A lot of ‘I agree with Tony/Keir’ going on here I sense.
How about the tough decision on the triple lock ? Have Labour decided on that yet ?
The need to appear 'tough' is not the the least depressing thing about British politics. I think SKS did the combat fatigues thing a while back, are we about to see him on a tank?
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
Your apparent belief that all sex workers have been trafficked and coerced might explain why you see a conflict of interest.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
Question for you though. Are you in favour of criminalisation of those procuring any type of sex or sexual titillation? Should serving officers be disallowed from going to lap dancing bars or maybe gay saunas where rent boys might hang out? How about porn where consensual adults are the "actors"? Isn't your view more than biased by your feminist belief that men are exploiting women by paying them for sex, even though some women and some men do it entirely at their own choice?
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose a man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
A lot of ‘I agree with Tony/Keir’ going on here I sense.
How about the tough decision on the triple lock ? Have Labour decided on that yet ?
The need to appear 'tough' is not the the least depressing thing about British politics. I think SKS did the combat fatigues thing a while back, are we about to see him on a tank?
SKS with, but not on, Brit tank (of RTR judging from the 'through mud and blood to the green fields beyond' shoulder flash, and perhaps the overall if it is black despite that lighting). Not sure what the tank is, but it is not AS-90 SP artillery. Think it is CR2 but there are detail changes if so. Definitely UK tank because of the registration no.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
A lot of ‘I agree with Tony/Keir’ going on here I sense.
How about the tough decision on the triple lock ? Have Labour decided on that yet ?
The need to appear 'tough' is not the the least depressing thing about British politics. I think SKS did the combat fatigues thing a while back, are we about to see him on a tank?
SKS with, but not on, Brit tank (of RTR judging from the 'through mud and blood to the green fields beyond' shoulder flash, and perhaps the overall if it is black despite that lighting). Not sure what the tank is, but it is not AS-90 SP artillery. Think it is CR2 but there are detail changes if so. Definitely UK tank because of the registration no.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose a man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
You appear to be conflating prostitution with rape and/or gbh, both of which are already illegal even for sex-starved coppers.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
So hospitals banning staff from wearing jewellery is illegal under the Equality Act in your view?
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
Your apparent belief that all sex workers have been trafficked and coerced might explain why you see a conflict of interest.
There are a lot of criminal offences that are associated with prostitution, so I can see how the potential for conflict of interest would arise.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
I'm not sure that analogies in general are the problem...
A lot of ‘I agree with Tony/Keir’ going on here I sense.
How about the tough decision on the triple lock ? Have Labour decided on that yet ?
The need to appear 'tough' is not the the least depressing thing about British politics. I think SKS did the combat fatigues thing a while back, are we about to see him on a tank?
SKS with, but not on, Brit tank (of RTR judging from the 'through mud and blood to the green fields beyond' shoulder flash, and perhaps the overall if it is black despite that lighting). Not sure what the tank is, but it is not AS-90 SP artillery. Think it is CR2 but there are detail changes if so. Definitely UK tank because of the registration no.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
Quite how police officers who are customers of pimps are expected to investigate their criminal activities, quite how we are expected to trust that they will do so properly is a question I will leave you to ponder.
What I see is that the moment an organisation which has some very serious problems in relation to how it deals with women tries to do something about this by asking its employees, including the men, to behave differently, a lot of men immediately jump in with reasons why asking men to change their behaviour is somehow impossible.
I wonder if it was women who were being asked to change their behaviour and attitudes would the response be the same? We're always being told to "Be Kind"
Well, here's a thought: you men be kind. For a fucking change.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose a man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
The original of the post you are replying to seems to have vanished. It does at least seem to concede that the EA is relevant to employment contracts - I thought you said it was only applicable to the provision of services?
Let's be realistic: I cannot find any stats on male vs female use of prostitutes in the UK, searches just throw up stats about how many men use female vs male prostitutes. This is because the proportion of prostitute users who are not men is statistically invisible. Leaving aside our common ground about the general and universal abhorrence of men who use prostitutes, can we agree that this means that a prostitute ban is not gender neutral and that this has EA implications?
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
Quite how police officers who are customers of pimps are expected to investigate their criminal activities, quite how we are expected to trust that they will do so properly is a question I will leave you to ponder.
What I see is that the moment an organisation which has some very serious problems in relation to how it deals with women tries to do something about this by asking its employees, including the men, to behave differently, a lot of men immediately jump in with reasons why asking men to change their behaviour is somehow impossible.
I wonder if it was women who were being asked to change their behaviour and attitudes would the response be the same? We're always being told to "Be Kind"
Well, here's a thought: you men be kind. For a fucking change.
Please don't swear at me, and don't patronise me. I am more than capable of "engaging with" your very obvious point about conflicts of interest. I am against prostitution, I am even more against rape and murder. Try to engage with that.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose a man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
You appear to be conflating prostitution with rape and/or gbh, both of which are already illegal even for sex-starved coppers.
Not suggesting that the wonderful Cyclefree is one of the man hating feminists, but there does seem a flavour of the "all men are rapists" opinion here. All men are bad (straight, bi or gay), but particularly those that want to indulge in anything other than very vanilla sex within the nice confines of a loving relationship. Women, are all exploited creatures of virtue who would never wish to have sex at all, let alone anything kinky, but sometimes do so out of necessity within a loving relationship.
It is like a mirror image of the views of misogynistic religious bigots.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
I'm not sure that analogies in general are the problem...
So, point out the problem with that one in particular.
Your answer should deal with the fact that analogies usually have one point in which they agree with the situation being analogised, not more. If I say that tomorrow's by elections are a sword of Damocles hanging over Sunak's head, I do not expect the response that that's quite wrong, because by elections are not cutting and stabbing weapons 2-4 foot long and made of steel.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
Quite how police officers who are customers of pimps are expected to investigate their criminal activities, quite how we are expected to trust that they will do so properly is a question I will leave you to ponder.
What I see is that the moment an organisation which has some very serious problems in relation to how it deals with women tries to do something about this by asking its employees, including the men, to behave differently, a lot of men immediately jump in with reasons why asking men to change their behaviour is somehow impossible.
