image and – if concerned – ring the police. The aim is to stop crimes before they are committed. If a vehicle is moving too fast or slow – indicating joyriding or kerb-crawling, for example – a similar alert could be given.

Tory Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: We will look at this carefully… but there is no argument for CCTV that invades your privacy without being effective in the fight against crime.

An ad, for Tiger Beer, appeared on poster and in the Metro and London Lite newspapers. A small image of a bottle of Tiger beer was shown in the top left-hand corner, which was labelled with a star that stated THE FAR EASTS MOST DESIRABLE EXPORT SINCE 1932. In the foreground of the ad was a large image of a person wearing black stockings, knickers and a bra, with a sheer blouse that was not fastened. The person was putting something into their mouth and was labelled with a star that stated "3rd".

1. Eight complainants objected that the image of the person, who they believed to be a woman, was offensive because it linked exports with a person in a sexually provocative pose, which they felt was inappropriate given reports of human trafficking for the sex trade and

2. Three of the complainants also objected that the ad was offensive and disrespectful to Eastern culture because it implied beer and sex were some of the best things to come out of the region.

Tiger Beer UK Ltd said the campaign was not intended to condone lewd behaviour, human trafficking or the sex trade in, or as exports of, the Far East. They said the campaign was intended to reflect Tiger Beers Far Eastern heritage and build on its position as the Far Easts most desirable export since 1932 by presenting it in the context of other recognised Far Eastern exports including ladyboys, tuk tuks, chop sticks and acupuncture, all of which were treated with the respect they deserved.

ASA Assessment 1. & 2. Upheld

We understood that the ads image was intended to represent a ladyboy cabaret act. We considered, however, that by presenting the character in sexual clothing and a provocative pose alongside the implication that she was rated the Far Easts third most desirable export, the ad appeared to link exports with the sex trade and, potentially, human trafficking.

We also considered the ad suggested beer and sex were two of the best exports of the Far East, which was disrespectful to Eastern culture. We concluded that the ad was likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

On both points, the ad breached CAP Code clause 5.1 (Decency).

The ad must not appear again in its current form. The ASA welcomed Tiger Beer UKs decision to remove the image from the campaign.

Nebraska Governor, David Heineman, is reviewing a state policy that requires state employees to help patients at state hospitals buy pornography.

The policy was highlighted in an alleged sexual assault at the Beatrice State Developmental Center, which houses developmentally disabled residents.

The assault suspect, a developmentally disabled man, had obtained permission from employees to possess pornography and had even been driven by state workers to two sex shops to buy it.

Heineman has plans to discuss with the state Attorney General’s Office discontinuing any involvement from state workers. The governor said, however, he would not restrict residents or family members from buying such material.

Officials of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services said that under its policies concerning appropriate sexual expression, a resident at the Beatrice center or other state facilities for the developmentally disabled can obtain pornography if it’s approved by a treatment team.

This calls for an SS inquiry... chaired by special interrogator 'Dr' Mugabe

MPs demanded protection from a police state last night after the heavy-handed arrest of a Tory frontbencher shocked Westminster.

Extraordinary details of four simultaneous raids on immigration spokesman Damian Green's homes and offices raised urgent questions about the independence of Parliament.

The Oxford-educated father of two girls, who denies any wrongdoing, was fingerprinted and required to give a DNA sample before being released on bail after nine hours.

Police seized his mobile phone, his BlackBerry, bank statements, computers containing confidential details of constituents, and were only prevented from carrying off legal documents by his wife, a barrister.

The tactics of Scotland Yard investigating a series of leaks that had no bearing on national security and served only to embarrass Labour were compared to those used in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

Last night, the row between police and Parliament was turning into a political crisis for Gordon Brown, who faced accusations of standing by while the rights of MPs were being trampled.

Ministers struggled to dispel suspicions that they knew in advance about the plan to arrest Green, amid MPs' fears that the case marked another step towards the politicisation of the police.

The Tories issued a series of questions about the role of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said there were huge question marks over the claim that Brown and Smith had not been informed the arrest was about to take place. He said: It would be an astounding breakdown in the system of governance, and the linchpin doctrine of Ministerial responsibility, if Ministers were not, at the bare minimum, kept informed.

MPs also demanded assurances from Speaker Michael Martin that he would defend their interests after it emerged that he authorised an unprecedented police search of Green's office on Commons property. One called on Martin to quit.

The MP was detained in Kent on suspicion of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office and taken to London by Yard detectives ten days after a Home Office official was arrested on suspicion of leaking sensitive documents.

Police are investigating Green's role in four leaks to the media over the past year - two of them to the Mail - that embarrassed the Home Office.

Tory MPs threatened to disrupt Wednesday's Queen's Speech debate. Veteran former Labour MP Tony Benn said the arrest of an MP amounted to a contempt of Parliament. Once the police can interfere with Parliament, we are into the police state, he said.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: This is something you might expect from a tin-pot dictatorship, not in a modern democracy.

There is massive public support for a law legalising prostitution, a politics.co.uk poll has revealed.

The news follows government plans to criminalise paying for sex when the worker is under the control of someone else – effectively criminalising 90% of transactions.

politics.co.uk asked users what should be done with the industry. 72% called for legalisation, with only 5.4% saying it should be banned completely.

The Home Office plans unveiled last week enjoyed very little support with only 8% of respondents saying they supported the measure. 13% said there should be no change.

Asked whether the new law will work, responses were overwhelmingly negative, with 91.8% of people saying 'no'.

Similar numbers thought there was no chance of ever abolishing prostitution in the UK, with 95% saying it will always take place.

Responses to a question about the purpose of prostitution laws were equally emphatic. 89% of politics.co.uk users said the purpose of legislation should be to keep sex workers safe.

Just 5% said the purpose should be to crack down on prostitutes. The same percentage thought the guiding aim should be to protect trafficked men and women.

The changes to the prostitution law followed an extensive research period in the Home Office, with ministers visiting Sweden, where the trade is criminalised, and Holland, where it is legal.

South Korean prosecutors have demanded an 18-month jail term for a popular actress who admitted breaking the country's strict laws on adultery.

Ok So-ri had sought to overturn the 50-year old legislation, which carries a maximum jail sentence of two years.

She said it was an infringement of human rights and amounted to revenge.

But in October the constitutional court ruled for the fourth time that adultery must remain a crime, saying it was damaging to social order.

Ms Ok has admitted having an affair with a well-known pop singer and her husband, Park Chul, is said to be seeking a severe sentence.

Ms Ok's lawyers have said the legislation has degenerated into a means of revenge by the spouse, rather than a means of saving a marriage.

The Korean Times says that in the past three years about 1,200 people have been indicted annually for adultery, but very few have been jailed. The case has created a sensation in South Korea, say correspondents, where many have denounced what they see as an archaic law.

The Government is urging tens of thousands of Women's Institute members to snitch on sex small ads in local newspapers.

But campaigners have slammed the move and say it will only drive prostitutes on to the streets - making them ten times more likely to be attacked.

In a speech to the WI, Minister for Women Harriet Hateman asked its 205,000 UK members to snitch to editors if they see the adverts in local newspapers.

She falsely claimed many of these sex workers are trafficked into this country and forced into prostitution.

However, representatives of the UK's estimated 80,000 prostitutes say Harman is grossly exaggerating the problem in order to launch an anti-immigration message - and a moral crusade.

Niki Adams, of the English Collective Of Prostitutes, told Sky News Online: It's appalling, it's absolutely terrible (what Harriet Harman is saying). It's ten times safer for women to work together in a house than on the street. And local newspapers are one of the few ways women have to advertise. This sort of thing will force them out on to the streets - is that what the WI wants?

She added: The Government has fabricated the trafficking figures to make it appear worse. They are putting together violence and prostitution. We know the difference between consensual sex and rape.

Pat Marshall, chairman of Hampshire WI, held back on criticising Harman: We are waiting to see what Harriet Harman has to say and will think about that in the light of our resolution, she told Sky News Online.

But a spokeswoman for the national group said members would be encouraged to look out for adverts and write letters of complaint to editors if they found them. If our members find the adverts, we ask them to write to the paper and report back to us so we can collate the results. We want our members to raise awareness of the damage that carrying these adverts can have on the lives of trafficked women and girls.

Two Britons found guilty of having sex on a Dubai beach are to be deported without serving any jail sentence.

Michelle Palmer and Vince Acors had appealed against their convictions.

They were caught on Jumeirah Beach on 5 July and fined £170 and sentenced to three months in prison in October.

The pair were freed on bail during the appeals process and a court has now withdrawn their three-month jail terms.

Hassan Matter, who represented the couple in court, said: The judge has cancelled the jail. He refused the prosecution appeal [for the sentences to be increased].

Palmer and Acors were found guilty of unmarried sex and public indecency at Dubai's Court of First Instance.

The new offence of paying for sex with person controlled for gain is so broad that it will be unworkable. Under existing laws controlling can include advising what to charge, and for gain currently means any financial advantage. Trafficking already includes providing food or transport on a journey – even giving someone a lift to a train station. Theoretically, the proposals criminalise a prostitute's landlord as well as her client.

And when clients are criminalised, the situation becomes impossible to police: just look at Sweden. Clients and sex workers won't testify against each other because it is in neither of their interests. Besides which, how would clients know that a worker was trafficked or not? The unintended consequence will be to force the sex industry further underground, where it is harder for workers to access services or help.

As for trafficking, the only official report from the police operation Pentameter 1 shows a tiny proportion, just 0.11%, of people in the sex industry have in fact been trafficked. A subsequent operation, Pentameter 2, found 167 trafficked people, which is still only 0.21%.

The proposals are based on myriad flawed and inadequate reports written by lobby groups who have a vested interest in the criminalisation of clients and the victim status of women. The many dubious ideologies behind these groups include the radical feminist thesis that all heterosexual sex is exploitation, a Marxist view that all work is exploitation, and a religious evangelism which argues that all non-procreational sex is wrong. The recent All Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution, chaired by Fiona McTaggart, was funded by a religious group with separatist feminists out in force.

...Read full article

A Romanian entrepreneur has come under fire for putting plastic prostitutes on the street to advertise his garden gnome business.

Neighbours in Lilieci, Bacau county, complain the realistic figures distract motorists and are an unsuitable sight for local children.

Cristi Birgu who has just set up his business, defends his advertising and says the dummies will remain outside his house to drum up trade. Apart from garden gnomes and prostitutes, he makes reproductions of Laurel and Hardy, Elvis, sports stars, cartoon characters and animals.

Birgu said: So far, my girls have attracted a lot of beeping from truck drivers but not too many customers. Sometimes I am afraid somebody might have an accident, arrested by the view, you know.

The new Australian Sex Party has had more than 1,000 membership applications since its launch this week, it says.

Convenor Fiona Patten said although she knew there would be a significant amount of interest in the political party, the numbers so far had taken her by surprise: People are sick of not being treated like adults when it comes to issues involving censorship and personal choices, and they're certainly sick of living in a nanny state, where religious minorities are influencing the agenda.

The curious thing about common sense is that it is so uncommon. Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, is so short of it that at times she seems uncommonly silly. Last week she unveiled a proposal about prostitutes that is clearly silly, regardless of one’s opinions about the control of prostitution.

Her central idea in these proposals is to make it illegal for anyone to pay for sex with someone who is being controlled for another’s gain. And, crucially, her plan placed the duty on the punter to discover whether the prostitute is controlled by a pimp, a trafficker in human flesh or a drug dealer. Ignorance would be no defence.

Anyone with a tittle of sense would see that this is unworkable and unfair. Yet Smith insists she sees no disadvantage at all, apart perhaps from the necessity of “marketing” the idea to men. I think she is going to have considerable difficulty marketing it to women as well, even to those who disapprove of prostitution in any form.

How could any punter, no matter how well meaning and fearful of the law, find out for sure that the woman of his choice is with him by her choice as well? If she is under duress, she will certainly deny it out of fear of her pimp or of the villains who have bought her into sexual slavery. So will everyone around her. If the punter comes to the wrong conclusion about her he will be prosecuted for a criminal offence, even though he thought he was within the law.

See article from timesonline.co.uk

Smith has just unveiled a steaming mess of new laws aimed at criminalising men who pay for sex with trafficked or exploited women. Ignorance of the girl's background will be no defence for punters, and men who knowingly pay for sex with trafficked women may be charged with rape.

You may ask yourself how a commercial transaction, no matter how distasteful or amoral it may seem to others, can be suddenly reclassified as rape. Answer: it can't.

This is just the worst kind of gesture politics from a politician desperate to recast herself in the rosy glow of sexual reform. Patronisingly, she sees every prostitute as a helpless victim. And to the suggestion that many 'trafficked' women are actually just economic migrants, she says: I do not buy that argument. End of.

Men need to think twice about paying for sex, says the Home Secretary, who wants to obliterate the sex industry by strangling demand for it - rather like trying to stop tooth decay by banning the baking of cupcakes.

Do you know, her naivety would be endearing, if it wasn't so petty and dangerous. Jacqui, there are lots of things that men need to think twice about, but as they usually go right ahead and please themselves anyway, what is the point?

Smith's mad ramblings and ideals, forged in the hairy armpit heat of Seventies feminism and untrammelled by a sliver of practical common sense ever since, make me want to scream. All she will succeed in doing is driving the trafficked women further underground - making them more vulnerable to deeper depravity - and undermining the country's rape laws while she is at it.

In all the years of New Labour lunacy, in all their obsessive, spirit-sapping social tinkering, has there ever been anything quite so mad, or ill thought out?

Last night the Norwegian Parliament voted in favour of making payment for sexual acts a criminal offence supposedly in order to protect vulnerable women and children. The law passed with 44 votes in favour and 28 against and will come into effect on 1 January 2009.

The legislation – inspired by neighbouring Sweden which criminalised the purchasing of sex in 1999 – is actually rather more robust than that of its next door neighbour, setting a new pace for prostitution law reform.

In the past two years police have rescued 251 women whom they believe were trafficked to Britain for sexual slavery.

