Two hours of Nutty-slacking

Well, Monday night was fun. I spent it at this (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/health/relaxing-cannabis-law-could-benefit-isle-of-man-claim-1-6589370 ) and, as I said elsewhere, enjoyed the rare pleasure of seeing a genuinely knowledgeable person speaking in a Manx public building. As far as I can recall, that has only happened three times in all my years on the island.

Media reports of the event are a little sketchy, because reporters on a topic which, eventually, was all about personal freedom and enjoyment and not “serious” moral issues were only ever going to get space to pick one sound-bite and play it up. Personal reports will vary enormously, and considering that even within a row of me were folk ranging from sixties burn-outs and semi-pro tree-huggers to conservative clergy and hardcore UKIP groupies that is no surprise.

So, for the record, if you have already seen David Nutt on, say, that live Channel Four Ecstasy experiment last year or read his book then there was nothing new. He ran through his routine in a manner calculated not to frighten elderly ladies, hung together with a jokey slide-show, and finished by politely answering questions from mostly middle-aged, middle brow types who had, quite reasonably and with admirable public spirit, turned up to find out what they could about illegal drugs from someone who ought to be able to tell them. The questions from the public were fair enough, and he answered them objectively and in comprehensive detail.

Actually, I did clarify a couple of my own local suspicions from these questions.

Firstly, that the only real drug threat on Manx sink estates is the latest generation of prescription drugs (the ones which were supposed to replace benzodiazepines, AKA “mother's little helpers”).

Secondly, that those who set up and have benefited from the Chief Minister's Task Farce on Drugs and Alcohol still pan-handle for cash and tell whoppers without shame. These whoppers would be immediately discredited the moment our Public Health professionals have the courage to publish - in full- all the surveys they have conducted at public expense into drug and alcohol “abuse” exactly as they were published in peer-reviewed journals, including the methodology and the true parameters and numbers of the survey groups. They never will, because even the two examples I was able to obtain from university libraries via friendly academics clearly show that neither the experiments nor the findings bear much resemblance to the 500 word press summaries (and, sadly, even they went unread by the local media once a couple of shock stats had been quoted, wrongly and out of context).
The more serious question posed by Nutt on the night was if the island could and should profit from the problem caused back in 1971 by a UK government which, in ensuring cannabis must never be legally available, simultaneously ensured that university research could never explore any medicinal benefits because to possess it was a common crime and even to cultivate it under licence was prohibitively expensive. Since the 1980's research in other countries has begun to open up some amazing possibilities (just check the excellent and extensive Wikipedia entry on cannabinoids to get a sense of these). Meanwhile UK scientists, once world leaders, are now reduced to reading other people's research and begging knee-jerk politicos to look beyond the next focus group and ballot box. With just a little of the horse sense that saw us develop the TT and the finance sector, we could develop a niche pharmaceutical industry to fill the gap when both of those vanish – as they must within a decade or two at most.
But the only real question is do you trust mature adults to take decisions over their own lives, and then be responsible for the results? Just that.
If so (and as a libertarian my obvious answer is ”Yes”) all that remains is how you organise things (legally, socially, economically..) so that the mature and responsible are free to get on with it, those who refuse to take responsibility will find it too much hassle and those who cannot (the young and otherwise vulnerable) are not going to be capable or exploitable. The question itself should be no different when it comes to other adult pleasures, such as cigarettes and alcohol.
Nutt half addresses it with the comparative risks of rock-climbing, horse-riding etc. and the way that pleasures enjoyed by the relatively powerful never seem to get restricted while working people's cheap relaxants do, but then screws up by setting up alcohol and tobacco as alternative folk panics to dope. He starts off by correctly pointing out that alcohol is also a drug, but then it all goes rapidly downhill, and he ends up peddling a variation on “reefer madness” about currently legal (if increasingly socially proscribed) substances in order to advance his own special interest.
Those who follow the debate seriously (rather than with one hand on the bible or the bong) know about Nutt's shortcomings already. He causes defenders of drinkers or fag smokers in particular to grind teeth in despair as the “evidence” of his prattlings is taken up by dopey Guardianistas and neo-puritans alike. When he should be identifying and seeking common cause with all who oppose a prohibitionist industry which out-prudes the Victorians (and lacks even their genuine social concern for the dispossessed) he hands it half-truths to shoot down all opposing views (including his own expert opinion).
For a real attempt to put the wider picture in context, try Chris Snowdon's excellent little book The Art Of Suppression: Pleasure, Panic and Prohibition since 1800. Towards the end, in assessing current threats to liberty of the responsible adult, he comprehensively covers the wrong done by government and tabloids to David Nutt, but also Nutt's unfortunate habit of shooting himself and potential allies in the foot. If you cannot find time to read the book, at least check out some of the short and pertinent blogs on Snowdon's website (Velvet Glove, Iron Fist) and those of a few endangered fag smokers ( Dick Puddlecote is a prime example). If you cannot then begin to see the bigger picture, then maybe the liberties you are losing are just liberties you never deserved.