I wonder if it was women who were being asked to change their behaviour and attitudes would the response be the same? We're always being told to "Be Kind"
Well, here's a thought: you men be kind. For a fucking change.
Please don't swear at me, and don't patronise me. I am more than capable of "engaging with" your very obvious point about conflicts of interest. I am against prostitution, I am even more against rape and murder. Try to engage with that.
But you're not engaging with the point about conflicts of interest.
I am not going to express a view about whether prostitution should or should not be legal. That is not the issue here. The issue is whether those who have to enforce the law should be allowed to engage in an activity which will almost inevitably create a conflict of interest with their duties, put them in a position where they may be facilitating criminal acts and expose them to the risk of blackmail and whether it is reasonable for an employer to impose restrictions on such activity.
On the Equality Act point, I will ask my equality expert lawyer friend what they think.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
I'm not sure that analogies in general are the problem...
So, point out the problem with that one in particular.
Your answer should deal with the fact that analogies usually have one point in which they agree with the situation being analogised, not more. If I say that tomorrow's by elections are a sword of Damocles hanging over Sunak's head, I do not expect the response that that's quite wrong, because by elections are not cutting and stabbing weapons 2-4 foot long and made of steel.
There you are, an analogy about analogies.
One might argue that if male police officers are more likely to use prostitutes than female officers, then this would amount to indirect discrimination on the grounds of sex.
However, indirect discrimination is lawful provided it is proportionate means of achieving a legitimate end.
The legitimate end is avoiding conflicts of interest. On the face of it, the ban seems a proportionate means of achieving that end.
A lot of ‘I agree with Tony/Keir’ going on here I sense.
How about the tough decision on the triple lock ? Have Labour decided on that yet ?
The need to appear 'tough' is not the the least depressing thing about British politics. I think SKS did the combat fatigues thing a while back, are we about to see him on a tank?
SKS with, but not on, Brit tank (of RTR judging from the 'through mud and blood to the green fields beyond' shoulder flash, and perhaps the overall if it is black despite that lighting). Not sure what the tank is, but it is not AS-90 SP artillery. Think it is CR2 but there are detail changes if so. Definitely UK tank because of the registration no.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose a man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
You appear to be conflating prostitution with rape and/or gbh, both of which are already illegal even for sex-starved coppers.
Not suggesting that the wonderful Cyclefree is one of the man hating feminists, but there does seem a flavour of the "all men are rapists" opinion here. All men are bad (straight, bi or gay), but particularly those that want to indulge in anything other than very vanilla sex within the nice confines of a loving relationship. Women, are all exploited creatures of virtue who would never wish to have sex at all, let alone anything kinky, but sometimes do so out of necessity within a loving relationship.
It is like a mirror image of the views of misogynistic religious bigots.
I do not hate men. I do get fed up with some men thinking that any curbs at all on men's behaviour, especially when it affects or harms others, is somehow an outrage which cannot under any circumstances be tolerated. For the record, I also get pretty fed up with women thinking that any curbs on their behaviour, when it affects or harms others, especially children is somehow an outrage which cannot under any circumstances be tolerated.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
I'm not sure that analogies in general are the problem...
So, point out the problem with that one in particular.
Your answer should deal with the fact that analogies usually have one point in which they agree with the situation being analogised, not more. If I say that tomorrow's by elections are a sword of Damocles hanging over Sunak's head, I do not expect the response that that's quite wrong, because by elections are not cutting and stabbing weapons 2-4 foot long and made of steel.
There you are, an analogy about analogies.
A better analogy would have been with something that a significant minority of women choose to do and very few men choose to do, rather than one that almost every biological women experiences, and does not choose.
I think I get the point you were trying to make, but I also think that drawing an analogy with menstruation is clumsy at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence ..
It isn't specifically so under UK law - though you're very probably correct that a large part of the trade involves both those things.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
Quite how police officers who are customers of pimps are expected to investigate their criminal activities, quite how we are expected to trust that they will do so properly is a question I will leave you to ponder.
What I see is that the moment an organisation which has some very serious problems in relation to how it deals with women tries to do something about this by asking its employees, including the men, to behave differently, a lot of men immediately jump in with reasons why asking men to change their behaviour is somehow impossible.
I wonder if it was women who were being asked to change their behaviour and attitudes would the response be the same? We're always being told to "Be Kind"
Well, here's a thought: you men be kind. For a fucking change.
Please don't swear at me, and don't patronise me. I am more than capable of "engaging with" your very obvious point about conflicts of interest. I am against prostitution, I am even more against rape and murder. Try to engage with that.
But you're not engaging with the point about conflicts of interest.
I am not going to express a view about whether prostitution should or should not be legal. That is not the issue here. The issue is whether those who have to enforce the law should be allowed to engage in an activity which will almost inevitably create a conflict of interest with their duties, put them in a position where they may be facilitating criminal acts and expose them to the risk of blackmail and whether it is reasonable for an employer to impose restrictions on such activity.
On the Equality Act point, I will ask my equality expert lawyer friend what they think.
Most things in life have both advantaged and drawbacks. I have no idea experience of dealing with prostitutes but it looks to me like a simple retail transaction and I don't see that of itself it draws you into the business of the business owner, any more than eating in an Italian restaurant in NY constitutes dealings with the mafia. It may be a danger, but most things in life have drawbacks as well as advantages.
A lot of ‘I agree with Tony/Keir’ going on here I sense.
How about the tough decision on the triple lock ? Have Labour decided on that yet ?
The need to appear 'tough' is not the the least depressing thing about British politics. I think SKS did the combat fatigues thing a while back, are we about to see him on a tank?
SKS with, but not on, Brit tank (of RTR judging from the 'through mud and blood to the green fields beyond' shoulder flash, and perhaps the overall if it is black despite that lighting). Not sure what the tank is, but it is not AS-90 SP artillery. Think it is CR2 but there are detail changes if so. Definitely UK tank because of the registration no.
Like Rommel husbanding his resources in N. Africa, the Starmer high command will be waiting for the right moment to deploy the full panzer.