The situation is shameful, but the proposal the government unveiled this week is no way to remedy it. This newspaper tends toward a liberal view of these matters, but even those who do not will find this amber light a waste of space. Better by far either to criminalise outright the purchase of sex or to legalise it and regulate what ensues.

Britain’s dilemma is not unique: all countries have prostitutes of varying sexes and nationalities. Some, such as New Zealand, have tried to minimise the problems that usually accompany the trade—violence, coercion, drugs, exploitation of minors and migrants—by allowing prostitutes to operate openly. This seems both fair to those who choose to sell sex and good for exposing any abuses

'Cerebrally challenged Home Secretary'

See article from dailymail.co.uk

Clearly there is no case whatsoever for the muddled, unworkable and downright unjust proposals put forward yesterday by our cerebrally challenged Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

Under her plans, it will be an offence for a man to pay for sex - but only if the prostitute is being 'controlled for another's gain' (meaning that she is the victim of trafficking, works for a pimp or is selling her body to pay her drug dealer).

If that sounds irrational, wait for the really mad part: if Miss Smith gets her way, it will be no defence for a man to prove he didn't realise a prostitute was working for a pimp (while if he did know, he may be charged with 'rape', further devaluing the meaning of the word).
Jacqui Smith

In many cases, therefore, it will be impossible for someone who pays for sex to know if he is committing an offence.

So the law of England - our most precious bequest from our ancestors - is to become a lucky dip, severely punishing some while letting others off scot-free.

But leave aside that affront to justice. How, in the name of sanity, does Miss Smith suppose her new law will succeed in her stated aim of protecting the victims of trafficking?

Wouldn't she achieve that far more effectively if she faced up to her responsibility to police our borders - or enforced existing laws against sex trafficking, for which convictions fell by 40 per cent last year alone?

The bitter truth is that Miss Smith's proposals are gesture politics of the lowest kind, defying all the principles of jurisprudence in a pathetic bid to please the feminist lobby.

Even by Labour's debased standards, this is bad law. It must be resisted.

Tough new measures announced today will protect vulnerable women and tackle the demand for prostitution by clamping down on sex buyers and kerb crawlers.

The announcement followed the completion of the government’s Tackling the Demand for Prostitution review.

The six-month review, published today, looked at what more could be done to protect the women being exploited for sexual gain. The review explored both legislative and non-legislative options, and drew from the experiences of other countries with similar issues, including Sweden and Holland.

In response to the review, the government has committed to running national marketing campaigns to raise the public’s awareness of the kerb crawling offence and the realities of trafficking.

This will be complimented by new enforcement guidance for the police to help bring people to justice.

Creating a new offence

The measures include a new offence, which will encourage men to think twice before paying for sex, and will protect women who have been groomed or trafficked into prostitution, or those who remain involved for fear of violence from a partner or pimp.

The new offence will mean that sex buyers will be liable for prosecution, even if they didn’t know that the prostitute was controlled by a pimp or had been trafficked. Sex buyers who commit the new offence will get a criminal record and up to a £1,000 fine.

The government is also giving police new powers to close premises associated with prostitution and is cracking down on kerb-crawlers by making sure that police can act on their first offence.

Home Secretary's statement

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said, I want to do everything we can to protect the thousands of vulnerable women coerced, exploited or trafficked into prostitution in our country and to bring those who take advantage of them to justice. That is why I am determined to shift the focus onto the sex buyer, the person responsible for creating the demand for prostitution markets which in turn creates demand for the vile trade of women being trafficked for sexual exploitation.

There will be no more excuses for those who pay for sex. This new criminal offence of paying for sex with someone who is trafficked or pimped will apply even if the buyer claims he did not know the woman was being controlled for gain.

'I also want to tackle kerb crawling. In my book, once around the block is once too many, and so I’m making kerb-crawling punishable as a first offence. I also want to see more naming and shaming of persistent kerb crawlers.

Minister for women and equality's statement

Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equality, said, Women are being trafficked for sexual exploitation into this modern day slavery. We have cracked down on the traffickers, but we also need to cut off the demand which fuels this evil trade - that’s why we will criminalise and hold responsible the men who buy sex from these vulnerable women.

Ignorance will be no excuse.

Association of Chief Police Officers' statement

Gloucestershire Chief Constable Dr Timothy Brain, ACPO lead on prostitution and vice matters, said, With these proposals the government has clearly signalled its intention to bring about a sea change in attitudes towards prostitution.

Any man who intends to pay for sex with a prostitute will have to think very carefully because it will be no defence in future to claim that they did not know someone was trafficked or controlled by someone else for gain.

Measures to close brothels are to be welcomed and will give police powers to protect neighbourhoods from the nuisance and harm they create.

'It is important to realise that this measure extends beyond trafficking and directly concerns domestic prostitution as well.

Poppy project statement

Denise Marshall, Eaves Poppy Project chief executive said, Eaves Poppy Project welcomes these new measures which seek to protect the increasing numbers of women exploited in prostitution in this country.

We are delighted that the government is taking a stance on this issue and will criminalise men who buy sex from these vulnerable women.

Notes to editors

The government's intention is to look at criminalising those who pay or offer to pay for sex with victims of these crimes, in order to deter the sex buyers who fuel illegal exploitative and coercive practices as soon as parliamentary time allows.

The Sexual Offences Act 1985 introduced two distinct offences which can be used to prosecute those who buy sex:

• kerb crawling (where someone solicits from a motor vehicle, or within the vicinity of a motor vehicle), for the purposes of prostitution, persistently or in a manner that is likely to cause annoyance to people in the neighbourhood
• persistent soliciting for the purposes of prostitution (effectively kerb crawling but without a vehicle)

The government now intends to remove the 'persistence' requirement from both offences, and in the case of kerb-crawling, to remove the alternative requirement of 'in a manner that is likely to cause annoyance to people in the neighbourhood'. The purpose is to make it possible to prosecute the kerb crawler in the first instance, increasing the deterrent to those who consider paying for sex on the street or in a public place.

At present, the police have no powers to close premises associated with the sexual exploitation of adults or children, unless there is sufficient evidence to warrant the use of a premise closure order or a crack house closure order. However, many places where sexual exploitation takes place will not be associated with anti-social behaviour or the use, supply or production of Class A drugs. This means that, in practice, premises that are subject to police investigations for offences relating to sexual exploitation can reopen and begin operating again quickly.

The government now intends to introduce a new order that allows for such premises to be closed and sealed for a set period, providing an opportunity for agencies to act swiftly and decisively to prevent further exploitation and abuse from taking place. The order will prohibit entry to the premises by any individual for a period of three months.

Ministers have been prevented from introducing an outright ban on paying for sex because they found that prostitution was too big a business and commanded too much public support.

A Home Office study released yesterday revealed a £1 billion market with 80,000 sex workers. It estimated that as many as 10% of men had used a prostitute at some point.

Jacqui Smith, the mean minded Home Secretary, has shelved plans to legalise small brothels - put forward when Tony Blair was in office - but has been unable to go farther and push through a ban on paying for sex, after a MORI poll indicated that 47% of people would oppose it.

Instead Ms Smith confirmed yesterday that she would introduce a criminal offence, with a maximum fine of £1,000, of paying for sex with a prostitute controlled for another person's gain. She will also start a campaign to discourage men from using prostitutes.

The Home Office report concluded that Britain was not yet ready to follow Sweden's ban on paying for sex. The Swedish Government created their offence only after several years of close consultation with practitioners and over time the attitudes of the Swedish public grew to support the proposed legislation.

In the UK, public attitudes are currently much more divided, suggesting that the Government needs to work to challenge the attitudes of sex buyers and the public as a whole before criminalising the purchase of sex per se becomes a viable option.

The Home Office is preparing an advertising campaign to highlight the connection between prosecution and people trafficking, of which about 4,000 women in Britain's sex industry are claimed to be victims. [but somehow only a few cases ever actually turned up]

The Home Office believes that the new measures will shame men who pay for sex by removing any ambiguity from possible offenders' minds about the potential consequences.

The man haters of New Labour will also terrorise men seeking sex: Under the new offence it will be irrelevant whether the sex buyer knew that the prostitute was controlled or not. It is argued that those who pay for sex will know that they could be paying for sex with a person who is controlled, and therefore they will think twice about what they are doing and their attitude towards those selling sex. This will also help to achieve the goal of reducing the size of the ‘sex market’ by sending a clear message that those who pay for sex should consider the potential implications of their actions.

Ministers are hoping that yesterday's changes, which will also allow kerb crawlers to be prosecuted for a first offence, will help to change the culture surrounding prostitution.

The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats said that the changes would have little effect and that the present laws should be enforced.

Further Information

Thanks to Donald

Sex And Prostitution Law Overhaul

Law 'will help trafficked women'
Smith on prostitution clampdown See also 'We need men to think twice about paying for sex'
Sex worker reacts to clampdown
Prostitute users face clampdown

Women's Hour

Prostitutes Speak Against New Law

Fair Trade Prostitutes

Based on article from ft.com

Jacqui Smith's plan to criminalise sex with illegally trafficked prostitutes offers an exciting new business opportunity - ethical sex trade.

Fair-trade prostitutes will not only be legally sourced but will be able to sign waivers making clear that they are here of their own free will.

A brothel reputed to be the largest in Europe has been overwhelmed with interest after offering free entry for life to customers who have its name tattooed on their arm.

The manager of Pascha, which houses more than 120 prostitutes across its 12 stories, did not expect any takers when he put up posters advertising the tongue-in-cheek promotion.

But more than 40 men have already come forward to have the name inked onto their arm in large blue letters, and the brothel's tattoo artist is having to work extra shifts to keep up with demand.

Men who have the tattoo will save the brothel's £4 (€5) entry fee for life and get discounts on other services like lap dances, but will still have to pay for their time with the prostitutes who are self-employed and independent from the brothel.

The Debenhams store in Oxford Street has been banned from playing Christmas carols after council bosses said the music created noise pollution.

Westminster council officials have ordered managers at the department store not to broadcast the festive music that traditionally accompanies its popular window display, and threatened it with prosecution if it does not comply.

Thousands of families normally flock to see the £100,000 display featuring moving reindeer and snowmen while listening to traditional carols such as Jingle Bells or Silent Night broadcast onto the street through four-inch speakers.

However, despite being played on one of the busiest and noisiest shopping streets in England, environmental health officials told the shop's management the music would have to be switched off because it constituted noise pollution.

Daniel Astaire, Westminster's cabinet member for community protection, said: If every business was allowed to blast its choice of music and advertising into Oxford Street a visit would become unbearable and inevitably affect trade.

The store offered to turn down the volume but this was rejected by the council.

An employee at the store, who wants to remain anonymous, said the music would cheer people during the credit crunch and branded the council killjoys.

He said: We've done this for decades and at a time of grimness it brings an awful lot of joy into people's lives at Christmas. We were more than happy to turn the music right down so only people standing inches from the window could hear it but he insisted it must be turned off or we would be prosecuted. We could understand the council's stance if were deliberately blaring out the usual Christmas songs by Slade with no regard for passers by. But this is a very gentle, very quiet, discreet piece, composed especially to appeal to children as they watch the show. It's clear that Scrooge is alive and well and working with the killjoys at Westminster City Council.

Internet shoppers will not have to pay customs duty on items they have bought for less than £105 from outside the EU. VAT will still be charged on most items that cost more than £18. (£30 for gifts)

The change, which comes into force on 1 December, extends the duty-free limit for goods bought online from £18, HM Revenue and Customs says.

Whether you are looking to get your hands on the latest computer game, designer clothes or DVDs, it is important to be aware of the law on customs charges, especially as this is about to change, said Doug Tweddle, of HMRC.

Import duties vary and are not charged on all goods, but are charged on items such as CD players (import duty rate of 9.5%), DVD players (14%), silver or gold jewellery (2.5%), or imitation silver and gold jewellery (4%).

Items such as mobile phones and books are already free from import duty charges set by the EU.

From Dec 1st 2008

• total price 0-£18 no VAT and no duty
• £18.01-£105 VAT payable but no duty
• £105.01+ VAT and duty payable

Aw Cummon...gi'us a swig

The author of a new briefing document reports on how drinking control laws give the police absolute, unchecked power.

Most police powers are kept on a tight leash. If the police want to arrest you, search your house, or confiscate your property, they can only do this in particular defined circumstances – and the whole procedure is closely documented and recorded.

Yet now there is a whole swathe of behaviour-policing laws, where police – or pseudo-police such as community support officers – are given powers to use however they want, against whomever they want, in whatever circumstances they want. They are being signed legal blank cheques. One key example of this is drinking control powers: within 800-plus control areas across the UK, police officers can now ask peaceable citizens to surrender their can of lager or ale, or to tip it down the drain. 

...Read full article

The Australian political party, with the slogan we're serious about sex, launches at Melbourne Sexpo on November 20th and party convenor Fiona Patten is confident it will gain the 500 members required to register and contest state Upper House and Senate seats.

Ms Patten, who is also the chief executive of the Eros Association - representing the adult retail and entertainment industry, said she and others were concerned about the Government's proposed internet filter, which is being tested over summer on about 10,000 sites to block unwanted content.

This really came out of 20 years of lobbying on sex and censorship and then... the latest being the compulsory internet filter, which will ... prohibit and blacklist adult material that is currently legal in magazines, books and film, she said.

Ms Patten said there had already been a lot of interest from potential members: We'll probably have our 500 members by the time we launch on Thursday. But there's four million customers of adult shops in Australia."

She also hoped the 1000 or so adult shops around the country would become Sex Party branches: Hopefully we'll get their attention with the word but then we may be able to help influence some reasonably sensible policies.

An introductory statement on the Australian Sex Party reads:

We're serious about sex.

Sex is a wonderful thing. It's the reason we were born and (mostly) its NOT the reason we die. Sex, as gender, defines who we are and often what roles we undertake in society. It's responsible for a heck of a lot of pleasure and fulfillment in life. Also, the basis of much art, fashion and music. It entertains us, enthralls us and mystifies us. Because its such a fundamental need of human beings, it conditions much of our behaviour. And then politicians go and legislate that behaviour.