Thou Shalt Not Shall Be The Whole Of The Law

I am startled (but hardly surprised) by a report (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=48533) that the Manx police are seeking (or at least having foisted upon them) a power to stop drinking anywhere on island, rather than just isolated trouble spots which police records have identified. 

My first thought is that it is a shame we cannot have a bill to prevent idiocy outside the Wedding Cake, or public evangelising. Because as the wise and witty P.J. O’Rourke says “…no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.”

There is also the planned legislation to prevent smoking in cars containing children  (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/health/publicsviewssoug.xml ), which may sound laudable on a casual glance but is based on poor BMA research, which was quickly debunked but only corrected so quietly that the general public remain unaware of the problem.

One elementary fault in the research is that it is based on what happens if you smoke in a car with the windows fully closed – which even a hardened smoker will tell you is physically impossible. Another is that they simply got the sums wrong, by a massive percentage. See http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2012/10/bma-lying-again-say-their-friends-again.html for the latest in the saga plus a number of links which give a potted history of the way the legend has developed.

Further to that is the way that the BMA (and more particularly a professional anti-tobacco lobby) continue to press their case based on the sensational but now totally discredited version of the evidence, not the reasonable but much milder version which would allow for some sort of common sense debate and compromise. It really seems such parties are not interested in debate or democracy, just consolidating a position where they will tell us what to do without question, or else.

As I have never smoked (filthy habit) and am (at least in the true and original sense of the word) temperate I think I can claim an independent, unbiased view of these things. As I am also a responsible parent, what also niggles me is the way that pig-ignorant but powerful prodnoses not only presume, but are being allowed, to legislate based on their ridiculous assumption that most parents simply do not know, and cannot be trusted to do, what is best for their children. That is an insult, especially coming from cretins who cannot even read the Bible without moving their lips.

The most worrying thing about this is the way we’re slipping away from the English Common Law system towards European ‘Roman Law’. In a nutshell, common law is based on the idea that you are free to do something unless there is specifically a law against it. Roman law works on the principle that it is illegal to do anything unless there is a law which grants you the right to do it, i.e. there is a numbered code and regulation for absolutely everything and if there is not you are a criminal, go straight to jail.

Eventually, because smokers (like most Manx people in my experience) are conformists they will lose the latest battle, just as they long ago lost the one over smoking in even segregated areas of pubs staffed and patronised only by consenting adults.

As smoking has been moved by a mixture of social engineering and well connected but ignorant busybodies from being the social norm to the social exception (the action of an ‘awkward’ and ‘inconsiderate’ few), so social drinking is going the same way. It will soon be - at best - not tolerated and at worst actually illegal, because people who want to conform, to be friendly and not make trouble (i.e. to be sociable and neighbourly) do not know how to fight back in a civilised way against anti-social prodnoses who claim the moral high ground and have friends in all the right political places.

In the process, of course, these otherwise useless and unemployable busybodies create a nice little cottage industry as ‘therapists’, ‘counsellors’ and ‘advisors’, which we the public (and their victims) pay for from our taxes.

Nice scam if you can work it, but what a nasty way to destroy our community and the pleasures that community has long held in common. Little more than a miserable, mean-minded, happy clappy fascism, in fact.

Aggressive beggar alert

I see from this (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/street-angels-help-keep-douglas-town-centre-safe-1-4614060 ) that, as Douglas streets have been so safe late at night for years, the police have had to draft in troublemakers so that they can pick up enough overtime.

Think about this for a few seconds – if the police are willing to allow muddle-headed if sincere septuagenerarians to pester drunks, then the midnight streets of Douglas must be quieter than a Trappist monastery.

This nonsense has been tried before, mostly, it must be noted, in redneck backwaters of the UK where both incest and membership of the Christian Police Association is high (not that those three factors are always found together, of course – just alarmingly often). There, surveys of the relative figures for street-based violence before and after the introduction of such crackpot schemes inevitably show more disturbances and hospital visits AFTER the bible bashing started.