Hmmm. Perhaps not the analogy Starmer would have favoured given the eventual outcome.
More pedestrian air about SKS, more reminiscent of a British set-piece such as Totalize or Tractable. Question is whether the LDs (or indeed SNP) can provide the allied thrust to close the pocket and get to the Seine, or rather Embankment.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
Quite how police officers who are customers of pimps are expected to investigate their criminal activities, quite how we are expected to trust that they will do so properly is a question I will leave you to ponder.
What I see is that the moment an organisation which has some very serious problems in relation to how it deals with women tries to do something about this by asking its employees, including the men, to behave differently, a lot of men immediately jump in with reasons why asking men to change their behaviour is somehow impossible.
I wonder if it was women who were being asked to change their behaviour and attitudes would the response be the same? We're always being told to "Be Kind"
Well, here's a thought: you men be kind. For a fucking change.
Please don't swear at me, and don't patronise me. I am more than capable of "engaging with" your very obvious point about conflicts of interest. I am against prostitution, I am even more against rape and murder. Try to engage with that.
But you're not engaging with the point about conflicts of interest.
I am not going to express a view about whether prostitution should or should not be legal. That is not the issue here. The issue is whether those who have to enforce the law should be allowed to engage in an activity which will almost inevitably create a conflict of interest with their duties, put them in a position where they may be facilitating criminal acts and expose them to the risk of blackmail and whether it is reasonable for an employer to impose restrictions on such activity.
On the Equality Act point, I will ask my equality expert lawyer friend what they think.
I think you undermine many of your otherwise eloquent arguments by remarks such as "you men be kind. For a fucking change". It makes you appear to be as prejudiced about the opposite sex as any frothing reactionary misogynist.
Many of "us men" are kind on a similar level to a similar number of women. Putting us all in the same category (as your feminist "womansplaining" comment seems to) is as ludicrous and irrational as any form of discrimination that I have encountered.
There are good men. There are bad men, There are good women. There are bad women. Try and understand this please, if that isn't too "mansplaining".
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
I'm not sure that analogies in general are the problem...
So, point out the problem with that one in particular.
Your answer should deal with the fact that analogies usually have one point in which they agree with the situation being analogised, not more. If I say that tomorrow's by elections are a sword of Damocles hanging over Sunak's head, I do not expect the response that that's quite wrong, because by elections are not cutting and stabbing weapons 2-4 foot long and made of steel.
There you are, an analogy about analogies.
One might argue that if male police officers are more likely to use prostitutes than female officers, then this would amount to indirect discrimination on the grounds of sex.
However, indirect discrimination is lawful provided it is proportionate means of achieving a legitimate end.
The legitimate end is avoiding conflicts of interest. On the face of it, the ban seems a proportionate means of achieving that end.
Yes it's like professional footballers not being allowed to bet on football, despite the fact that most people who bet on football are men. But I suspect Miklosvar is trolling with this nonsense about the Equality Act and menstruation and bans on pantyhose. Nobody could be that ridiculous.
The need to appear 'tough' is not the the least depressing thing about British politics. I think SKS did the combat fatigues thing a while back, are we about to see him on a tank?
SKS with, but not on, Brit tank (of RTR judging from the 'through mud and blood to the green fields beyond' shoulder flash, and perhaps the overall if it is black despite that lighting). Not sure what the tank is, but it is not AS-90 SP artillery. Think it is CR2 but there are detail changes if so. Definitely UK tank because of the registration no.
I think it's a Challenger 2. The two upright headlights, the metal loop just beyond the further headlight (the matching one closest to us is out of view), the hydraulic track tensioner, the wrapped barrel, the fume extractor, the prominent glacis plate and the British registration make me think so.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Bodily decomposition releasing CO2? Or do you have a CCS facility for the recently-bumped-off?
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose a man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
You appear to be conflating prostitution with rape and/or gbh, both of which are already illegal even for sex-starved coppers.
Not suggesting that the wonderful Cyclefree is one of the man hating feminists, but there does seem a flavour of the "all men are rapists" opinion here. All men are bad (straight, bi or gay), but particularly those that want to indulge in anything other than very vanilla sex within the nice confines of a loving relationship. Women, are all exploited creatures of virtue who would never wish to have sex at all, let alone anything kinky, but sometimes do so out of necessity within a loving relationship.
It is like a mirror image of the views of misogynistic religious bigots.
I don't know about man-hating. There is a view that sex is shameful if not sinful, so women must have been be violently coerced into sex work as otherwise they'd all be high-flying lawyers.
It is dangerous too when it spills over into the corollary that women who have not been visibly coerced are beyond saving. They have brought any misfortune onto themselves, so no-one will be surprised when they are murdered or raped, as by the Yorkshire Ripper or Rotherham child-grooming gangs.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
Quite how police officers who are customers of pimps are expected to investigate their criminal activities, quite how we are expected to trust that they will do so properly is a question I will leave you to ponder.
What I see is that the moment an organisation which has some very serious problems in relation to how it deals with women tries to do something about this by asking its employees, including the men, to behave differently, a lot of men immediately jump in with reasons why asking men to change their behaviour is somehow impossible.
I wonder if it was women who were being asked to change their behaviour and attitudes would the response be the same? We're always being told to "Be Kind"
Well, here's a thought: you men be kind. For a fucking change.
Please don't swear at me, and don't patronise me. I am more than capable of "engaging with" your very obvious point about conflicts of interest. I am against prostitution, I am even more against rape and murder. Try to engage with that.
But you're not engaging with the point about conflicts of interest.
I am not going to express a view about whether prostitution should or should not be legal. That is not the issue here. The issue is whether those who have to enforce the law should be allowed to engage in an activity which will almost inevitably create a conflict of interest with their duties, put them in a position where they may be facilitating criminal acts and expose them to the risk of blackmail and whether it is reasonable for an employer to impose restrictions on such activity.
On the Equality Act point, I will ask my equality expert lawyer friend what they think.