The Australian Sex Party is a political response to the sexual needs of Australia in the 21st century. It is an attempt to restore the balance between sexual privacy and sexual publicity that has been severely distorted by morals campaigners and prudish politicians.

A political party based on sex is certainly a single-issue party but to choose a bad metaphor, its a very broad church. Economic, social welfare, environmental and even defense policies have got lots to do with sex and sexuality. All those big guns and huge surpluses...

If you're sick of religious and anti-sex politicians like Steve Fielding, Brian Harradine and Fred Nile threatening to block legislation in the Senate and State Upper Houses unless they get their way on sex and gender issues, vote for someone who understands this rort.

Vote for the Sex Party.

Paying for sex is to become a criminal offence in the UK and lapdancing clubs will face a stringent licensing regime

The Home Secretary has attacked the 'bizarre' practice of City firms entertaining clients in lapdancing clubs, on the eve of a government crackdown on the sex trade which is expected to criminalise most men who use prostitutes.

Jacqui Smith said she expected to see some lapdancing clubs, which have mushroomed in recent years, close and fewer new ones opened under reforms. She will outline plans this week to criminalise paying for sex with a woman controlled for another person's gain. The new offence will carry a hefty fine and criminal record, which could prevent those caught from getting jobs in sensitive occupations.

The legislation will cover women who have pimps or drug addicts who work to pay off their dealers as well as the rarer cases of trafficked women. This is expected to include the majority of Britain's 80,000 sex workers. Ignorance of a woman's circumstances will not be a defence. Kerb crawlers will be named and shamed, while those who pay a prostitute knowing she has been forcibly trafficked could face rape charges.

The measures are highly controversial, with critics arguing that men will seek other outlets if prostitution is driven off the streets. Smith said it was not mine or the government's responsibility to ensure that the demand is satisfied. Is this something about which people have a choice with respect to their demands? Yes, they do. Basically, if it means fewer people are able to go out and pay for sex I think that would be a good thing.

The prostitution review will be published this week, followed later this month by new licensing arrangements that are expected to see lapdancing clubs, currently licensed in the same way as pubs, subjected to the same stringent regime as sex shops, allowing local residents more opportunities to object.

he English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), which has vigorously opposed the clampdown, says outlawing paid-for sex between consenting adults will punish women who find this more lucrative than menial jobs. Forcing the trade underground would mean that the risks they are forced to take will be greater, said a spokeswoman.

Under the new offence, men would not be able to claim in court that they had not known the prostitute had a pimp or a drug habit. It won't be enough to say, "I didn't know", she said. What I hope people will say is, "I am not actually going to take the risk if there is any concern that this woman hasn't made a free choice." It would be quite difficult for a man paying for sex in the majority of cases not to fall under this particular offence.

What the new powers would provide:

• A new criminal offence of paying for sex with a prostitute 'controlled for another person's gain'.
• Kerb crawlers to be liable for prosecution after their first offence.
• The possible expansion of a scheme in Lambeth, south London, which has impressed ministers, in which offenders are routinely named in local press.
• A stricter licensing regime to make it harder for lap-dancing clubs to open in residential areas.

Sex toys amounting to P10,000 were seized during a series of police raids in several stalls in Manila's Quiapo and Sta. Cruz districts.

The raids were in response to Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim's directive to intensify the campaign against illegal sex toys being sold in the city, said Superintendent Romulo Sapitula, of Manila Police: My men will continue to monitor the area and we will conduct relentless operations to prevent the proliferation of the sex toys.

Among the items seized were sex rings, sex dolls and dildos.

Police had been receiving information that sex toys, along with fake Viagra pills, are being sold openly in the areas.

A man known as the Naked Rambler has been cleared of committing a breach of the peace after leaving Barlinnie Prison on 14 October with no clothes on.

Stephen Gough was acquitted at Glasgow Sheriff Court yesterday, but was rearrested in the foyer.

Police in the Malaysian state of Perak want the state government to either stop issuing entertainment licences to errant operators or tighten the rules in a move to combat prostitution.

The only way for us to keep these activities under control is by getting the state government to intervene. We need them to help us by revoking entertainment licences given to notorious operators or by tightening the rules and monitoring the outlets closely, Perak police chief Deputy Comm Datuk Zulkifli Abdullah told reporters.

He also urged the state government to make it mandatory for karaoke operators to use glass windows in each of their karaoke rooms at their outlets: It would be easier for us to keep watch on what is going on behind the walls in the rooms. There are operators who even have special cubicles to hide their guest relations officers or prostitutes during our raids.

DCP Zulkifli said that the appeal to the state government comes in the wake of the 18% rise in arrests made on foreigners engaged in vice activities across the state this year: We arrested a total of 987 foreigners, mostly from China, some from Indonesia, Vietnam and other countries, in 305 raids conducted from January to October this year.

Black & Decker battleaxe grinder

US power tool maker Black & Decker has received a hammering from a Swedish advertising censor for an advert described as degrading to women.

The Swedish business sector's Ethical Council against Gender Discriminatory Advertising (ERK) slammed an advert that promised beauty treatments for the wives of men who bought its products.

The Black & Decker ad earlier this year promised customers a pleased wife guarantee, offering beauty treatments worth 350 kronor ($43 dollars) to the wives of men who bought spent more than 1,500 kronor on its tools.

Through this text, the council finds that (the company) conveyed an outdated view of gender roles in which women are expected to be placated with beauty treatments while men buy tools, ERK said in its ruling: This is degrading for both women and men. The ad is thereby gender discriminatory.

ERK, which is made up of representatives of Sweden's main advertising companies, has no power to impose sanctions on companies it finds guilty of discrimination.

All alcohol advertisements should be banned in Northern Ireland in an effort to repress the region's drinkers.

The legislative assembly heard that raising the age limit for buying alcoholic drinks in off licences from 18-21 and outlawing two-for-one and happy hour promotions in bars and clubs are also among a series of repressive measures proposed by the SDLP.

The SDLP also called for a social responsibility tariff imposed on all licensed premises to ensure they contribute to the cost of policing the night-time economy.

The initiatives were outlined by Foyle MLA Pat Ramsey during a debate on the problems surrounding alcohol misuse in Northern Ireland.

Ramsey acknowledged that while some of his party's proposals could be legislated for by the Assembly others were devolved matters.

Britain's largest dedicated human trafficking police unit is being shut down just a year after it was set up because of Home Office spending cuts.

The Metropolitan Police's Human Trafficking Team will cease work next year because its budget has been withdrawn following the decision by the Home Office to cut its yearly funding for human trafficking investigations from £4m to £1.7m.

The Met's Human Trafficking Team was set up in March 2007 and was designed to actively target gangs who bring women to the UK as sex slaves and children as forced labourers. It is estimated that more than 4,000 people are currently in the UK as a result of having been trafficked.

The Home Office yesterday insisted that the funding for the unit was always intended to be time-limited. However, when it was launched last year, the Home Office made no mention of this. Instead, the Home Office minister, Vernon Coaker, said: This new team will be a specialist unit dedicated to targeting the global criminal networks that profit from this modern day slave trade. Those involved in the trafficking of men, women and children can expect to feel the full weight of the law.

However there have been a handful of cases of trafficking successfully prosecuted recently:

Based on article from enfieldindependent.co.uk

A man who held a teenage girl in sex slavery at his Enfield home has been jailed. Mentor Brahimi pimped out his 19-year-old victim from a property in Enfield for a month, in March this year.

She had just been brought to the UK by an Eastern European gang, when Brahimi’s wife promised the teenager a room in a safe house, which she saw as an escape route.

But the offer was nothing but a trick and she was forced to sell her body for sex to stay there. She eventually escaped on April 23 and alerted police.

Brahimi was convicted and sentenced to five years for trafficking women and four years for controlling prostitution. He was also handed a three-year jail term for cocaine possession and a year for money laundering.

DC Chris Ansell, of the Met’s clubs and vice unit, said: Brahimi subjected a young and vulnerable woman to repeated sexual abuse to line his own pocket. To exploit a woman who had already been trafficked over from Romania to work as a prostitute shows cruelty in the extreme.

Based on article from news.bbc.co.uk

Thai brothers who led an internet sex gang which made millions by exploiting trafficked women have been jailed. The women were charged up to £30,000 by the gang to repay their travel "debts".

Bordee Pitayatankul was jailed for 15 months. His brother Pongpoj was given 18 months at Southwark Crown Court. Seven other members of the gang were also jailed.

Gang members admitted to various offences including conspiring to launder money and plotting to control prostitution between 1 January 2005 and 21 April 2008.

Up to 70 women worked from at least 20 brothels across London, including Bayswater, Kensington and Paddington, to raise the money they were told they owed the gang.

The Oriental Gems website set up by the gang featured the women accompanied by a photo gallery showing them naked or semi-naked. It also listed their sexual specialities with prices ranging from £150 for one hour to £1,500 for an overnight stay.

Passing sentence, Judge Christopher Hardy said: It cannot be right in this day and age that women coming to this country should be, in effect, sold off like slaves to work in this or any other trade for free until their debt is expunged.

Police estimate that the business was making a conservative £800,000 a year at one stage, with the gang pocketing a minimum of £3.2m. Although officers have seized £179,000 they are yet to trace huge assets thought to be hidden abroad.

The judge said authorities should decide whether those convicted should be deported. Confiscation hearings will be held next year.

There a number of proposals being highlighted in the run-up to next month's Queen's Speech.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will shortly announce an overhaul of prostitution law, making it an offence for a man to buy sex from a prostitute if she is 'controlled for the gain' of another person. This is expected to be so widely drafted that it could cover up to nine out of 10 sex workers, not just those trafficked into the sex trade but those controlled by pimps or even by drug habits.

Ministers hope that while it will technically remain legal to pay for sex so long as a woman agrees freely, many men will be frightened off because it will be so difficult to be sure any particular prostitute falls into that category.

Burkha is the new bikini

Bali Police chief Insp. Gen. Teuku Ashikin Husein said his institution had no option but to enforce the new pornography law in the province.

I have no option. The police must enforce every positive law in the country, he said in Denpasar, as quoted by Tempointeraktif.com.

Ashikin said the law would be implemented through a government regulation which had yet to be established.

Last week, Bali's governor and speaker of the provincial legislature announced that the province would not be able to enforce the newly passed law, saying it was not in line with Balinese philosophical and sociological values.

Bali leaders and members of the public have united in an organization named the Bali People's Component to challenge the new law through the Constitutional Court.

The Harriet Hateman Committee

House of Commons debates
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Oral Answers to Questions — Solicitor-General

Fiona Mactaggart (Slough, Labour):

What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the review of demand for prostitution; and if she will make a statement.

Vera Baird (Solicitor General, Redcar, Labour):

I have discussed with the Home Secretary a number of measures to address the problems of prostitution arising from the demand review. They were mainly announced by the Home Secretary in September, and included improvements to the legislation on kerb crawling, new powers to close brothels, greater restrictions on lap dancing clubs and a new offence of paying for sex with someone who is controlled for another's gain. The full results of the review will be announced this month.

Fiona Mactaggart:

I thank the Solicitor-General for that reply. The last of those offences announced by the Home Secretary—the offence of having sex with someone who is controlled for gain—mirrors an offence in Finland. Is the Solicitor-General aware that there have been no prosecutions since the Finnish offence was introduced?

Vera Baird:

No, I did not know that. However, I do not think that that is an inherent defect of the offence, and I am not sure that the two offences are identical. We prosecute those who control prostitutes for gain, so prosecuting people who pay for sex with a person who has been prostituted for gain goes with the grain of what we do already. We all know that a very high percentage of prostitutes are controlled for another's gain, so one might think that there is a 90 per cent. chance that any man who buys sex will fall foul of this law. We will have to design its finer points later, but we have every hope that it will make a significant difference and be a significant deterrent.

Burkha is the new bikini

Indonesia watched its new anti-pornography law leap into action last weekend, as police raided a Jakarta nightclub and arrested three employees. The officers detained three erotic dancers in the raid. The women now face up to 10 years in prison.

The new law retains a broad definition of pornography that many fear could be abused by law enforcers and radical organizations. The law is wide open to interpretation and could even apply to voice, sound, poetry, works of art or literature, says Kadek Krishna Adidharma, one of many Balinese who see the law as an attempt by the Indonesian Muslim majority to impose their will on the rest of the country: Anything that supposedly raises the libido could be prosecutable.

The law has a long list of possible offenses. Anyone displaying nudity could be fined up to $500,000 and jailed for up to 10 years. Public performances that could incite sexual desire have been banned, and civil society groups will be allowed to help enforce the legislation.

While it is true that pornographic magazines and pirated DVDs are easily available in Indonesia, advocates for the rights of religious and ethnic minorities say the problem will not be righted by the new legislation. They point to existing provisions in the criminal law as sufficient to deal with the problem, and complain that the new law poses a threat to non-Muslim Indonesians. The law imposes the will of the majority that embrace Islam, is a form of religious discrimination and against the spirit of tolerance taught by the country's founders, says Theophilus Bela, chairman of the Christian Communication Forum.

Four provinces with sizeable non-Muslim populations — Bali, Yogyakarta, Papua and North Sulawesi — have already rejected the law and said it will not be enforced in their regions. It remains to be seen how and if that will be tolerated by Jakarta. Major protests are planned for this month in Bali, where the governor has been a vocal opponent of the law and pledged that it will not be implemented. Many Balinese are now calling for greater autonomy and say dire consequences lie ahead if their demands are not met. There is even a possibility that Bali will ask to separate from Indonesia, says Rudolf Dethu, a Balinese who has helped organize protests against the law: It's that serious.

Jack & Jacqui Jack: Have you got your ID card yet? Jacqui: Yes, but I lost it!

Passport fees to jump by a third to more than £100 to pay for fingerprinting. The Home Secretary Jacqui Smith also revealed that the cost to taxpayers of new identity cards will double from £30 to £60.

The huge rises were necessary to pay for taking facial readings and fingerprints for new biometric passports and ID cards.

From 2012 identity and passport service estimates that around seven million UK residents will apply for a card or a passport - with each person having to provide their fingerprints, photograph and signature in person.