The funniest thing is that in some small towns there simply were no disturbances until the godbotherers started annoying people making their way home amicably enough from pubs and clubs. Perhaps the key here is that people in conservative communities might head for the pub to escape miserable puritans they have to put up with during the day, for example at work. If so, the last thing they want looming up at them after a couple of pints is that prod nosed supervisor who has been on their case all week about wearing an ‘inappropriate’ tie to the office.

This plan hasn’t appeared out of the blue, by the way. I was aware of a Broadway Baptist klingon trying to set up a ‘street pastor’ scheme five years ago, and since then, so disgruntled insiders say, there have been several approaches to the police from both Living Hell and the Batshits.

The irony is that one of their previous attempts at ‘street ministry’ so annoyed the public that it led to senior police officers being asked if the English crime of ‘aggressive begging’ (used in the UK to keep panhandling junkies way from tourists) was on the books over here. As families with small kids walking down the Prom being harangued by evangelical loons said, if threatening small kids and pensioners with hell fire isn’t demanding money with menaces, then what is?

Old hippies may also be sniggering at that acronym ‘DTCP’, which sounds very similar to ‘PCP’ – a nasty street drug in the 1970’s always associated with nutters jumping through windows, and better known as ‘Angel Dust’.

On a more serious note – who are the ‘other agencies’ so keen for the police to OK this nonsense? Not, by an odd coincidence, a certain ‘police advisory committee’ whose very membership is tightly controlled by three evangelical business figures (so convenient when you want to close down a small town for a bit of godbothering theatricality and police are needed to guide punters to the only available parking which is – oh, another coincidence – at your shopping centre)?

Thought so.

Who guards the guards?

I had to laugh at this report (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=31002) of a building on Homefield Road having 20 windows smashed some time “between Friday, November 19, and Tuesday, November 23”, apparently without anyone noticing.
The thing is, I can only think of one large building on that road which is set back enough from the road for anyone to smash that many windows without either the racket alerting the neighbours or the glass covering enough of the main road to bring traffic to a standstill.
That would be the Department of Home Affairs offices.
So, in addition to demonstrating what the Great Manx Public really thinks about those who misrun our police and prison services, this incident also suggests that there’s not much work going on there. Either that or the civil servants and self-selecting advisory committees who claim to be ensuring we can sleep safely at nights are deaf and blind.
I’d suggest they need a decent Neighbourhood Watch scheme, except that the last time I looked the Manx Crimestoppers project was effectively under the thumb of Group 4 Security, which many suggest obtains more money under false pretences from the court and prison services (and therefore the public) than 'official' criminal types would dare to in their wildest dreams.

Legal draughts

Shortly after the funeral of the island’s most senior judge this week (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Fond-memories-of-Deemster-Kerruish.6433467.jp ) came a hilarious insight into the way justice is done here, and the less than reverential attitude of some of the island’s legal profession to those who do ‘good works’.
A friend from the legal profession mysteriously managed to be present when the Isle of Man Law Society turned out in force to show respect at the courthouse following news of Mike Kerruish’s death. I say mysterious, because My Legal Friend has officially been off-island on leave for a while – extremely inconvenient as my company and others use him almost daily for notarising documents and similar services.
So he confessed the hilarious truth about his absence.
In addition to his paid work, MLF is also known by charities as a soft touch for pro bono work. It appears some time ago he was called in suddenly by an island MONGO (‘Methodist Orientated Non-Governmental Organisation’). More precisely, the highly waged government employee who actually runs said MONGO asked him to revise a legal document at an hour or so’s notice. MLF, yet again, did this and in lieu of actual cash received his usual token payment for such favours – which is two lunchtime pints of Guinness.
This is a long-running joke between the parties in question, made all the funnier because most of these MONGOs work for the removal of easy access to strong drink at reasonable prices. The only part of the joke the HWGE and MLF refuse to reveal is if the cost of the Guinness is then billed to some obscure government expense account.
Unfortunately, MLF was then due back in court and arrived a little late, 'tired' and unprepared. The late Mike Kerruish was notoriously sharp-tongued with legal counsel who wasted court time, or offered less than a full service to clients, and he was on form that day.
However, Deemster Kerruish was no teetotaller either, and later took MLF aside to offer a less formal legal judgement. In essence, if MLF was not to face formal disciplinary proceedings, he should cancel any upcoming court work and in the near future take an extended holiday where he should consider his future. In particular, how to bring forward plans for handing over such work to younger partners.
This MLF duly did. At the time I learnt this he was in receipt of yet another ‘payment in kind’ (via a HWGE) from unwitting but grateful temperance nazis and the Manx government, both of whom will be totally unaware of the arrangement and certainly regard MLF as a bad example to upright youth they’d like to remove from our streets.
Slainte!