Most things in life have both advantaged and drawbacks. I have no idea experience of dealing with prostitutes but it looks to me like a simple retail transaction and I don't see that of itself it draws you into the business of the business owner, any more than eating in an Italian restaurant in NY constitutes dealings with the mafia...
I explained above how, under UK law, it effectively does just that.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose a man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
You appear to be conflating prostitution with rape and/or gbh, both of which are already illegal even for sex-starved coppers.
Not suggesting that the wonderful Cyclefree is one of the man hating feminists, but there does seem a flavour of the "all men are rapists" opinion here. All men are bad (straight, bi or gay), but particularly those that want to indulge in anything other than very vanilla sex within the nice confines of a loving relationship. Women, are all exploited creatures of virtue who would never wish to have sex at all, let alone anything kinky, but sometimes do so out of necessity within a loving relationship.
It is like a mirror image of the views of misogynistic religious bigots.
I do not hate men. I do get fed up with some men thinking that any curbs at all on men's behaviour, especially when it affects or harms others, is somehow an outrage which cannot under any circumstances be tolerated. For the record, I also get pretty fed up with women thinking that any curbs on their behaviour, when it affects or harms others, especially children is somehow an outrage which cannot under any circumstances be tolerated.
And are you detecting that mindset in anyone here? I started off by saying I was not an Andrew Tate wannabe, you seem to have decided that I am.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence ..
It isn't specifically so under UK law - though you're very probably correct that a large part of the trade involves both those things.
That would likely make most police officers paying for sex criminals. That alone justifies the policy, IMO.
It's also - as of course you of all people know - the case that an employer can require staff to not-do X, Y, Z if they would conflict with overall corporate policy. Which would seem another reason for this, separate from the above.
I'm reminded of the rule that university teaching staff shouldn't have relationships with those students for which they hjave any responsibility - much to the indignation of some on PB as I recall, but a very necessary one. Incidentally it's not just sexual ones. See eg
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Liquefaction is now an option,google alkaline hydrolysis.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Freeze-drying? (I'm not so keen on the liquidising variety which is now on offer.)
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
I'm not sure that analogies in general are the problem...
So, point out the problem with that one in particular.
Your answer should deal with the fact that analogies usually have one point in which they agree with the situation being analogised, not more. If I say that tomorrow's by elections are a sword of Damocles hanging over Sunak's head, I do not expect the response that that's quite wrong, because by elections are not cutting and stabbing weapons 2-4 foot long and made of steel.
There you are, an analogy about analogies.
One might argue that if male police officers are more likely to use prostitutes than female officers, then this would amount to indirect discrimination on the grounds of sex.
However, indirect discrimination is lawful provided it is proportionate means of achieving a legitimate end.
The legitimate end is avoiding conflicts of interest. On the face of it, the ban seems a proportionate means of achieving that end.
Yes it's like professional footballers not being allowed to bet on football, despite the fact that most people who bet on football are men. But I suspect Miklosvar is trolling with this nonsense about the Equality Act and menstruation and bans on pantyhose. Nobody could be that ridiculous.
Pantyhose has been used by men in cold weather, including by policemen on the beat on a cold winter's night, although long johns are back on sale now.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
I'm not sure that analogies in general are the problem...
So, point out the problem with that one in particular.
Your answer should deal with the fact that analogies usually have one point in which they agree with the situation being analogised, not more. If I say that tomorrow's by elections are a sword of Damocles hanging over Sunak's head, I do not expect the response that that's quite wrong, because by elections are not cutting and stabbing weapons 2-4 foot long and made of steel.
There you are, an analogy about analogies.
One might argue that if male police officers are more likely to use prostitutes than female officers, then this would amount to indirect discrimination on the grounds of sex.
However, indirect discrimination is lawful provided it is proportionate means of achieving a legitimate end.
The legitimate end is avoiding conflicts of interest. On the face of it, the ban seems a proportionate means of achieving that end.
Yes it's like professional footballers not being allowed to bet on football, despite the fact that most people who bet on football are men. But I suspect Miklosvar is trolling with this nonsense about the Equality Act and menstruation and bans on pantyhose. Nobody could be that ridiculous.
Pantyhose has been used by men in cold weather, including by policemen on the beat on a cold winter's night, although long johns are back on sale now.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence ..
It isn't specifically so under UK law - though you're very probably correct that a large part of the trade involves both those things.
That would likely make most police officers paying for sex criminals. That alone justifies the policy, IMO.
It's also - as of course you of all people know - the case that an employer can require staff to not-do X, Y, Z if they would conflict with overall corporate policy. Which would seem another reason for this, separate from the above.
I'm reminded of the rule that university teaching staff shouldn't have relationships with those students for which they hjave any responsibility - much to the indignation of some on PB as I recall, but a very necessary one. Incidentally it's not just sexual ones. See eg
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Freeze-drying? (I'm not so keen on the liquidising variety which is now on offer.)
Not sure I'd like to be turned into ersatz coffee
I quite fancy being compressed into a diamond, though I suspect that has a shocking GHG footprint.
Seriously, I'd like a 'green' burial, in some kind of easily decomposable coffin with a tree on top turning me into apples or something.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence ..
It isn't specifically so under UK law - though you're very probably correct that a large part of the trade involves both those things.
That would likely make most police officers paying for sex criminals. That alone justifies the policy, IMO.
It's also - as of course you of all people know - the case that an employer can require staff to not-do X, Y, Z if they would conflict with overall corporate policy. Which would seem another reason for this, separate from the above.
I'm reminded of the rule that university teaching staff shouldn't have relationships with those students for which they hjave any responsibility - much to the indignation of some on PB as I recall, but a very necessary one. Incidentally it's not just sexual ones. See eg
Indeed. While I wouldn't adopt Cyclefree's rhetoric on this, I think in essence she's absolutely right.
Quite. The indignation I recall may have been to do with more general employment, but the basic principle is the same - relationships risking getting in the way of the orderly work of the organization and therefore impermissible for that reason.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
I'm not sure that analogies in general are the problem...
So, point out the problem with that one in particular.