This means that the additional cost of a biometric passport or identity card will be £28 each, on top of the £72 charge for a new passport. The cost of paying for an identity card will jump from £30 to £58.

The fee for a new passport has increased fourfold in the past 10 years, from £18 in 1997 to £72 today. If the fee in 1997 had increased by the annual rate of inflation it would be £23.67 today.

In a speech by Smith at the Social Market Foundation in London, Smith also revealed that some ID cards will be handed out next year to members of the public who were keen to have one.

Anyone who wants a card can register their interest on a website. They would be then selected at random to become early adopters of the cards. The cards will enable holders to travel around Europe without a passport.

ID cards will be compulsory for 20,000 airside workers at two airports - City of London and Manchester - from next Autumn, although the cost of registering them will be paid for by the Home Office.

From Nov 25 this year, ID cards are compulsory for foreign nationals who come to Britain for more than a holiday.

Today, according to the Government's own Mori poll, 59% of people agree that prostitution is a perfectly reasonable choice of work; and 37% would not be ashamed if a family member worked as a prostitute. It is surely time to decriminalise it. Yet Jacqui Smith wants to criminalise kerb crawlers ever more severely and to give police and councils the power to close brothels, throwing women on the streets. There is rightly proper concern about the trafficking of young girls, and their exploitation and violent abuse by pimps and drug dealers. The spiral of such depravity is a scar on our cities. But pitching such interests in a war with the police can only aggravate matters.

There is, whether we like it or not, a compelling need for many men to have sex without strings, sex with a stranger that is over and done with once the cash has changed hands. Throughout history they have found ways of doing so, whether with sacred temple maidens or in the garrison brothels set up to serve fighting armies. We can chase it up and down the legal ladders, hound it down dark alleys and squalid bedsits, but its persistence tells us that we won't eradicate it. So let's face up to the fact and make paying for sex legal. That way we can site and inspect brothels where it suits the community, women can have their health and welfare monitored and their drug problems treated.

...Read full article

Nutters are pressing for another change in the law on prostitution, which would see sex for sale in the Capital's saunas outlawed. They want an outright ban on buying sex, which would apply not just to clients of street prostitutes but also those who visit saunas or private flats.

And they hope the change could be achieved through tabling an amendment to a bill already being considered by the Scottish Parliament.

A number of MSPs from different parties have indicated support for making the purchase of sex illegal. But independent Lothians MSP Margo MacDonald branded the move futile and said it could make the situation worse.

Evangelical nutters of CARE have asked the Scottish Parliament's justice committee to add a clause to the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Bill, which it is currently scrutinising, to outlaw the purchase of sex. Lawrie Hutton, executive director of Edinburgh City Mission is another religious nutter to back the call.

And Labour backbencher Paul Martin said he would not rule out tabling an amendment: Public perception is probably that this is something which is already illegal.

Fellow Labour MSP Marlyn Glen and SNP MSP Sandra White voiced their backing and Scottish Tory deputy leader Murdo Fraser said the campaigners had made a good case.

Glasgow City Council is also pressing for a ban on the purchase of sex. Ann Hamilton, the council's lead officer on prostitution, said the new law on kerb-crawling was helping to combat street prostitution, but some women were continuing their trade elsewhere.

But Margo MacDonald said the Swedish example showed outlawing prostitution did not work: If the aim is to eliminate prostitution, it has been proven in Sweden to fail. It simply drives prostitution underground. It makes it infinitely more dangerous for the women because of the way organised crime is moving in and taking over.

Gordon Brown's ministerial team. Left to right: Women's Issues, Patriotism & Jingoism, Religious Observance, Fun & Recreation, Men's Issues

Harriet Harman says firms should not take staff to lap dancing clubs

She urged firms to sign up to a new morality charter that would prevent employees paying for trips to see strippers on expenses.

Harman, a no-sex object and minister for women, was speaking as the Fawcett Society launched a campaign to urge firms to challenge sex-object culture at work.

It includes banning the use of use of lap dancing clubs in corporate entertaining and stopping staff from accessing pornography in the office.

The charter is backed by the likes of BT, Barclays Wealth and Matrix Chambers.

However the suggestions were criticised by the Lap Dancing Association.

Kate Nicholls, the association's secretary, said: This campaign is another aggressive attempt to see our clubs shut down and tens of thousands of professional dancers put out of work.

The Fawcett Charter is another attempt to stigmatise a legitimate industry, constructed by people who oppose it on moral grounds.

Lap dancers have taken part in a protest against government plans to reclassify them as sex workers.

Nutter campaigners against the clubs want them to be relabelled as sex encounter establishments and say councils should be given more control to ban them and to charge higher licence fees.

But the Lap Dancing Association, which represents a third of the industry's clubs, claims this would stigmatise performers. Its members say sexual activity does not take place in regulated clubs and their businesses were already controlled under the Licensing Act 2003.

They said they are subject to numerous policies which regulated their activity and the reclassification was unnecessary.

On Tuesday, Lap dancers Lynsey Catt, Sian Wilshaw, Katherine Martinez, and Sharon Warneford presented a petition with nearly 3,000 signatures to Number 10 Downing Street, on behalf of the association.

Elaine Reed, a spokeswoman for the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen's Clubs chain, said: The workers within our industry are absolutely horrified that the Government are trying to rebrand us as part of the sex industry. The feeling is that if these changes are made the whole face of the industry will change, and not for the better

A Home Office spokesman said it was looking into the matter and intended to introduce changes to the the law at some point in the future.

Do the incentives this sets up seem weird?

You let a man solicit you for sex, and then you say hey, I'm suing you?

Seems like an incentive for women luring men and then turning on them, no?

See article from newsmill.se (in Swedish):

The Johns shall pay damages to prostituted persons

Politicians to the right and left agree how the payingforsex law should be redefined.

The law against paying for sexual services was adopted to acknowledge that sex buyers exploits and damages the prostituted. To give those victims of sex discrimination the right to seek damages under civil rights law is in line with that acknowledgement, writes 9 Swedish MPs* and American feminist/lawyer Catherine A. Mackinnon**

….

Giving lots of references to Melissa Farley’s research, the article argues that a civil remedy for prostituted persons to claim damages from sex buyers would empower those who need empowerment.

The amendment would define prostitution as a civil rights violation against women, and allow women who claimed harm from prostitution to sue the sexbuyers for damages in civil court .

*including lawyer and former Ombudsman of equality Claes Borgström
**MacKinnon has already tried this in the US together with Andrea Dworkin -see under pornography here.

Wowser Stephen Conroy:  I am not a wowser ...BUT... I will ban hardcore porn

Online pornography will be caught in the Rudd Government’s compulsory blacklist internet filter, the Australian Media and Communications Authority (ACMA) has confirmed.

Any website that is subject to a complaint and classified RC or X18+ will be added to the blacklist, an ACMA spokesman said: This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity

Legal X18+ pornography in the territories will not be immune, the ACMA spokesman added.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy: This is not an argument about free speech. As I have already said, [...BUT...] we have laws about the sort of material that is acceptable across all mediums and the internet is no different.

Currently, some material is banned and we are simply seeking to use technology to ensure those bans are working. The National Classification Code determines content against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults.

ACMA received 1122 complaints about online content in 2007/08 resulting in 15 take-down orders and 781 recommendations to makers of online filters.

A third of those 796 blocked websites were classified X18+ for actual sexual activity between consenting adults, with the remainder refused classification for depiction of a sexual fetish or fantasy, violence, or a child.

A separate filter, dubbed the Clean Feed, will further block a range of material unsuitable for children. Adults will be able to opt out of the Clean Feed, but not the illegal content filter.

• www.myspace.com/nocleanfeed
• www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=32318174194

Proposition K failed to gain voter approval in San Francisco and lost by 16 percentage points. It proposed to van the enforcement of the states anti-prostitution laws.

The result so far is that with 98% of precincts counted. Yes - 42%. No - 58%. (The measure required a simple majority to pass).

Meanwhile, this election's wackiest ballot measure, Proposition R - which would rename a city sewage plant after George W Bush - went down the shitter by 31% in favour to 69% against.

Corrosive cynicism, fuelled by politically nihilistic blogs and a retreat from dispassionate reporting, is endangering British political discourse, Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, will tell a Hansard Society conference today on growing political disengagement in Britain.

She will lambast the growth of a hermetically-sealed professional political class and call for a support network on the lines of the political women's action group Emily's List to help more people from ordinary careers into full-time politics.

In a hard-hitting speech, she will warn that the fall in turnouts among working class voters in some British cities is now so marked that it amounts to a reversal by stealth of 19th century reforms that spread the franchise.

All political parties will have to learn how to use the web as a campaign and fundraising tool, she will say, and how to engage ethnic minority groups and the working class.

We are witnessing a dangerous corrosion in our political culture, she says. In part she will blame a shrinking and increasingly competitive newspaper market which demands more impact from its reporting - the translation of every political discussion into a row, every difficulty a crisis, every rocky patch for the prime minister into the worst week ever.

She will, however, also turn her fire on some political bloggers.

Perhaps because of the nature of the technology, there is a tendency for political blogs to have a 'Samizdat' style. The most popular blogs are rightwing, ranging from the considered Tory views of Iain Dale, to the vicious nihilism of Guido Fawkes. Perhaps this is simply anti-establishment. Blogs have only existed under a Labour government. Perhaps if there was a Tory government, all the leading blogs would be left-of-centre?

But mostly, political blogs are written by people with disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy.

Until political blogging 'adds value' to our political culture, by allowing new voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair.

Jack & Jacqui Jack: Good one Jacqui, can't wait to read the consultation results. Jacqui: No need to wait, we just listen in to what people are saying

Internet black boxes will be used to collect every email and web visit in the UK under the Government's plans for a giant big brother database, The Independent has learnt.

Home Office officials have told senior figures from the internet and telecommunications industries that the black box technology could automatically retain and store raw data from the web before transferring it to a giant central database controlled by the Government.

Plans to create a database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit made in the UK have provoked a huge public outcry. Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, described it as step too far and the Government's own terrorism watchdog said that as a raw idea it was awful.

Nevertheless, ministers have said they are committed to consulting on the new Communications Data Bill early in the new year. News that the Government is already preparing the ground by trying to allay the concerns of the internet industry is bound to raise suspicions about ministers' true intentions. Further details of the database emerged on Monday at a meeting of internet service providers (ISPs) in London where representatives from BT, AOL Europe, O2 and BSkyB were given a PowerPoint presentation of the issues and the technology surrounding the Government's Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), the name given by the Home Office its database monstrosity proposal.

Whitehall experts working on the IMP unit told the meeting the security and intelligence agencies  said the technology would allow them to create greater capacity to monitor all communication traffic on the internet. The black boxes are an attractive option for the internet industry because they would be secure and not require any direct input from the ISPs.

During the meeting Whitehall officials also tried to reassure the industry by suggesting that many smaller ISPs would be unaffected by the black boxes as these would be installed upstream on the network and hinted that all costs would be met by the Government.

A source close to the meeting said: They said they only wanted to return to a position they were in before the emergence of internet communication, when they were able to monitor all correspondence with a police suspect. The difference here is they will be in a much better position to spy on many more people on the basis of their internet behaviour. Also there's a grey area between what is content and what is traffic. Is what is said in a chat room content or just traffic?

A spokesman for the Home Office said that Monday's meeting provided a chance to engage with small communication service providers ahead of the formal public consultation next year.

The age for securing a marriage visa to enter the UK is to be raised from 18 to 21 in an effort to crack down on people being forced into relationships, the government announced yesterday.

The change to the immigration rules will come into force on 27 November and will mean both the intended husband and wife will have to be 21 before a marriage visa can be issued.

Owners of lap dancing clubs across Britain have joined forces to oppose attempts to make it more difficult for them to obtain licences.

Next week lap dancers are to hand in a petition to Prime Minister Gordon Brown urging him not to reclassify them as sex establishments.

They stress that while lap dancing is a sexy industry, sex is not for sale.

The Government look set to change the law to make it easier for local councils to refuse licences for clubs where customers pay to watch semi-naked women dancing.

But Kate Nicholls, secretary of the Lap Dancing Association (LDA) yesterday said: Britain's lap dancing clubs have been the subject of political and media debate in recent months.

The LDA shares concerns about unregulated or inadequately controlled establishments offering lap dancing. The LDA proposes a mandatory code of operating standards for the industry.

The LDA offers its own code of practice as a blueprint for this. A code of practice which would ensure any licensed premises offering adult entertainment must adhere to principles of professionalism, safety and transparency, would go some lengths to addressing residual issues within the industry.

The LDA insist that local authorities do have the power to reject a licensing application for a lap-dancing club, and quote an example in her own Durham constituency: By way of example, in a recent case in Durham, a council ignored objections from local residents and the Magistrates Court reversed their decision, showing how effective and influential local complaints can be. The reality is that planning and licensing restrictions give local authorities and local communities full powers of consultation, complaint and control.

Utrecht plans to clean up prostitution in the city after strong indications that most women are forced into working the streets.

Camera surveillance will be introduced to show whether women are put under pressure and brothels will have to apply for licences. Police, the courts and health care workers will exchange more information in the future.

Utrecht does not want to go as far as Amsterdam and Alkmaar, where many red light area premises have been closed.

Update:

Based on article from enews20.com

One by one, authorities in cities across the country are stepping up their efforts to regulate, scrutinize and generally clean up the country's sex business.

This week the mayors of the cities of Alkmaar and Utrecht followed moves by Amsterdam in 2007 to toughen regulation and reduce the ability of the sex trade to act as cover for and cause of other illegal activities.

The mayor of Utrecht, Aleid Wolfsen, announced that the entire area of Zandpad in the city would be placed under CCTV surveillance.

Prostitution itself is legal in the Netherlands, with companies operating brothels being required to obtain a licence before they can open for business.

Brothels are required to list individual sex workers as employees. It is a bureaucratic procedure, which doesn't provide the authorities with information on whether or not the women were employed voluntarily.

This is why Wolfsen wants to change the law, requiring individual prostitutes to apply for a licence themselves.

Utrecht will also make it easier for prostitutes to report crimes and criminals to the police and get help, Wolfsen said.