Here's to a libertarian anti-theology

Considering that I describe myself as a libertarian and freethinker, I have been a bit lax of late in promoting the libertarian view, and especially at suggesting how the two might be linked.
To me, the two things are interlinked, and the obsession of many atheists/humanists with soft left/liberal views of the world which are (in practice) paternalistic, over-reliant on welfare-statism or (at times) just plain dead in the water is a constant frustration for me. I know from new alliances I've made in the last few years it is for many others 'written out' of mainstream humanism too, which is why we've been kicking off about it.
While I was one of the first to pop my head above the parapet, sadly, introducing the concept of ‘secular methodism’ to humanist circles might have been my only contribution to this noble struggle. Meanwhile, I see Diesel Balaam, for example, plugging away in the letters pages of The Freethinker to push us secularists beyond a wishy-washy middle of the road version of liberalism and back to thinking about the real meaning of the term.
So, if I was a young schoolie my end of term report this month probably would be saying ‘must try harder’. This I undertake to do, always providing I don't have to stop joking about it too. To paraphrase Emma Goldman, 'If I can't laugh, I don't want any part in the revolution.'
For a start, as nobody in the UK except the Spiked posse is taking on the vacuous new British temperance-nazi lobby (which, in turn, causes nonsense like the island’s ‘voluntary’ alcohol sales codes) I had to turn to the US for a spot of inspiration laced with a strong slug of humour.
I found some recently in the work of Jeffrey A. Tucker (and you do have to like a bloke who writes a book called Bourbon for Breakfast: Living outside the Statist Quo).
In Repeal the Drinking Age (see http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker177.html ) Tucker lays into the ridiculous nationwide US ban on anyone under 21 consuming booze. As almost anyone who’s been to the US knows, in practice this ban is ignored, except for times when it suits authority to stop other activities. For example, any attempts at a self-sufficient youth culture where kids actually discuss and do intelligent, socially progressive stuff instead of vegging out and/or reading the Bible.
He goes on to argue that: “With the two-thirds and more of people under the age of 21 reporting that they have consumed alcohol in the last year, it should be obvious that the law is doing nothing but providing a gigantic excuse for arbitrary police-state impositions on human liberty, and also socializing young people in a habit of hypocrisy and law breaking. It’s like the old Soviet-style joke: they pretend to regulate us and we pretend to be regulated.”
Writing just after Independence Day, Tucker ends his piece by saying: “The founders would have never imagined such a thing as a national law regulating the age at which beer, wine, port, and other alcoholic beverages are consumed. If we are serious about embracing their vision of a free society, as opposed to just blathering about it, let’s start with something that is supremely practical and would have immediate effects on an entire generation: repeal the national minimum drinking age law.
You say that this is unthinkable? I say that you don’t really believe in human liberty. “
Closer to home, I’d not only agree with the above but add that the last thing on the minds of the pathetic church-led, state-sponsored Manx agencies theoretically ‘concerned’ with the ‘welfare’ of young people is encouraging any sort of social set-up in which teenagers take control of their own lives, or parents and guardians are allowed to help them do so.