Your answer should deal with the fact that analogies usually have one point in which they agree with the situation being analogised, not more. If I say that tomorrow's by elections are a sword of Damocles hanging over Sunak's head, I do not expect the response that that's quite wrong, because by elections are not cutting and stabbing weapons 2-4 foot long and made of steel.
There you are, an analogy about analogies.
One might argue that if male police officers are more likely to use prostitutes than female officers, then this would amount to indirect discrimination on the grounds of sex.
However, indirect discrimination is lawful provided it is proportionate means of achieving a legitimate end.
The legitimate end is avoiding conflicts of interest. On the face of it, the ban seems a proportionate means of achieving that end.
Yes it's like professional footballers not being allowed to bet on football, despite the fact that most people who bet on football are men. But I suspect Miklosvar is trolling with this nonsense about the Equality Act and menstruation and bans on pantyhose. Nobody could be that ridiculous.
Bloody hell.
The claim was that banning x cannot be gender-biased if the ban applies to both men and women. This is simply not true, as other examples show. The purpose of the counter examples is to illustrate that one point. How difficult is this.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
I guess the problem with such a policy would not just be the requirement to embrace cannibalism with a nice Chianti, but the fact that rich people would eventually become an endangered species and so the definition would be constantly shifting, so while it is possible that I might be eaten before you, eventually it would become your turn.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Freeze-drying? (I'm not so keen on the liquidising variety which is now on offer.)
Not sure I'd like to be turned into ersatz coffee
I quite fancy being compressed into a diamond, though I suspect that has a shocking GHG footprint.
Seriously, I'd like a 'green' burial, in some kind of easily decomposable coffin with a tree on top turning me into apples or something.
Friend of mine did that with his mum and dad somewhere in Somerset, perhaps this one complete with orchard if you are looking*?
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Liquefaction is now an option,google alkaline hydrolysis.
AKa soap making, and being flushed down the drain. Difficult to get that past spouses, I suspect, unless they had plenty of warning.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
Quite how police officers who are customers of pimps are expected to investigate their criminal activities, quite how we are expected to trust that they will do so properly is a question I will leave you to ponder.
What I see is that the moment an organisation which has some very serious problems in relation to how it deals with women tries to do something about this by asking its employees, including the men, to behave differently, a lot of men immediately jump in with reasons why asking men to change their behaviour is somehow impossible.
I wonder if it was women who were being asked to change their behaviour and attitudes would the response be the same? We're always being told to "Be Kind"
Well, here's a thought: you men be kind. For a fucking change.
Please don't swear at me, and don't patronise me. I am more than capable of "engaging with" your very obvious point about conflicts of interest. I am against prostitution, I am even more against rape and murder. Try to engage with that.
But you're not engaging with the point about conflicts of interest.
I am not going to express a view about whether prostitution should or should not be legal. That is not the issue here. The issue is whether those who have to enforce the law should be allowed to engage in an activity which will almost inevitably create a conflict of interest with their duties, put them in a position where they may be facilitating criminal acts and expose them to the risk of blackmail and whether it is reasonable for an employer to impose restrictions on such activity.
On the Equality Act point, I will ask my equality expert lawyer friend what they think.
There is also the fact that there is a long history of criminality and corruption within the Met, in connection to prostitution.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
I guess the problem with such a policy would not just be the requirement to embrace cannibalism with a nice Chianti, but the fact that rich people would eventually become an endangered species and so the definition would be constantly shifting, so while it is possible that I might be eaten before you, eventually it would become your turn.
As with "raising taxes on the rich", we may find that we're richer than we think.
"The Italian government issued a red alert for 23 of the country’s 27 main cities on Wednesday, along with warnings of the dangers of extreme temperatures. In Rome, temperatures surpassed 41 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, beating last year’s record of 40.7C, while Licata, in Sicily, saw the highest temperature in the country with a high of 46.3C. ... The heat wave is wreaking havoc across Europe, with ongoing wildfires in Greece and Switzerland and dangerously high temperatures across southern Europe. "
"An often outspoken character with a robust and active Twitter presence, Hall was criticised by the Conservatives in 2021 for arguing that the deadly storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Trump was the equivalent of UK politicians who opposed Brexit."
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
Where (besides here) has this new police anti-prostitution requirement been announced? I can't see it on the main news sites or in a quick scan of the Met's development plan.
"declaring romantic relationships" is most likely very challengeable.
Under what legal provision?
Equality Act. What if I am a serving police officer and I have a gay relationship with married male officer of equal rank? Why should I be forced to reveal this very personal relationship? I would also guess (you tell me if you are a lawyer) Article 8? I should not need to reveal my personal relationships as they are private. I would also think that such retrospective requirements might also infringe the officer's employment contract.
Please shoot me down if I am wrong. I am genuinely interested.
Relationships at work policies are very common in the public sector e.g. -
Unless the policy only applies to those of a specific protected characteristic then the direct discrimination provisions of the Equality Act shouldn't apply. You then have to rely on indirect discrimination provisions i.e. the policy applies in the same way for everybody but disadvantages a group of people who share a protected characteristic. In which case the Met would have to show that the policy is a proportionate means of achieving its (presumably legitimate) aim. the example you give would only be indirect discrimination if the officer can show that the policy disadvantages those having a gay (or bi) affair over those having a heterosexual affair. I don't see that. It's just disclosure - not necessarily a prohibition. We've recently had an openly lesbian Commissioner. Why is such disclosure worse than disclosure of a heterosexual affair.
No-one ever cites Article 8 properly, itreads -
Article 8: Right to privacy 1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. 2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. (my emphasis)
Given that this policy has been brought in to avoid sexual misconduct then the "public safety" exemption the Met would argue applies.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
Quite how police officers who are customers of pimps are expected to investigate their criminal activities, quite how we are expected to trust that they will do so properly is a question I will leave you to ponder.
What I see is that the moment an organisation which has some very serious problems in relation to how it deals with women tries to do something about this by asking its employees, including the men, to behave differently, a lot of men immediately jump in with reasons why asking men to change their behaviour is somehow impossible.
I wonder if it was women who were being asked to change their behaviour and attitudes would the response be the same? We're always being told to "Be Kind"
Well, here's a thought: you men be kind. For a fucking change.