The Mayor of Alkmaar Piet Bruinoge announced that the city would not be renewing the license of the JE Nool company, which operates 95 out of the 125 brothels in Alkmaar's Achterdam Street. Authorities in Alkmaar, north of Amsterdam, said that JE Nool did not fulfill the terms of the 2003 law, known as BIBOB.

The city of Alkmaar says it has no intention of closing down the prostitution zone entirely: If brothels observe Dutch law, they will be given a licence.

Alkmaar police have now been authorized to stop passers-by in the prostitution zone, and perform so-called random preventive searches for weapons or hard drugs.

Utrecht authorities have also said they will use the law in their own red-light districts.

Local authorities are claim that Latin words are elitist and discriminatory, and have ordered employees to use often-wordier alternatives in documents or when speaking to the public.

Bournemouth Council has listed 19 terms it no longer considers acceptable for use. They include ad hoc, bona fide, status quo, vice versa and even via.

Mary Beard, a Cambridge professor of classics, said: 'This is absolutely bonkers and the linguistic equivalent of ethnic cleansing: English is and always has been a language full of foreign words. It has never been an ethnically pure language.

Harry Mount, author of the best-selling book Amo, Amos, Amat and All That, a light-hearted guide to the language, said: Latin words and phrases can often sum up thoughts and ideas more often than the alternatives which are put forward. They are tremendously useful, quicker and nicer sounding. They are also English words. You will find etc or et cetera in an English dictionary.

Of other local authorities to prohibit the use of Latin, Salisbury has asked staff to avoid the phrases ad hoc, ergo and QED, while Fife has banned ad hoc as well as ex officio.

The credit crunch is already starting to bite at the industry, early in October the Wildcats group which had 8 clubs mainly in the north of England went into administration.

It’s understood that former MD Matt Haycox has bought the Leeds and Harrogate clubs off the receivers and that most of the others are now shut and on the market.

I understand also that as well as Wildcats Aphrodite’s in Blackpool has also closed and that several other clubs in that run down resort are closed or close to closing.

Also closed are Walsall’s “Cobra Lounge” club which is being converted back into a traditional pub and the UK’s first club “Route 66” in Park Royal.

An attempt to open a club in Tunbridge Wells has also been abandoned for the moment.

Indonesia Goes Burkha

The House of Representatives pushes through an overly broad bill that could energize Islamic fundamentalists even more

Analysts and critics are warning that the bill will embolden the country’s already-unswerving Muslim fundamentalists.

Provisions of the Bill

• Article 29
  Any person who manufactures, produces, duplicates, reduplicates, distributes, broadcasts, imports, exports, makes for sale, trades in, leases or makes available pornography shall be punished with a prison term of 6 months to 12 years and/or a fine of Rp250 million or Rp6 billion.
   
• Article 30
  Any person who makes available pornography …shall be punished with a prison term of 6 years and/or a fine of Rp250 million to Rp6 billion
   
• Article 31
  Any person who loans or downloads pornography…shall be punished with a maximum prison term of 4 years and/or a fine not to exceed Rp2 billion
   
• Article 32
  Any person who exhibits, possesses or stores pornography shall be punished with a maximum prison term of 4 years and/or a fine not to exceed Rp2 billion
   
• Article 34
  Any person who consents to be a pornographic object or model shall be punished with a maximum prison term of 10 years and/or a fine not to exceed Rp5 billion
   
• Article 36
  Any person who exhibits themselves or others in a performance…that contains nudity, sexual exploitation, coital acts or other pornographic content shall be punished with a maximum prison term of 10 years and/or a fine not to exceed Rp5 billion.

...Read full article

Update: Papua Protests

5th November 2008. Based on article from radioaustralia.net.au

About a thousand Christians in the Indonesian province of Papua have protested against an anti-pornography bill passed by parliament last week, saying it conflicts with their traditional culture.

The protesters say the bill, which has the support of a number of Islamic parties, could threaten Indonesia's national unity.

Minority groups, especially Christians and Hindus, say the new law is too vague, and a threat to artistic, religious, and cultural freedom.

From 1999 onwards, Sweden began penalising people who patronise prostitutes (through fines, jail terms of up to six months, and “naming and shaming”), while treating people who sell their bodies as victims.

The Swedish experience is finding imitators in several countries—including England and Wales where people will soon be liable to prosecution for “paying for sex with someone forced into prostitution…or controlled for another’s gain”. It is also becoming easier for English and Welsh police to prosecute people (either pedestrians or motorists) who solicit sex on the street. In Scotland, kerb-crawling was banned a year ago.

But what is really happening in Sweden? The policy of penalising clients or “johns” enjoys widespread consent. It was introduced by a centre-left administration, despite opposition from the centre-right. Now it is accepted by all Sweden’s main parties. The authorities say the number of streetwalking prostitutes fell about by 40% during the first four years of the new regime. Swedish politicians say they have made their country a bad destination for traffickers. But a sceptic might retort that by driving prostitution away from Sweden, the authorities have simply exported it, sending sex-hungry Swedes to nearby countries or else to Thailand.

Moreover, a sex-workers’ association in Sweden says the law makes life dangerous for those who ply their trade secretly. A life of dodging between apartments and exchanging furtive texts can leave women more reliant on pimps. Another argument is that fear of prosecution reduces the chances that clients will report the exploitation of under-age girls or boys.

Some drawbacks of doing things the Swedish way have been noted in more established quarters. A report by Norway’s justice ministry, in 2004, cited evidence of an “increased fear of attack” among Swedish prostitutes, who found it harder to assess their clients because transactions had to be agreed hastily or on the telephone.

...Read full article

Pub-goers in Aberdeen are facing a drugs test before entering bars as part of a unbelievably shitty policy by Grampian Police.

Officers in the force will be the first in Scotland to use an Itemiser - a device which can detect traces of drugs from hand swabs in a matter of seconds.

The test is voluntary, but customers will be refused entry if they do not take part. They could be searched and even arrested if traces are found.

The Itemiser allows police officers or door staff to swab customers hands as they enter a pub or club. It can tell almost instantly if drugs are present - including cocaine, cannabis, heroin and ecstasy.

The device can show three possible results: green, amber or red. Customers who get a green reading are allowed entry to the pub, those who get amber are given a drug information pack and those who get red could be searched by police.

If drugs are found on that person they could be arrested and a report could be sent to the procurator fiscal.

Police said the device deters unwanted drug dealers. [and no doubt an awful lot of innocent customers]

Det Supt Willie MacColl, national drugs co-ordinator for the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA), said: This project offers an opportunity for collaborative working to implement an alternative intervention that will help change attitudes and reduce demand for controlled drugs. We hope that over time the model can be developed and used by community partnerships in other towns and cities across Scotland to reduce the harm caused by drugs.

The Itemiser is already being used in pubs in England where concerns have been raised about the possibility of customers getting a positive reading simply by touching a surface where there are traces of drugs.

Indonesian bikini compromise

In a move of defiance against the controversial Indonesia pornography bill, Bali's governor and speaker of the provincial legislative council declared Friday the province would not be able to enforce the newly passed law.

In a two-point written statement, signed by Governor Made Mangku Pastika and Speaker Ida Bagus Putu Wesnawa, Bali made its historic mark as the first region ever to publicly declare an inability to implement a law passed by the House of Representatives.

With the passing of the porn bill on Thursday, we hereby declare that we cannot carry it out because it is not in line with Balinese philosophical and sociological values, Pastika said at the council building here.

We further implore every element of the Balinese public to keep calm, stay alert, not be easily provoked and maintain the appropriate atmosphere to maintain the integrity of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia.

However, the legal force of the declaration remains unclear. Pastika did not elaborate on how the declaration would affect the island, calling it simply a statement from the people of Bali.

Asked whether the provincial administration would pursue a Constitutional challenge, Pastika said he and other leaders were still considering it, adding a legal challenge was the next most viable option.

The previous governor, Made Dewa Beratha, even stated during the bill's first introduction to the public in 2006 that Bali might as well declare independence if the bill was passed.

Update: Support

6th November 2008. Based on article from thejakartapost.com

Members of Bali's tourism industry declared their support Tuesday for efforts to legally challenge the recently passed pornography bill, calling the bill a violation of individual rights and an egregious monopoly on cultural values.

Head of Bali Tourism Board (BTB) Ida Bagus Ngurah Wijaya said the industry was ready to support any legal challenge made to the pornography bill, including the plan by the Bali People's Component (KRB) to file a judicial review with the Constitutional Court.

He regretted the passing of the bill, saying it was a violation of personal rights and a blatant attempt to standardize public values: Thus we are in full support of KRB's attempt to have a judicial review of the bill.

He further applauded the island's leaders, Bali Governor Made Mangku Pastika and Speaker of the Bali Provincial Legislative Council (DPRD) Ida Bagus Putu Wesnawa, who last Friday had declared that the province would not carry out the law because it was not in line with the island's philosophical and social values: That was indeed representative of our Balinese feelings as a community. We salute and support the governor and DPRD speaker.

Owners of Tel Aviv "massage parlors" (a euphemism for brothels) forbid prostitutes working in them to use condoms because in a police raid they would be evidence that the establishment is for paid sex.

A Health Ministry spokeswoman says that an increase in sexually transmitted diseases has been registered recently among prostitutes and their clients.

Revital, 33, who has been working in such parlors for the last four years, tells Haaretz: I live in fear of police raids and don't even have basic protection. Some clients bring their own and then it's all right. Sometimes I hide condoms in my bra or in paper but it always involves fear - either from the owner who might catch me or from not using the condom.

Dozens of these outfits are spread in industrial areas in the central region and south Tel Aviv. Many of them have a legal business license but provide illegal sexual services. The sign at the entrance says massage parlor but the addition of the word spa indicates sexual services.

The prostitutes tell callers that they give a regular massage, but in the end provide release in the [client's] underpants. Everyone understands that this is no ordinary spa, she says. The women are supposed to provide only a massage but there are always 'extras' - the men always suggest sex in addition to the massage, she says.

Both the man and woman are naked, he is allowed to touch and stroke her and the massage includes sexual relief. Afterward, if the client wants 'extras' [Revital's term for fellatio and sexual intercourse] he can offer more money and the woman can agree.

The brothel operators say they provide only massages but they are the ones making a profit while we're taking the risks, says Revital.

Nikita runs a successful massage parlor in the central region. She blames the police: I'm angry that the women can't use condoms. I see how stressed they are. They cannot protect themselves.

But due to repeat police raids Nikita says she cannot keep condoms on the premises. Condoms are evidence and cause for opening a criminal investigation for running a brothel. So my girls have to hide them on their person. Most of the women desperately need the money and neglect their health, although getting sick could be much worse for them.

A police spokesman said that the police enforce the law. We investigate brothel ads and open cases for offenses related to prostitution, women-trafficking, pimping and running brothels.

Control Room: Westminster Refuse Revenue Collection Service

More than half of town halls admit using anti-terror laws to spy on families suspected of putting their rubbish out on the wrong day.

Their tactics include putting secret cameras in tin cans, on lamp posts and even in the homes of 'friendly' local snitches.

The local authorities admitted that one of their main aims was to catch householders who put their bins out early.
dustbins

Many councils have been spying on residents and fining them if they put rubbish out on the wrong day

The shocking way in which the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - an anti-terror law - is being used was revealed through freedom of information requests made by the Daily Mail.

Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty said: Snooping appears to have become the favourite pastime in town halls up and down the land. Common sense has gone out of the window and instead of putting out more bins, councils spy on householders as if they were terrorists.

Although it is ostensibly an anti-terror law, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, or RIPA, is worded so loosely that it can be used to justify surveillance operations for a variety of reasons. These include spying to protect public health or the economic well-being of the UK. This 'means' that councils can use the powers granted by the Act to monitor families' treatment of household waste.

The revelations have raised fresh concerns about the Home Office's plans to create a 'Big Brother' database of every citizen's e-mail and internet records.

Ministers say that councils will not have access to the information. But critics point out that RIPA, which was passed as anti-terror legislation, is now being routinely used by town halls - and the same could happen with the database.

Phil Booth, of the NO2ID campaign, said that public bodies were assembling the tools of a totalitarian state.

Officials with Sweden’s Road Administration (Vägverket) have denied a driver’s request for a licence place with what at first glance appears to be a completely innocent combination of characters.

Recently, the agency received a request from an individual who wanted a licence plate reading X32IARO. Despite no obviously offensive reference in the desired combination, Vägverket nonetheless rejected the application.

When read in reverse, as it would be seen through a rear-view mirror, X32IARO suddenly appears nearly as ORALSEX.

The guiding principle is that a licence plate shouldn’t be offensive, regardless of whether it’s read forwards or backwards.

The Foreign Secretary was urged to make a formal protest to the Spanish government over online racist abuse of Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton.

The FIA, the sport's world governing body, and McLaren, Hamilton's F1 team, have condemned a voodoo-style website in Spain where hundreds of abusive messages, many of which refer to Hamilton's colour, have been posted.

Visitors to the site – about 20,000 to date – are encouraged to drop imaginary nails, pins or porcupines on a mock-up of the Interlagos circuit, in Sao Paulo.

Hamilton will take to the circuit on Sunday for the Brazilian Grand Prix, needing only to finish in the top five to become the youngest champion in Formula One history.

Labour MP Keith Vaz, the chairman of the party's Ethnic Minority Taskforce, condemned the abuse and said more action needed to be taken. He urged the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, to make a formal protest to Spain asking them to stop the abuse.

A local bar sign

The owner of the Ginger Pop shop - a shrine to the children's author, Enid Blyton, who lived nearby - has received hate mail branding her a racist and urging her to stop selling the rag dolls.

Viv Endecott has also received verbal complaints which she has informed the police about.

She insists the golliwogs are harmless soft toys synonymous with Enid Blyton who regularly featured them in her famous books, including Noddy.

In recent years the golliwogs have been 'cleansed' from the novels as many people began to see them as a crude racial stereotype.

But Miss Endecott claims there is demand for the toys in the Dorset village of Corfe Castle - immortalised in Blyton's Famous Five books. She said she has sold more than 500 in the last six months to customers of varying ages and ethnic backgrounds.