Harry Taylor, Harry Taylor, Taylor Taylor, Harry Harry

A while back I posted on Harry Taylor, a joker who taped religious cartoons from Private Eye on the walls of the ‘prayer room’ at John Lennon Airport.
Harry so upset the hyper-sensitive zombie worshipper who minds this slur on Lennon’s name that he ended up in court, on three charges of ‘causing religiously aggravated harassment.’ I think that might be ‘talking sense to spookchasers’ to the rest of us.
After just 15 minutes ‘deliberation’, a loaded jury (all swore on the Bible, so hardly tried by his peers as the law demands) found him guilty. And yesterday sentence was passed - or at least, some prat in a silly wig got malevolent.
Harry got a suspended six month prison sentence for two years, a five year ASBO, an order to carry out 100 hours’ unpaid work and £250 costs.
You can read a local report at www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2010/04/24/militant-atheist-harry-taylor-hit-with-asbo-for-offensive-images-in-john-lennon-airport-100252-26307049/ to find out more.
Terry Sanderson, from the National Secular Society, was quick to explain why this misjudgement sends us back to the Stone Age and sets yet another dangerous precedent when he commented:
"The six month sentence may have been suspended, but it is still totally out of proportion for what Mr Taylor did. The professional 'offence takers' in religious communities will now feel that they have a strong weapon to use against anyone who is critical or disapproving of them. It is, in effect, a blasphemy law that covers all religions and is much more powerful than the one which was abolished two years ago."
But I’m also intrigued in the report that the judge:
“… imposed the Asbo, which bans Taylor from carrying religiously offensive material in a public place.”
Now, for one thing, if he’s saying Harry shouldn’t walk about with a Koran or a Bible that might be a relief. In fact, can we demand that Asbos are passed immediately on all the wild-eyed lunatics who, for example, tried to drown each other on Peel Beach at Easter?
For another, how does material from a magazine on open sale at one place in the airport miraculously become ‘offensive’ when it is read in a hang-out for the superstitious elsewhere in the building. That sounds barmier than transubstantiation.
And is this really a victory for the Deluded Herd, and their continued demands for the ‘right’ to a privileged existence which no-one else may mock or question? Do all religions have the right to express themselves in a public place anyway?
Tell you what, let’s test that fantasy.
Imagine a bunch of saffron robed, tambourine-bashing folk with funny haircuts turn up at John Lennon Airport and start dancing around singing the following catchy ditty:

Harry Taylor, Harry Taylor,
Taylor Taylor,
Harry, Harry.

Nope? Thought not!

A case for legalisation

If
(a) you’re as bored as I am by pointless self-congratulatory pieces in the local press written by Dept of Home Affairs staff about the ‘success’ of the Drug Squad and the Chief Minister’s Drug & Alcohol Strategy and
(b) you’re as irritated as I am at the way Manx government agencies play to redneck ignorance or ask dimwit faith groups for ‘advice’ instead of researching and discussing drug issues properly…..
you might want to look at some proper research on the topic.
Transform Drug Policy Foundation (you can find them on the sidebar) have just commissioned and conducted the first proper report into the likely results of legalising most of the stuff currently banned by the Misuse of Drugs Act. It was published yesterday.
TDPF considered four possible scenarios, ranging from no increase to 100% increase in use of currently illegal drugs under conditions which would see them legalised, taxed but well controlled, rather than continuing to waste police and other resources just tracking down and arresting users and sellers.
Working mainly from Home Office and No. 10 Strategy Unit reports, Steve Rolles , Head of Research at TDPF, came to some suprising conclusions. In effect, a regulated drugs market could save between £4.4 billion and £13.9 billion in England and Wales.
He also finds that the UK government have done their own quiet research and, contrary to the public stance, their experts agree legalisation makes sense.
For example, Rolles uncovered an Independent Drug Monitoring Unit survey which considered how to raise taxes amounting to £1 per gram on cannabis resin and £2 per gram on skunk. He also discovered that the UK government has carried out at least two major surveys into such a scenario, but neither are available despite Freedom of Information Act requests.
The report ends:
“The conclusion is that regulating the drugs market is a dramatically more cost-effective policy than prohibition and that moving from prohibition to drugs-regualted markets in England and Wales would provide a net saving to taxpayers, victims of crime, communities, the criminal justice system and drug users of somewhere between within the range of, for the four scenarios, £13.9 billion, £10.8 billion, £7.7 billion and £4.4billion.”
You can read the report for yourself at http://www.tdpf.org.uk/TransformCBApaper.pdf or a summary of some main arguments by Danny Kushlick of TDPF at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/07/transform-drugs-prohibition .
And the funny thing is, rather than the increasingly conformist liberal press, it is the business press that backs such moves.
Who would have thought it? Touchy-feely hippie types gang up with evangelical ignoramuses to condemn hedonism or tout their dubious therapies, while pinstriped bods think it would make better economic and social sense if you could just buy skunk at Boots.
I kid you not. Even The Economist concluded last month:
“Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution”.