Please don't swear at me, and don't patronise me. I am more than capable of "engaging with" your very obvious point about conflicts of interest. I am against prostitution, I am even more against rape and murder. Try to engage with that.
But you're not engaging with the point about conflicts of interest.
I am not going to express a view about whether prostitution should or should not be legal. That is not the issue here. The issue is whether those who have to enforce the law should be allowed to engage in an activity which will almost inevitably create a conflict of interest with their duties, put them in a position where they may be facilitating criminal acts and expose them to the risk of blackmail and whether it is reasonable for an employer to impose restrictions on such activity.
On the Equality Act point, I will ask my equality expert lawyer friend what they think.
There is also the fact that there is a long history of criminality and corruption within the Met, in connection to prostitution.
But probably not at the consumer level. Same is almost certainly true of the drugs trade, but there's no particular reason to expect a link between the corrupt connections, and actual use of drugs.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
I guess the problem with such a policy would not just be the requirement to embrace cannibalism with a nice Chianti, but the fact that rich people would eventually become an endangered species and so the definition would be constantly shifting, so while it is possible that I might be eaten before you, eventually it would become your turn.
As with "raising taxes on the rich", we may find that we're richer than we think.
It might have some impact on inward investment I suspect and non-dom status might change a little. As with taxes also there will be many claiming that the classification and burden should be placed on others, but definitely not them.
Interestingly the global average salary is US$18000 per year. I would guess that makes most of us on this forum in the edible category
"The Italian government issued a red alert for 23 of the country’s 27 main cities on Wednesday, along with warnings of the dangers of extreme temperatures. In Rome, temperatures surpassed 41 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, beating last year’s record of 40.7C, while Licata, in Sicily, saw the highest temperature in the country with a high of 46.3C. ... The heat wave is wreaking havoc across Europe, with ongoing wildfires in Greece and Switzerland and dangerously high temperatures across southern Europe. "
Hence my Down with trees! campaign. Trees and bogs are about equally good at carbon capture, and how many wildfires involve bogs being set alight?
Bad for tourism, I'd have thought. Why spend the school fees (see last thread) on a Mediterranean holiday if you can't leave your air-conditioned hotel room? Which, paradoxically, is good news for travel writers.
"The Italian government issued a red alert for 23 of the country’s 27 main cities on Wednesday, along with warnings of the dangers of extreme temperatures. In Rome, temperatures surpassed 41 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, beating last year’s record of 40.7C, while Licata, in Sicily, saw the highest temperature in the country with a high of 46.3C. ... The heat wave is wreaking havoc across Europe, with ongoing wildfires in Greece and Switzerland and dangerously high temperatures across southern Europe. "
"The Italian government issued a red alert for 23 of the country’s 27 main cities on Wednesday, along with warnings of the dangers of extreme temperatures. In Rome, temperatures surpassed 41 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, beating last year’s record of 40.7C, while Licata, in Sicily, saw the highest temperature in the country with a high of 46.3C. ... The heat wave is wreaking havoc across Europe, with ongoing wildfires in Greece and Switzerland and dangerously high temperatures across southern Europe. "
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
Rich people do not feel pain like normal people and any vocalisations or spasmodic movements are purely reflexive and are not actually screams or running away, Heavens no.
As hairless animals they do not need to be skinned with the same assiduousness as other creatures, although there are health risks involved with eating brains. The corpse should be hung upside down and bled (collect the blood for later use). The head should be removed: contrary to popular belief the eyes are not pleasant. The tongue (which is surprisingly large) is seen as a delicacy by some. The viscera should be removed, although the heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas are usable, and like a haggis the stomach can be used to wrap. The hands and feet are too bony for realistic use, and the genitals only really usable for superstitious rituals.
Rich people are usually fatter, so when roasting make sure the fat runoff is collected.
Carefully preserved and prepared, a rich person can feed a family of four for about a week, although by the end of that week be advised it will be stew, so don't forget to bring herbs, onions and - inevitably - carrots.
Disposal is difficult, due to various acts regarding the disposal of human remains, so (absent access to a pig farm) boil and macerating is the order of the day. Do not flush the remains as it will inevitably clog. Instead, separate into smaller containers and dispose via scattering in a remote spot.
On the two-child limit: I've done a bit of work on this previously.
1) Removing the limit would be by far the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty. It would target large families, often with a single parents, at relatively low cost.
2) It would be deeply unpopular according to most polling
3) KLAXON In-work poverty is the biggest issue for the UK, with out-of-work poverty quite favourable compared to Nordic countries. None of these policy fiddles deal with that
I've just had a quick look through Susan Hall's twitter likes and I'm not sure she's a good fit for London Mayor. 😬
What is happening to the Tories? This is desperate stuff.
The pendulum has swung. The Tories now have a dearth of talent, and will find it hard to attract fresh and exciting blood to the ranks while they remain so deeply unpopular.
This is probably more pronounced than in previous twilight years of government given the 2019 Brexit fallout.
In time new faces will start to emerge but it needs the cooling off of opposition before that process can start.
I've long held the view that the British so-called constitution (which only mental contortionists who've obediently pre-decided it's a constitution think actually is one) is made up as they go along. This current example seems grist to my mill. Did any of the three MPs actually take the Chiltern Hundreds or Manor of Northstead? No?
Yes.
12 June 2023: "The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed Nigel Adams to be Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead." 12 June 2023: "The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to be Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern." 19 June 2023: "The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed the Honourable David John Warburton to be Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead."
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
On what planet does paying for sex equate to menstruation? Are you suggesting men are equally unable to refrain from using prostitutes in the same way women can’t refrain from menstruating?
What section of the Equality Act is potentially being breached here? I’ve got a call on the EqA with some other employment lawyers this morning and I’ve no doubt this …erm…refreshing take will make all the others take notice.
Yes I was wondering exactly how menstruation and prostitution are similar.
I suppose man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
Analogies seem to go down badly here. The point was the limited one that prohibiting x for both men and women, does not necessarily make the prohibition of x gender neutral. See below for the use of a pantyhose ban as an alternative example.