She said despite the complaints she will continue to sell the doll: No offence has ever been intended by me and therefore none should be taken.

Councillor Gary Suttle, leader of Purbeck District Council, said: 'I can understand why she is selling them because they are part of the heritage of Enid Blyton. There is a great move in this country to be politically correct and sometimes it goes beyond its remit. I don't think she is in anyway being non-PC. Four people may have complained but 500 people have bought them, so I would err on the side of democracy.'

Adnan Chaudry, chief officer of the Dorset Race Equality Council, said golliwogs had no place in today's society, even in Enid Blyton country.

Indonesian bikini compromise

Indonesia's parliament has passed an anti-pornography law despite furious opposition to it.

Islamic parties said the law was needed to protect women and children against exploitation and to curb increasing immorality in Indonesian society.

The law would ban images, gestures or talk deemed to be pornographic.

Artists, women's groups and non-Muslim minorities said they could be victimised under the law and that traditional practices could be banned.

The law has prompted protests across Indonesia, but particularly on the predominantly Hindu island of Bali - a favourite destination for tourists.

Critics particularly do not like a provision in the bill that would allow members of the public to participate in preventing the spread of obscenity. We're worried it will be used by hard-liners who say they want to control morality, Baby Jim Aditya, a women's rights activist, told Associated Press news agency.

This law will ensure that Islam is preserved and guaranteed, said Hakim Sori Muda Borhan, a member of parliament from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party.

The bill must be signed by the president before it comes into effect.

Violators face up to 12 years in prison and hefty fines.

A Private Members' Bill seeking to re-licence lap-dancing clubs as Sex Encounter Establishments with repressive new guidelines has been dropped.

The Bill had been proposed by Dr. Roberta Blackman-Woods under the Ten Minute Rule but has now been dropped at its second stage.

Although private members' bills rarely became law, Blackman-Woods has created a great deal of publicity for the campaign.

The Government have signalled that they will pick up the suggestion for future legislation.

In the early hours of Oct. 1, a fire broke out at an Osaka video parlor, killing 15 people and injuring nearly a dozen others. A man has been arrested for arson and murder. The issue has highlighted such video parlours in the Japanese press.

So what goes on at private video parlors?

Private video parlors include small, usually one-person cubicles for viewing in individual privacy on the premises.

Cubicle charges are usually based on 15-minute, 30-minute or one-hour increments. Charges vary, but in major cities rates run between ¥500 and ¥1,000 per hour.

Adult videos constitute up to 90% of the selection at most private video parlors. The nonadult fare often includes Hollywood action films, Chinese martial arts films and Japanese anime. Most customers are men.

A typical private booth will have a large, comfortable chair that, in some cases, can be extended into a bed. A TV set with DVD player, VHS recorder and remote control are always present, and most cubicles have earphones. There are also tissues and wet towels.

The more upscale private parlors are similar in design to the more upscale Net cafes and karaoke rooms, and offer similar services, including refreshment areas with free soft drinks, coffee and tea, and light snacks. A visitor can usually bring food and drinks into a private booth.

Do private video parlors provide sexual services?

Some places do. In recent years, a growing number of establishments have started offering female customer service representatives, women who knock on the door while the customer is watching a video and for a fee offer a variety of sexual services.

In a study of Japan's underground economy published last year, economist Takashi Kadokura noted the rates for such services range between ¥2,000 and ¥5,000 on average, about 10% of the cost of a "soapland" sex parlor and a third of the cost of a visit to a "fashion health" sexual massage establishment.

The advantage to the women, Kadokura said, is that they keep half or more of their pay, and the quick turnover of customers ensures high profits for both the women and the establishments.

In addition, police warn that men who use private video booths run the risk of being secretly filmed, as some establishments have been caught selling videos of customers to magazines and video production companies that target the gay community.

Osaka police have submitted a bill to the prefectural assembly that would ban the operation of establishments that introduce customers to women and establishments providing sexual services. The bill is expected to be debated later this year.

Pioneering adult film director Gerard Damiano died Saturday of complications from a stroke. He was 80.

Damiano is best known for directing the adult film classics Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones.

The theatrical release of Deep Throat in 1972 created the phenomenon of porno chic, making it acceptable for couples and celebrities to attend X-rated movies and changing the way the public viewed explicit sex on screen.

During the late '60s and early '70s, Damiano directed sexploitation docs and marriage manual films including We All Go Down (1969), Changes (1970), and Sex USA (1971). These early skin flicks made Damiano part of a circle that included performers Harry Reems, Jason and Tina Russell, Jamie Gillis, Fred Lincoln, Marc Stevens, and Shaun Costello.

But it was Deep Throat that defined Damiano's career and revolutionized adult cinema. Shot in six days on a shoestring budget in Miami, the Linda Lovelace classic became an instant box-office smash and a cultural event whose impact continues to be felt today.

By the time Damiano made his follow-up film The Devil in Miss Jones in 1973, he had become the adult film world's first real auteur.

Actress Georgina Spelvin, who played the part of Miss Jones in the seminal film, met Damiano through Harry Reems. Spelvin wrote about her first encounter with a real fuck-film director in her recently published memoir The Devil Made Me Do It. What's a nice girl like you doing in a porn shop like this? Damiano asked Spelvin. It was the beginning of a warm friendship that would last for 35 years.

Damiano went on to direct other acclaimed, high-profile adult features including Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974), The Story of Joanna (1975), The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue (1981) and Night Hunger (1983). Outside the X-rated genre, he made the little-seen '70s horror film Legacy of Satan.

Millions of British travellers, unwittingly or otherwise, break the permitted limit for overseas purchases of £145.

Customs officials regularly conduct sweeps on flights arriving from New York, Dubai and the Far East.

Some old lags ditch the receipts for their new clobber before coming back through Customs, and even snip the labels out of clothes to make their provenance harder to determine.

Others are genuinely appalled to learn that retail therapy on Fifth Avenue or along Singapore's Orchard Road can land them with a hefty bill for duty and VAT.

From 1 December, though, life becomes easier for big spenders. While duty-free allowances for tobacco, alcohol and fragrances stay the same, the limit for "other goods" is to rise from £145 to £340 – just in time for that Christmas shopping trip you promised yourself.

18% of all British men have visited prostitutes. This represents a 3% increase in the number of men who have visited a prostitute since 2002. Usage of prostitutes is highest among men aged 35-54 (26%), and 14% of married men have also visited a prostitute.

In addition to the 9% who have previously used prostitutes, 6% of those who have not done so would consider paying for sex in the future.

In total, 27% of British men have either visited a prostitute or would consider doing so in the future.

A majority believe that prostitution should be legalised. However, the proportion of Britons who believe that prostitution should be legalised is falling. In 2002, 61% said that prostitution should be legalised compared with 51% in the latest survey. Men are significantly more likely to favour legalisation, while a majority (57%) of women would oppose it.

The 16-24 age group are, by a considerable distance, the most likely to oppose legalisation (69%).

A sample of 1,044 UK adults aged 16+ were interviewed by ICM Research in September 2008.

Sweden's Court of Appeal has rejected a kennel owner's request to appeal a sexual orientation discrimination case he lost after he refused to sell a dog to a customer because she was in a lesbian relationship.

During a phone call to the kennel owner enquiring about a puppy advertised for sale, the lesbian woman mentioned her partner. The owner then refused to sell the puppy to her.

In her explanation for denying the woman her puppy, The Local reported: the kennel owner made reference to earlier contacts she'd had with transvestite couples, saying she'd read that transvestites are connected to animal pornography.

Sweden's Ombudsman Against Discrimination on Grounds of Sexual Orientation took the case to court. The kennel owner must now pay 20,000 kronor (£1,608) in damages.

Clerics have issued an edict banning tomboys in Malaysia, saying that girls who act like boys violate the tenets of Islam.

Under the fatwa, girls are forbidden to have short hair and dress like boys.

Harussani Idris Zakaria, who attended the meeting of the National Fatwa Council, said an increasing number of Malaysian girls behave like tomboys, and some of them engage in homosexuality.

He said the council's ruling was not legally binding because it has not been passed into law, but that tomboys should be banned because they are sinful: It doesn't matter if it's a law or not. When it's wrong, it's wrong. God created them as girls, they must act like girls.

Malaysian media have reported on recent incidents of school bullying among girls, which have been caught on film and circulated on the internet. In one film, some girls are seen beating up another girl in a bathroom.

A well-known Malaysian Muslim actress caused an uproar last year when she shaved her head bald for a film. Harussani and other muftis urged Muslims not to watch the movie, arguing that the actress had violated Islam by making herself look like a man.

San Francisco would become the first major U.S. city to decriminalize prostitution if voters next month approve Proposition K — a measure that forbids local authorities from investigating, arresting or prosecuting anyone for selling sex.

The ballot question technically would not legalize prostitution since state law still prohibits it, but the measure would eliminate the power of local law enforcement officials to go after prostitutes.

Proponents say the measure will free up $11 million the police spend each year arresting prostitutes and allow them to form collectives.

Even in tolerant San Francisco the measure faces an uphill battle, with much of the political establishment opposing it. Proposition K has been endorsed by the local Democratic Party. But the mayor, district attorney, police department and much of the business community oppose the idea, contending it would increase street prostitution, allow pimps the run of neighborhoods and hamper the fight against sex trafficking, which would remain illegal because it involves forcing people into the sex trade.

Some form of prostitution is already legal in two states. Brothels are allowed in rural counties in Nevada. And Rhode Island permits the sale of sex behind closed doors between consulting adults, but it prohibits street prostitution and brothels.

Police made 1,583 prostitution arrests in 2007 and expect to make a similar number this year. But the district attorney's office says most defendants are fined, placed in diversion programs or both. Fewer than 5% get prosecuted for solicitation, which is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.

In an attempt to restrict growing prostitution, Ukrainian law enforcers have adopted a new method of writing unpleasant notes to the parents of those arrested in connection with the sex trade, the Sehodnia newspaper reported.

The letter-writing campaign is aimed to repress the trade by bringing parental pressure to bear on prostitutes, said Aleksey Lazarenko, an internal ministry spokesman.

We inform the parents their daughter was arrested at the moment she was selling her body, Lazarenko said: As soon as the parents of one girl found out how their daughter was earning a living, there was such a scandal in the household, that (the prostitute) had no quiet at home for an entire week, and she quit the business.

The programme has had a wide-reaching effect on the prostitution industry nationwide by reducing dramatically numbers of prostitutes on the street, as most feared rows with their parents more than police, according to the report.

Prostitution is technically illegal in Ukraine but laws against it are rarely enforced by poorly-paid police. Economic hardship and limited career options for women have pushed tens of thousands of Ukrainian women to sell sex.

Ukraine's government has declared the situation a national disgrace but nonetheless low-cost streetwalkers and bordellos are a common feature not just of all major Ukrainian cities, but most small towns and even some remote villages.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to sue a publishing company unless it withdraws a Sarkozy doll that comes with a voodoo manual telling readers to plant pins in it.

The doll is emblazoned with some of Sarkozy's most famous quotes such as Get lost you pathetic arsehole -- his words to a bystander who refused to shake his hand at a farm show last year.

Readers are encouraged to plant pins in the quotes.
Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy has instructed me to remind you that, whatever his status and fame, he has exclusive and absolute rights over his own image, his lawyer Thierry Herzog wrote to publishers K&B in a letter published by newspaper Le Monde.

Herzog said Sarkozy would sue the publishing firm if it didn't respond and pull the product. K&B has issued 20,000 copies of the manual and doll.

Tradesmen working for UK local authorities are to be asked to report signs of child abuse and neglect as they visit the homes of council tenants.

The plumbers, electricians and carpenters will be issued with a checklist of signs to look out for. Training will last just half a day.

But critics believe the use of workers untrained in such a highly complex field could backfire. They say that children who are at real risk could be overlooked because social workers with already bulging caseloads could be bombarded with baseless complaints.

One of the first councils to pilot the scheme will be Lincoln, which later this month is expected to approve the policy under which about 200 front-line staff will be given four hours’ training on child abuse, with 600 backroom or office workers attending even shorter awareness briefings.

The front-liners include any employee who visits homes as part of his or her job, including rent officers. Council-employed sports coaches and leisure-centre staff, who come into daily contact with children, will also be trained.

Child welfare charity AIMS condemned the idea as ‘ludicrous’. Its spokeswoman Jean Robinson said: This will just lead to a huge increase in the number of false cases being reported and you won’t be able to find the needle because the haystack will be so vast.

This is a highly complex area and not one for amateurs. Of course, if anyone, council employee or not, saw a child who was clearly being beaten or starved, their basic humanity would hopefully lead them to report it but the idea of council plumbers and carpenters being semi-trained and seen as some sort of child-abuse spies by the people they are supposed to be serving is rather sinister.

Jack & Jacqui Jack: Good one Jacqui, but isn't it a little expensive. Jacqui: Wait until you see my proposals for Citizen Data Non Disclosure Charges

Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, faces a revolt from her senior officials over plans to build a database monstrosity holding information on every telephone call, e-mail and internet visit made in the UK.

A significant body of Home Office officials dealing with serious and organised crime are privately lobbying against the plans, a leaked memo has revealed.

They believe the proposals are impractical, disproportionate, politically unattractive and possibly unlawful from a human rights perspective, the memo says.

Their stance puts them at loggerheads with the spy-masters at GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, who have been driving through the plans.

The Home Office rebels appear to have forced Smith to stall plans to announce a bill in the Queen’s speech authorising the database. She has instead ordered her officials to review the proposals.

This weekend a top law enforcement body further dented the government’s case for the database. Jack Wraith, of the data communications group of the Association of Chief Police Officers, described the plans as mission creep. He said there was an inherent fear of the data falling into the wrong hands: If someone’s got enough personal data on you and they don’t afford it the right protection and that data falls into the wrong hands, then it becomes a threat to you.

Smith is already studying less explosive but equally effective alternatives. One option involves a system based on sending automated requests to databases already held by telephone and internet firms.