Pimps, Parsons, Police & Prostitution

A press release from the ECP (English Collective of Prostitutes) on the MOJUK (Miscarriage of Justice UK) news service has finally made my mind up.
I must post something on the cretinous, faith-biased proposals to change the laws on prostitution in January. It’s been proposed by UK Home Secretary Jaqui Smith and advertised by Stop The Traffik and other religious pimps as ‘protecting’ women, but to be blunt it’s absolute bollocks which works by appealing to racist and sexist myth dating back to White Slave Trade fairy stories.
The ECP release mentions a raid on a Soho premises in December, just the latest in a series of similar swoops. This one will lead to a grandmother and registered carer for a man with Alzheimers facing a charge of "controlling prostitution for gain". This though no underage or trafficked women or any evidence of force or coercion was found at the premises, and none had been found during the weekly visits by the police during the whole month of September.
The ECP say it is only the latest in a series, all targetting women at small premises where women are working in safety and by mutual consent, well away from street violence and organised crime rings. As the ECP note: "Many are mothers supporting children; at least three have children with disabilities. One woman started working after the Inland Revenue sent her a £6,000 bill for overpayments of child tax credit. Others are struggling to keep bailiffs at bay following threats of repossession on their home or suffer from ill health.”
These raids and prosecutions are preparing the ground for the new legislation to be announced on 19 January which would force women into "rehabilitation", make it easier for the police to close brothels and arrest kerb-crawlers, and make an offence of "paying for sex with a person who is controlled for another person's gain". Receptionists such as the one arrested in the December raid face up to 7 years in jail, and immigrant women would be automatically deported.
Yet as the ECP also point out,” The figures the government is using to justify raids are based on blatantly discredited research which claims that 80% of women working in the sex industry in the UK have been trafficked. Convictions for trafficking are distorted because the UK definition of trafficking for prostitution, unlike trafficking for any other industry, does not mention force or coercion. This enables every woman with a foreign accent to be labelled a victim of trafficking!”
There is not only the on-the-ground anecdotal evidence of the ECP for such a claim. One of the few serious academic studies of the topic, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry by Laura Maria Agustin, pretty emphatically trashes the entire argument, pointing out that these figures are arrived at by such a loose definition of ‘traffiking’ that pretty much any migrant seeking work in another country is cast as a ‘victim’ brought there against their will, not as an intelligent decision to better their lot.
I’ve been following this issue for some time, and not just because the involvement of Rev Steve Chalke and his twattish Stop The Traffik outfit alerts me there’s likely to be a scam the religious hope to profit from. By the way, considering the number of ‘business interest/charities/government initiatives’ he and his cohorts are involved in (e.g. Stop The Traffik, Faithworks, Parentalk, Oasis), and the not uncommon use of evangelical networks to provide cheap labour here in the UK (including the Isle of Man), you might wonder who the real pimps and gangmasters are here!
Also note that under the Proceeds of Crime Act the police get to keep 25% of assets seized, and also have a habit of keeping all cash found, trading on the reluctance of sex workers to go public and demand it back. Nice little earner which resembles stories I’ve heard from when the fishing and tourist trade were still profitable here on the island.
Yes, this is a difficult and controversial issue. But if anyone is serious about cutting down on exploitation, rather than religionists trading on sexist and racist myth for a quick buck and more public subsidy, we should have the honesty to look closer and to speak out.
As I recall, I first noted an item by Natalie Rothschild on the ‘Spiked’ website on the misuse of the term ‘traffiking’. You’ll find that at http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3580/. I’d then recommend Brendan O’Neill highlighting the reintroduction of ‘white slave trade’ mythology on the same site at http://www.spiked-online.co.uk:80/index.php?/site/article/4389. To bring things up to date check out Natalie Rothschild again in a November update at http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5973/.
My old friends at Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine are also on the case. See, for example,a reprinted article, Sex Workers of the World United, by Cherry Bennet at http://www.gayandlesbianhumanist.org/November%202008/Sex%20Work.htm, and also the link from the G&LH site to the International Union of Sex Workers site at http://www.iusw.org/.

Oy, Godbotherer, you're nicked!

Some days you see something you didn't expect which gives you the hope to go on - and this is one of them.
A while back I spiked Manx National Prayer Week plans with a pisstake letter to the Examiner suggesting street evangelists should be arrested for begging with menaces, which got more attention than Stepford Central's carefully planned campaign. Poor them, after they got their space in return for advertising from godbothering local businesses and everything.
Just an off-the-cuff prank, and I never dreamed my suggestion that evangelists be pestered by the law would be taken up.
Then I saw an article on the IOM Newspapers website about cowboy builders (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im:80/news/Gangs-of-cowboy-builders-target.4760564.jp). Not the most obvious target for a bit of holy roller-baiting, but look at the first comment from Steve.
Hmm, thanks Steve.
Now, let's take this further, people. Let's write to our retards (sorry - politicians) and demand that the coldcalling clause is applied to thugs who threaten pensioners with badly misquoted scripture.
If this new Crime & Disorder Bill really could be used to criminalise door-to-door biblebashing we might actually see an end to a real social evil.