I'm not sure that analogies in general are the problem...
So, point out the problem with that one in particular.
Your answer should deal with the fact that analogies usually have one point in which they agree with the situation being analogised, not more. If I say that tomorrow's by elections are a sword of Damocles hanging over Sunak's head, I do not expect the response that that's quite wrong, because by elections are not cutting and stabbing weapons 2-4 foot long and made of steel.
There you are, an analogy about analogies.
One might argue that if male police officers are more likely to use prostitutes than female officers, then this would amount to indirect discrimination on the grounds of sex.
However, indirect discrimination is lawful provided it is proportionate means of achieving a legitimate end.
The legitimate end is avoiding conflicts of interest. On the face of it, the ban seems a proportionate means of achieving that end.
Very well put.
I think a comparison was made of eating in a NY pizza restaurant. That comparison is meaningless. There is no conflict of interest. I buy a pizza and I pay for it. The mafia aren't going to blackmail me. They might well do however if I use one of their prostitutes and I am a policeman. Hence the need for a ban.
Another reason given for not banning it was 'the consequence' of banning the use of prostitutes. That is abuse, rape and murder if they are not available to certain individuals. We are talking about policemen here. Surely men such as this should not be policemen. Isn't this what the Sarah Everard case was all about. He should never have been a policeman in the first place. OK you might not be able to identify them all and fire them beforehand but you should give it a much better go than we do now. Sadly life is not perfect, but I see no reason for allowing policemen to use prostitutes because it might stop the odd one from raping a poor girl.
Saturday looks a washout at Old Trafford. Sunday 70% chance for each hour on the forecast (I always wonder how that works, cumulatively) but it's "thundery showers" which quite often means, no rain if you are lucky.
I believe some of you were interested in the deadline for voluntary NI contributions. The deadline has been extended to 31 July 2023. You have twelve days left.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
Quite how police officers who are customers of pimps are expected to investigate their criminal activities, quite how we are expected to trust that they will do so properly is a question I will leave you to ponder.
What I see is that the moment an organisation which has some very serious problems in relation to how it deals with women tries to do something about this by asking its employees, including the men, to behave differently, a lot of men immediately jump in with reasons why asking men to change their behaviour is somehow impossible.
I wonder if it was women who were being asked to change their behaviour and attitudes would the response be the same? We're always being told to "Be Kind"
Well, here's a thought: you men be kind. For a fucking change.
Please don't swear at me, and don't patronise me. I am more than capable of "engaging with" your very obvious point about conflicts of interest. I am against prostitution, I am even more against rape and murder. Try to engage with that.
But you're not engaging with the point about conflicts of interest.
I am not going to express a view about whether prostitution should or should not be legal. That is not the issue here. The issue is whether those who have to enforce the law should be allowed to engage in an activity which will almost inevitably create a conflict of interest with their duties, put them in a position where they may be facilitating criminal acts and expose them to the risk of blackmail and whether it is reasonable for an employer to impose restrictions on such activity.
On the Equality Act point, I will ask my equality expert lawyer friend what they think.
There is also the fact that there is a long history of criminality and corruption within the Met, in connection to prostitution.
But probably not at the consumer level. Same is almost certainly true of the drugs trade, but there's no particular reason to expect a link between the corrupt connections, and actual use of drugs.
At the consumer level - Met officers ran protection rackets, in return for money and sexual services. This was at the heart of a number of corruption scandals.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
Rich people do not feel pain like normal people and any vocalisations or spasmodic movements are purely reflexive and are not actually screams or running away, Heavens no.
As hairless animals they do not need to be skinned with the same assiduousness as other creatures, although there are health risks involved with eating brains. The corpse should be hung upside down and bled (collect the blood for later use). The head should be removed: contrary to popular belief the eyes are not pleasant. The tongue (which is surprisingly large) is seen as a delicacy by some. The viscera should be removed, although the heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas are usable, and like a haggis the stomach can be used to wrap. The hands and feet are too bony for realistic use, and the genitals only really usable for superstitious rituals.
Rich people are usually fatter, so when roasting make sure the fat runoff is collected.
Carefully preserved and prepared, a rich person can feed a family of four for about a week, although by the end of that week be advised it will be stew, so don't forget to bring herbs, onions and - inevitably - carrots.
Disposal is difficult, due to various acts regarding the disposal of human remains, so (absent access to a pig farm) boil and macerating is the order of the day. Do not flush the remains as it will inevitably clog. Instead, separate into smaller containers and dispose via scattering in a remote spot.
Aren't rich people mostly lizards anyway? What do they taste like? I know that frogs are meant to taste like chicken.
I believe some of you were interested in the deadline for voluntary NI contributions. The deadline has been extended to 31 July 2023. You have twelve days left.
"The deadline for making voluntary National Insurance contributions for eligible taxpayers with National Insurance gaps between April 2006 to April 2018 has been extended to 5 April 2025."
So, I have gaps 2014-2022 BUT the website tells me I can get a max pension if I make contributions in future from now to 2028 when I get the pension. It just says Contact the Future Pension Centre about filling past gaps. So are these two alternative routes to the same result?
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
Rich people do not feel pain like normal people and any vocalisations or spasmodic movements are purely reflexive and are not actually screams or running away, Heavens no.
As hairless animals they do not need to be skinned with the same assiduousness as other creatures, although there are health risks involved with eating brains. The corpse should be hung upside down and bled (collect the blood for later use). The head should be removed: contrary to popular belief the eyes are not pleasant. The tongue (which is surprisingly large) is seen as a delicacy by some. The viscera should be removed, although the heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas are usable, and like a haggis the stomach can be used to wrap. The hands and feet are too bony for realistic use, and the genitals only really usable for superstitious rituals.
Rich people are usually fatter, so when roasting make sure the fat runoff is collected.
Carefully preserved and prepared, a rich person can feed a family of four for about a week, although by the end of that week be advised it will be stew, so don't forget to bring herbs, onions and - inevitably - carrots.