Update: DPP Unimpressed

22nd October 2008. See article from independent.co.uk

Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), told ministers not to "break the back of freedom" by creating irreversible powers that could be misused to spy on individual citizens and so threaten Britain's hard-won democracy.

Poland are abusing Euro warrants We'd better invade

The number of extradition cases being dealt with in the UK courts has reached record levels, fuelled by a number of "trivial" requests from Europe that have exasperated the police and clogged up the system, the Guardian has learned.

Up to 1,000 extradition cases are expected to have been dealt with by the end of the year, more than double the number last year, and four times the number in 2006 according to figures from the City of Westminster magistrates court, which handles all extradition hearings.

The increase is largely down to the volume of European arrest warrants (EAWs), many of them issued by Poland.

EAWs, requiring the arrest and extradition of suspects from one EU country to another, are being used by Poland for a large volume of trivial extradition requests, according to Detective Sergeant Gary Flood of Scotland Yard's extradition unit.

He estimated that 40% of all extradition cases dealt with by the Metropolitan police originated in Poland, adding that many of the offences were so minor they would lead to either a caution or no investigation at all in England and Wales.

In one case, according to Flood, a carpenter who fitted wardrobe doors and then removed them when the client refused to pay him, was subject to an extradition request by Poland so that they could try him for theft. In another case, the Polish authorities requested the extradition of a suspect for theft of a dessert. The European arrest warrant contained a list of the ingredients, Flood said.

Although Poland is not the only culprit - a Lithuanian was extradited last year on a charge of piglet-rustling - it has made the most requests by far.

According to Flood the volume of cases from Poland has forced the Metropolitan police to start chartering special planes to return suspects to Poland. We now arrange for a Polish military flight every three weeks, he said.

The number of requests from Poland and other eastern European countries is due to the absence of a filtering process to weed out cases that are not worth prosecuting.

Jack & Jacqui Jack: We'll need an army to sift through this überdatabase Jacqui: Funny you should say that, take a look outside!

Anyone buying a new mobile phone will have to show a passport as proof of identity and be registered on a national database, it was claimed last night.

But civil rights organisations warned the move represented another serious step on the way to creating a surveillance society in the UK.

It is understood any such move would apply to Scotland because it would come under the terms of the Data Protection Act, which is reserved by Westminster. It would also have to apply to the whole of the UK if it was to be effective in tackling terrorism.

According to a newspaper report last night, the office of Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, said it anticipated that a compulsory mobile phone register would be unveiled as part of a law which ministers would announce next year.

A spokeswoman was quoted as saying: With regards to the database, that would contain details of all mobile users, including pay-as-you-go. We would expect that this information would be included in the database proposed in the draft Communications Data Bill.

The creation of the register would affect the owners of all 72 million mobile phones in the UK. But it is the owners of the country's 40 million prepaid mobiles who are the real target.

The move aims to close a 'loophole' in plans being drawn up by GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, to create a huge database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.

The 'Big Brother' database would have limited value to police and MI5 if it did not store details of the ownership of more than half the mobile phones in the country.

Simon Davies, of Privacy International, was quoted as saying he understood that several mobile phone firms had discussed the proposed database in talks with government officials.

The article claimed that contingency planning for such a move is already thought to be under way at Vodafone, where 72% of its 18.5 million UK customers use pay-as-you-go.

Yes Gordon, of course people will believe this is all about terrorism. Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it

This supposedly "informal" G6 group usually seem to manage to "policy launder" their decisions via the wider, full membership of the European Union, and then they can pretend that their latest Orwellian control fantasy which they are inflicting on our freedoms and liberties, has somehow been imposed on them by the EU, and is necessary to meet "international commitments", even though they themselves instigated the original policy.

From Hansard:

Written Ministerial Statements Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Home Department G6 and United States Counter-Terrorism Symposium

Jacqui Smith (Home Secretary; Redditch, Labour)

The informal G6 group of Interior Ministers from France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom met in Bonn, Germany on 26 and 27 September 2008, along with the United States State Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. This was the third G6 plus US counter-terrorism symposium meeting. I attended on behalf of the United Kingdom.

The symposium was divided into four substantive discussion sessions:

[...]

remote searches of computer hard drives;

[...]

Is this a further development of what the German government has been attempting recently ?

Presumably this involves intrusive access to remote computers, by means of some sort of spyware, computer virus, trojan horse backdoor etc., or by on the fly deep packet inspection and sniffing of passwords or other security credentials,

A nationwide women’s organization in Ukraine has risen to publicise their country as a location for sex tourism. A nutter organisation, FEMEN, has started on a nationwide roasdshow of a 50­person, awareness raising campaign.

The women members have condemned the entire tourism management of Ukraine, for making it one of the crudest sex destinations in the world. This is insulting to us [women] and it harms the country’s image since we’re increasingly becoming a country of destination for tourists whose sole purpose is to have sex with our women, complained Anna Hutsol, the leader of FEMEN.

Hutsol also points out that Ukraine women are faced with several embarrassing questionnaires and situations in other countries as well as in getting visas for travelling abroad.

The huge bevy of splendid beauties and the variety in sexual extravagance is what that pulls in the maximum of the crowd to the destination. Named and renamed as sex destination, Ukraine abounds in opportunities ready to be explored sexually at any hour.

Besides the nutter organizations, the government is also taking a keen eye on improving the social and moral status of the country. The government officials as well as the media are also seeking out ways to stop the sexual rampant in the country.

However, government officials reveal that it is quite difficult to count tourists coming to have sex in the country. The growing amount of sex tourists entering Ukraine has not escaped us, but it is very difficult to measure their numbers, said Andriy Shenin, an expert at the state tourism administration. The government also records a plethoric rate of prostitution that is visibly prevalent in Ukraine.

Referring to the growing rate of prostitution as a form of legal profession, Anna Hutsol says Most women I spoke with are ashamed and do this out of poverty but some also do it out of material desire. The immensely low-paying stipends and the rising unemployment amongst the graduates have led these young and fresh graduates to seek the toughest way of easy income. [talk of advertising what you are trying to ban!]

Two Britons who have been jailed for three months for a sexual liaison on a beach in Dubai insist they are "innocent" and will appeal against their sentence.

Michelle Palmer and Vince Acors met at a £60 all-you-can-drink champagne brunch in July and were arrested hours later by police who claimed they had been having sex on the public Jumeirah beach.

Judge Hamdi Abul Khair, who has presided over their case at Dubai's Court of First Instance, sentenced them to three months imprisonment, fined them 1,000 dirhams (£155) each for drinking alcohol and ordered their deportation after their sentence.

But he did not make clear whether the sentence related purely to the charge of indecent behaviour or the charge of sex outside marriage.

The unfortunate couple will remain on bail in Dubai pending the appeal, which will be lodged after the judge issues a formal explanation of his verdict, in two weeks.

Hassan Mattar, defence lawyer for the pair, said: "The verdict shows that the judge was convinced that they did not have sexual intercourse but he punished them for the indecent act of kissing (in public).

Senior persecutor Faisal Abdelmalek Ahli said: The sentence is rather light. I expect the prosecution to appeal.

Under the law of the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is part, the maximum sentence for sexual intercourse outside of marriage is one year imprisonment and the minimum is three months, he said. The same applies for committing an indecent act in public.

Ahli said he expected Acors and Palmer to serve their full three-month term in Dubai: Sometimes people serve half their sentence, but this is so short I expect they will serve it all.

Playboy Enterprises will stop making DVDs in the coming year as part of an effort to cut costs and shift the company's focus to online content distribution.

In a report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Playboy estimated that phasing out DVD production will help save the company $12 million in annual expenses.

CEO Christie Hefner wrote in a memo to employees that Playboy will continue to increase its digital content delivery while exiting the DVD business in phases over a period of several months.

Jacqui Smith plans broad new Big Brother surveillance powers. Telephone calls, internet use and email will be monitored by the police as part of a broad extension of the ability of the state to snoop on citizens.

Ministers were already planning a massive Big Brother database to log data contained in emails and phone calls but have decided to go even further in view of the current threat level.

The original proposal, which was this week criticised by Lord Carlisle, the independent reviewer of anti-terror laws, had been due to be put before MPs in the Communications Data Bill next month.

However, in a speech, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, announced that she was delaying the Bill in order to expand the extent of surveillance powers open to the security services, while consulting further on the best way to win public support for the plan.

In the speech to the IPPR think tank, Smith said communications data was not at present being routinely stored, and needed to be if terrorists and serious criminals were to be prevented from striking. The plan would not include recording the contents of people's messages and appropriate safeguards would be put in place, but Smith said it was "vital" to maintain Britain's capacity to combat terrorism.

She added: There are no plans for an enormous database which will contain the content of your emails, the texts that you send or the chats you have on the phone or online. Nor are we going to give local authorities the power to trawl through the database in the interests of investigating lower level criminality under the spurious cover of counter-terrorist legislation.

Snooping extension to gaming and social networking sites

Based on article from guardian.co.uk

The government is drawing up plans to give the police and security and intelligence agencies new powers to access personal data held by internet services, including social network sites such as Facebook and Bebo and gaming networks.

At present, security and intelligence agencies can demand to see telephone and email traffic from traditional communications services providers (CSPs), which store the personal data for business purposes such as billing.

The rapid expansion of new CSPs - such as gaming, social networking, auction and video sites - and technologies such as wireless internet and broadband present a serious problem for the police, MI5, customs and other government agencies, the security sources say.

Sites such as Bebo and Facebook provide their services free, relying mainly on advertising for income. They do not hold records of their customers, many of whom in any case use pseudonyms.

Criminals could use a chat facility - they are not actually playing the game but we can't actually get hold of the data, said one official.

Criminal terrorists are exploiting free social networking sites, said another Whitehall security official, who added that the problem was compounded by the increasing use of data rather than voice in communications: People have many accounts and sign up as Mickey Mouse and no one knows who they are. We have to do something. We need to collect data CSPs do not hold.

Whitehall officials say that with the help of GCHQ - the electronic eavesdropping centre with a huge information storage capacity - the government is looking at different options that will be put out for consultation. They declined today to spell out the options but said that whatever is decided will need new legislation.

Despite this reticence, it is clear that the government wants to be able to demand that the new generation of CSPs collect data from their customers so the security services can access them The response from the networks is likely to be hostile, not least because of the potential costs involved.

If the government, as expected, offers to pay for any new data access scheme, it is likely to cost taxpayers billions of pounds.

The plan will need international cooperation since many of the new CSPs are based abroad, notably in the US.

Opposition: Winston Smith vs Jacqui Smith

Based on article from independent.co.uk

Jacqui Smith faces a parliamentary backlash over Orwellian plans to intercept details of email, internet, telephone and other data records of every person in Britain. Labour MPs joined opposition parties in expressing doubts about plans announced by the Home Secretary which could lead to a vast database of information about Britons' calls and internet habits.

They warned that MPs, emboldened by the Government's decision to ditch plans to hold terrorist suspects for up to 42 days without charge, would not accept this extension of state power.

The scale of the Government's ambitions to hold data on email, internet and phone use emerged as government sources made it clear they needed new powers to obtain details of social networking sites on the internet, video sites, web-based telephone calls and even online computer games.

Civil liberties campaigners have expressed horror at the plans. Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, warned: Extreme caution needs to be taken. The Government needs to ensure that information-gathering is targeted and wiped and not collected just because it's possible."

Labour left-winger John McDonnell called the proposals Big Brother gone mad, while Ian Gibson, Labour MP for Norwich North, added: There is not a lot of confidence that we can hold on to data we collect already.

The plans were condemned by the Government's own terrorism watchdog. Lord Carlile of Berriew QC, the independent reviewer of anti-terrorist laws, said the raw idea of the database was awful and called for controls to stop government agencies using it to conduct fishing expeditions into the private lives of the public.

Police find it difficult to close down lap dancing clubs because their customers are usually well-behaved, a vice squad chief has told MPs.

Chief Inspector Adrian Studd, of the Metropolitan Police, said local residents often wanted officers to take action on "moral" grounds.

But the police were restricted to crime and disorder laws.

He told the Commons culture committee such clubs were usually well-run and had a high staff ratio to customers.

Often people look for a moral decision, which is sometimes very difficult for police and local authorities to make, said Chief Inspector Studd, of the Met's clubs and vice unit.

He added: It is true to say there is no evidence they cause any crime and disorder, or very rarely, because they tend to be fairly well-run, they tend to have a fairly high staff ratio to customers, the people who tend to go there tend to be a bit older, so they don't tend to drink so excessively and cause... problems outside.

The government has said it is considering a change in the law so that the clubs are categorised as "sex encounter" establishments - the same as sex shops. This would mean stricter rules about what is allowed to take place inside but Chief Inspector Studd suggested that even this might not make it any easier for police to take action.

In the few local authority areas where lap dancing clubs were regulated in this way, the rules, on how close customers can come to the dancers, for example, had proved difficult to enforce.

With the best will in the world, when you get into the fine detail of it, as we have tried to do, on a couple of occasions, it's incredibly difficult to try and do that, added Chief Inspector Studd.

Sex sells, filmmakers learned early on, and when the subject is immigrant Swedish girls forced into prostitution, you've struck box-office gold.

Traffic in Souls takes its inspiration from lurid tabloid headlines decrying the exploitation of young women new to New York. By some counts, the papers reported, as many as 50,000 a year were kidnapped and disappeared into white slavery.

It seems that ludicrously inflated trafficking statistics isn't a phenomenon limited to the modern age.

Traffic in Souls was shot on location in New York during the silent era. George Loane Tucker's 1913 film was made for $25,000, a high price for 1913, and its success helped establish Universal Pictures. It's now available for the first time on DVD.

It opens as the vice ring picks up two unsuspecting Swedish girls, fresh off the boat and done up in braids and bonnets. After being escorted to the Swedish Employment Agency, they're held hostage in what turns out to be a den of iniquity.

The plot focuses on a determined shop girl named Mary (Jane Gail), and her efforts to save her sister who's a victim of the prostitution ring. With her cop sweetheart (Matt Moore), Mary begins her own investigation and finds that William Trubus, (William Walsh), a respected society luminary and philanthropist who runs the International Purity and Reform League, isn't so pure after all.

Not surprisingly for this genre, the league is actually a front for the prostitution ring. Using a device that's the brainchild of her inventor father, Mary gets the evidence that puts the villain behind bars.

Traffic in Souls is no masterpiece, but it's never dull. Only near the end do things get wildly cinematic, with a chase up to the roof, complete with shootout and a gruesome view of a plunging body.

The Queensland Government has accepted recommendations by the miserable Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) to crack down on prostitution escort services.

Advertisements for legitimate social escorts will have to make it clear that they are non-sexual to distinguish from prostitution.

There will be legislation to seize the assets of anyone involved in illegal prostitution and phone numbers will be deactivated if they are used by illegal businesses.

But legal sole operators will in future be allowed to have an employee to act as a receptionist or driver.

Police Minister Judy Spence says there will also be a new offence called carrying on the business of prostitution. We might have the employer living in New South Wales or another state and operating women in Queensland. We've even seen what we believe is employers operating from New Zealand. So this new offence will allow police a lot more capacity to bring those people to Queensland to face our laws.

The European Baptist Federation’s anti-trafficking group is working on a handbook that will give congregations across Europe ideas on how best to eradicate prostitution.

European Baptists at September’s EBF Council session in Portugal reaffirmed their commitment to reducing demand for prostitutes among men supposedly in a bid to tackle the number of men, women and children being trafficked and sold into the illegal sex trade.

Sven-Gunnar Liden, Swedish Baptist pastor and chairman of the EBF anti-trafficking working group, said that human trafficking destroys women, children and men through ruthless exploitation and is a major topic for Europe’s churches.

He welcomed new legislation in Sweden that makes it illegal to solicit services from prostitutes and called on Baptist churches in Europe and in the Middle East to mark Oct. 18 as a day of prayer for the Gospel of Jesus Christ might release its healing and liberating powers against human trafficking.

The National Council of Churches in Sweden has announced plans to intensify its efforts against human trafficking when the country takes over the EU presidency in 2009.

Plans to build support for identity cards by introducing them among 'guinea pig' groups, such as airport staff and students, are in crisis after 10,000 airline pilots vowed to take legal action to block them and opposition swept through Britain's universities and councils.

In a move that could wreck the government's strategy for a phased introduction beginning next year, the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) said it would seek a judicial review rather than see its members forced to adopt ID cards at a time when pilots are already exhaustively vetted.

Balpa's vehement opposition is a hammer blow for the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, who had hoped to win the wider public over to ID cards by demonstrating that they were crucial to anti-terrorism policies. She intends to introduce them among groups who operate in positions of trust in our society.

Balpa, which represents more than 10,000 pilots working on 28 airlines, backed by the Trades Union Congress, insists that ID cards will do nothing to enhance airport or flight security, and it fears that information about its members stored on a National Identity Register could be abused.

Jim McAuslan, general secretary of Balpa, told The Observer: Our members are incensed by the way they have been targeted as guinea pigs in a project which will not improve security. We will leave no stone unturned in our attempts to prevent this, including legal action to force a judicial review if necessary.

From late 2010 ministers intend to start issuing ID cards to young people, particularly students, on a voluntary basis in a further attempt to win the population round. Then around 2012 everyone applying for a passport will have to be on the National Identity Register.

However, the anti-ID card campaign group, NO2ID, is mobilising what it says is a wave of student opposition to ID cards on campuses across the country.

More than 40 local authorities, as well as the Scottish parliament and the Welsh and London assemblies, have passed motions opposing ID cards. Without the co-operation of councils, which would use ID cards to verify benefit claimants and those wanting to use public services, the entire project would fail to get off the ground.

Slanj, which has shops in Glasgow and Edinburgh is one of the country's most talked-about designer outlets for their contemporary kilts and humorous T-shirts.

But their interpretation of the 2014 Commonwealth Games has not gone down well with the organisers.

The company set up to run the Glasgow Games are now threatening Slanj with legal action unless they withdraw a range of T-shirts that depict characters taking part in traditional Glaswegian sporting pursuits.

Four white boxes over the words Glasgow 2014, Commonwealth Games, contain figures playing pool and darts, watching TV and sinking a pint of beer.

Slanj owner Brian Halley said: We specialise in quirky T-shirts and this is just meant as a joke, our take on the real games that real Glaswegians indulge in. It was an attempt to join in the fun surrounding Glasgow getting the Games.

But a spokesman for Glasgow City Council, which is part of the partnership company running the event, said the Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2014 logo had been registered in the UK as a trademark, a design and a wordmark to prevent unauthorised material being sold: It therefore has legal protection in all these categories. In the instance of Slanj, if they are selling 2014 Games branded materials, then this will be followed up through the 2014 legal team. The organising company would not be against a little bit of humour or harmless fun, ...BUT...use of the brand means that it could not ignore this application. We would ask Slanj to remove the items from sale.

Halley said he was sorry if the T-shirts had caused offence. After the current batch had been sold, the design would be changed.

Lap dancing is booming even as Britain struggles not to go bust.

Hard-up Brits are buying food from cut-price supermarkets and staying in thanks to the credit crunch. But, despite the financial doom and gloom, dance clubs are flourishing.

And many canny Brit babes are quitting jobs such as nursing, teaching and even law work to become lap dancers, where the average wage is £50,000.

There are currently 150 official lap dancing clubs and 300 places which put on some form of sexy entertainment.

About 70 or 80 girls will work in one club, with all on duty at peak times. Added to the number of strippers working in British pubs, it means up to 25,000 women are working as lap dancers.

Birmingham is the country’s lap dancing capital with about 12 clubs while London is second with 10.

A spokesman for the adult entertainment branch of the GMB union reckons more women are working as lap dancers than ever before thanks to the wages. She says: Men still want to treat themselves. It’s the same phenomenon as women who buy a Chanel lipstick because they can’t afford the handbag. They want a taste of the high life. It’s the same with men – they might be struggling but need something to cheer themselves up.

Kate Nicholls, secretary of the Lap Dancing Association, says: Across the whole of the hospitality industry business is down but lap dancing clubs are bucking the trend. We’re not suffering as much as some. Some nightclubs are resorting to desperate tactics such as 80p shots to get people in. But in our clubs spending is holding up.

...BUT

Based on article from sundaymercury.net

A Birmingham lap dance company has gone BUST – the latest victim of the worldwide cash crisis. Plans to open a three-storey stripping superclub in the city have been abandoned after The Provocative Group (Birmingham) Limited went into administration.

The company had intended to expand its string of Wildcats venues by opening up in a building previously used by Spearmint Rhino on John Bright Street.

Just two months ago, it was offering free VIP tickets to see top glamour model Lucy Pinder on the opening night of the new club. The invitation read: We have just launched our lapdancing superclub Wildcats in Birmingham. For all you Lucy Pinder fans out there, you’re in luck as she’s going to be spending the evening with us.

Wildcats, which had venues across the country was said to be Britain’s biggest lapdancing club chain. It is not yet clear exactly why the club’s finances have collapsed.

A spokesman for Begbies Traynor, the adminstrators for the Provocative Group, said: There are no job losses in Birmingham because the club never actually opened. The building has been repossessed by the landlord.

A Virgin ticket inspector threatened a passenger with arrest after he went to the aid of a sobbing pensioner who had boarded the wrong train.

Lena Ainscow, 75, was left in tears when she was ordered to pay £115 for a new ticket to London.

When fellow passenger Tom Wrigglesworth stepped in to organise a whip-round to help her, the ticket inspector said his actions were akin to begging and that he would call the police.

Mrs Ainscow had bought an £11.50 pre-booked ticket for the 10.45am Virgin service from Manchester to Euston. But her printed travel itinerary stated she was booked on the 10.15am service and when she asked staff what she should do about the error they told her to board the earlier train.

But when her ticket was inspected she was told it was invalid and she must buy a new one. She said the train manager was unmoved when she explained that she had been told to board the earlier train.

Mr Wrigglesworth intervened to help the pensioner and pleaded with the train guard for leniency. When he was told he should not interfere, he started a whip-round among fellow passengers. He said: I couldn't sit there and let this helpless woman deal with it on her own. I got a paper bag from the buffet car and told the other passengers that if we all gave 50p or £1 we would get the money in no time. Everyone was happy to help and someone even put in £30.

The ticket was duly bought, but when Mr Wrigglesworth got off the train at Euston he was met by transport police officers.

He said: Thankfully a couple of the other passengers helped to explain. Once the police had been put in the picture they walked away.

A spokesman for Virgin Trains said: We apologise for the distress caused to both passengers and have launched an investigation into the incident.

After nearly 40 years of serving the local community, Sydney's most famous brothel, A Touch of Class, has shut up shop.

Politicians, judges and the late media magnate Kerry Packer were, reportedly, among those who frequented "Toucha", as it was fondly known.

Now the brothel, which operated out of three Victorian terraces in an unassuming residential street, is up for auction. The manager, Peter Lazaris, blamed competition from a rapidly proliferating number of cheaper establishments. He declined to comment on whether a raid by tax investigators had also played a role.

While the fixtures and fittings – including Roman fountains, crushed velvet furnishings and themed rooms complete with silk sheets and ensuite spa baths – are not included in the package, the bricks and mortar come replete with decades of colourful history.

The brothel, which could fetch more than A$6m (£2.3m), also featured in a 2006 Australian film, Candy, starring the late Heath Ledger.

Tissue Sir? May I recommend BustyStewardesses.com

Bowing to pressure from flight attendants and, supposedly, customers, American Airlines has said it will soon be blocking access to pornographic websites on its new Aircell in-flight Internet access service. Delta announced a similar plan earlier this month.

Naturally, privacy and civil rights advocates are already criticizing the move. Filters always tend to cast a very wide net, taking with them plenty of non-pornographic content while missing sites that many will find offensive. And of course, there's invariably the question of whether filtering will extend to violence, hate speech, and other frequently-censored content.

Well, if nothing else, American has probably inadvertently launched a new diversion for bored fliers travelling across the country: Beat the Filter, where buddies try to see who can slip some adult content past the censor first.

Help could be at hand for those who cannot resist dispatching a wee-small-hours email to a boss or an ex.

An altruistic Google employee has come up with a system that will block -or at least make you think twice about - the kind of message you will only regret the next day. Mail Goggles, which can be set to spring into action late at night and at weekends, asks emailers to answer a series of short mathematical posers before sending their message off. The idea, according to Gmail engineer Jon Perlow, is to help people who are a little too tired and emotional to foresee the consequences of their actions.

Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send, he confessed on the Gmail blog: Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late-night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. The program, he said, was designed to establish whether you're really sure you want to send that late-night Friday email.

TV Review: Dispatches: The Hidden World Of Lap Dancing, Channel 4, Monday 6 October, 9pm

As you would expect in a documentary like this, there was a fair amount of flesh on show. All secretly filmed flesh, but flesh nonetheless. The show used a couple of undercover reporters - a guy called Peter and a wannabe lady dancer - to show just what happens when someone goes into a lap dancing club. Guess what? What happens when you go into a lap dancing club is people try and get you to spend money and then take their clothes off if you pay them.

The questions that this episode of Dispatches was keen to answer were: Are the rules that govern these clubs being flouted? Does any transgression of these rules constitute a sexual service? And why does lap dancing get the same licensing status as a café or a karaoke bar?

Any sane people knows the answers.

Undercover footage revealed that the all-important three-feet rule was constantly being flouted, and lady-parts were shoved relentlessly into our brave undercover reporter's poor naive face.

You walk into a club, and five minutes later two girls who you hardly know are completely naked in front of you. It's quite shocking.

Is it Peter? Is it REALLY shocking? No offence, but what were you expecting when you went into a place like this? A cup of tea and a Digestive? Get real son. This type of journalism is so lazy and makes me angry. The whole programme was just a shock tactic to try and rile Middle England into shrieking at their television sets.

There was also a laughable bit when Peter was chatting to two dancers in a Blackpool club. They had offered him sex for £300. That's obviously prostitution and against the laws.

Jeez. It was like watching the televisual of equivalent of the Daily Mail.

...Read full review

Tissue Sir? Don't be alarmed by the vibrations... It's just the lady in 5C enjoying her flight

A reported decision by Delta Air Lines to block inappropriate websites from its planned in-flight WiFi service could be just the tip of the iceberg for airlines' control of Internet use.

Delta, which plans to offer WiFi on some planes later this year and on its whole domestic fleet in 2009, has decided to prevent passengers from accessing 'inappropriate content', according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article. Delta said it had considered turning to its flight attendants to handle the problem but decided to adopt technical means instead.

Delta plans to offer the GoGo service from Aircell, the same system used by American. GoGo uses a network of cellular towers on the ground to transmit data back and forth to WiFi routers on planes. It will charge passengers US$9.95 for service on flights of three hours or less, and $12.95 for longer flights.

Aircell will implement content filtering for airlines if asked, the company said in an e-mail response to questions.

At least one privacy rights advocate criticized the idea, but there's a good chance travelers will have to leave their traditional expectations about Internet use on the ground before they log on in the air.

I don't think it makes much sense, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. For one thing, it won't prevent passengers from looking at inappropriate material stored on their own laptops, he said. But it also opens the door to blocking of other content, such as news or political opinions.

It's so easy, once that precedent is set, to broaden ... the kind of information blocks that might be imposed, Rotenberg said. Considering how many of the world's airlines are owned by national governments, it wouldn't be surprising to see them filter out, for example, any site that criticizes the country's leader, he said.

To avoid the slippery slope of Internet filtering, airlines would be better off dealing with offensive Web use as they do other things that upset nearby passengers, he said. The current procedure for dealing with unruly passengers should be adequate, Rotenberg said.

 

Prostitutes in the Dutch city of Eindhoven are to be awarded "credits" in return for good behaviour under a new scheme to encourage them to abandon the oldest profession.

The prostitutes will receive so-called "street miles" that they can use to acquire free designer clothes or furniture, provided they take up an offer by the city council to take steps leading to a career change and a safer lifestyle.

We needed to come up with incentives that these women might latch on to, said Veronique Beurskens of Eindhoven council, who is leadin