Disposal is difficult, due to various acts regarding the disposal of human remains, so (absent access to a pig farm) boil and macerating is the order of the day. Do not flush the remains as it will inevitably clog. Instead, separate into smaller containers and dispose via scattering in a remote spot.
Aren't rich people mostly lizards anyway? What do they taste like? I know that frogs are meant to taste like chicken.
Most things (eg crocodile) taste like chicken. Ostrich is like beef.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
Rich people do not feel pain like normal people and any vocalisations or spasmodic movements are purely reflexive and are not actually screams or running away, Heavens no.
As hairless animals they do not need to be skinned with the same assiduousness as other creatures, although there are health risks involved with eating brains. The corpse should be hung upside down and bled (collect the blood for later use). The head should be removed: contrary to popular belief the eyes are not pleasant. The tongue (which is surprisingly large) is seen as a delicacy by some. The viscera should be removed, although the heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas are usable, and like a haggis the stomach can be used to wrap. The hands and feet are too bony for realistic use, and the genitals only really usable for superstitious rituals.
Rich people are usually fatter, so when roasting make sure the fat runoff is collected.
Carefully preserved and prepared, a rich person can feed a family of four for about a week, although by the end of that week be advised it will be stew, so don't forget to bring herbs, onions and - inevitably - carrots.
Disposal is difficult, due to various acts regarding the disposal of human remains, so (absent access to a pig farm) boil and macerating is the order of the day. Do not flush the remains as it will inevitably clog. Instead, separate into smaller containers and dispose via scattering in a remote spot.
Aren't rich people mostly lizards anyway? What do they taste like? I know that frogs are meant to taste like chicken.
Most things (eg crocodile) taste like chicken. Ostrich is like beef.
I'm vegetarian and depending on the cutoff I guess I might be on the menu.
I've just had a quick look through Susan Hall's twitter likes and I'm not sure she's a good fit for London Mayor. 😬
What is happening to the Tories? This is desperate stuff.
She's not, but it's really hard to think who could actually do better for the Conservatives.
The stench of death. I'm not sure she'd even be palatable in the Shires, let alone London.
This is very much a core vote action.
How do we think this will play out in the actual election?
I've got as far as evaluating the three potential Conservative candidates as Tweedledum, Tweedledummer, and Tweedledumkopf, all being as mad as hatters.
Suze Hall, with a number of years in the London Assembly, has repeatedly asserted she will do things which are outside the powers of the Mayors of London, so are we to expect a revolution lead by Brian Coleman, and Brian and the Barnet Massive invading Covent Garden Tube Station?
"The Italian government issued a red alert for 23 of the country’s 27 main cities on Wednesday, along with warnings of the dangers of extreme temperatures. In Rome, temperatures surpassed 41 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, beating last year’s record of 40.7C, while Licata, in Sicily, saw the highest temperature in the country with a high of 46.3C. ... The heat wave is wreaking havoc across Europe, with ongoing wildfires in Greece and Switzerland and dangerously high temperatures across southern Europe. "
But the point remains, bogs are either there or not. we can't create them on a sub 1,000 year timescale. We can create additional fire hazards by planting trees, where lower lying and less hazardous vegetation would do the same job. This may sound silly for the UK in 2023, but 2043...
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
Rich people do not feel pain like normal people and any vocalisations or spasmodic movements are purely reflexive and are not actually screams or running away, Heavens no.
As hairless animals they do not need to be skinned with the same assiduousness as other creatures, although there are health risks involved with eating brains. The corpse should be hung upside down and bled (collect the blood for later use). The head should be removed: contrary to popular belief the eyes are not pleasant. The tongue (which is surprisingly large) is seen as a delicacy by some. The viscera should be removed, although the heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas are usable, and like a haggis the stomach can be used to wrap. The hands and feet are too bony for realistic use, and the genitals only really usable for superstitious rituals.
Rich people are usually fatter, so when roasting make sure the fat runoff is collected.
Carefully preserved and prepared, a rich person can feed a family of four for about a week, although by the end of that week be advised it will be stew, so don't forget to bring herbs, onions and - inevitably - carrots.
Disposal is difficult, due to various acts regarding the disposal of human remains, so (absent access to a pig farm) boil and macerating is the order of the day. Do not flush the remains as it will inevitably clog. Instead, separate into smaller containers and dispose via scattering in a remote spot.
Aren't rich people mostly lizards anyway? What do they taste like? I know that frogs are meant to taste like chicken.
Most things (eg crocodile) taste like chicken. Ostrich is like beef.
Sheep’s testicles taste like death however. Never order stupid things in an Azerbaijani restaurant whilst drunk.
On the two-child limit: I've done a bit of work on this previously.
1) Removing the limit would be by far the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty. It would target large families, often with a single parents, at relatively low cost.
2) It would be deeply unpopular according to most polling
3) KLAXON In-work poverty is the biggest issue for the UK, with out-of-work poverty quite favourable compared to Nordic countries. None of these policy fiddles deal with that
If you can't afford to look after the kids, then don't have them.
Want to eradicate child poverty? Stop poor people from having children.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
Rich people do not feel pain like normal people and any vocalisations or spasmodic movements are purely reflexive and are not actually screams or running away, Heavens no.
As hairless animals they do not need to be skinned with the same assiduousness as other creatures, although there are health risks involved with eating brains. The corpse should be hung upside down and bled (collect the blood for later use). The head should be removed: contrary to popular belief the eyes are not pleasant. The tongue (which is surprisingly large) is seen as a delicacy by some. The viscera should be removed, although the heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas are usable, and like a haggis the stomach can be used to wrap. The hands and feet are too bony for realistic use, and the genitals only really usable for superstitious rituals.
Rich people are usually fatter, so when roasting make sure the fat runoff is collected.
Carefully preserved and prepared, a rich person can feed a family of four for about a week, although by the end of that week be advised it will be stew, so don't forget to bring herbs, onions and - inevitably - carrots.
Disposal is difficult, due to various acts regarding the disposal of human remains, so (absent access to a pig farm) boil and macerating is the order of the day. Do not flush the remains as it will inevitably clog. Instead, separate into smaller containers and dispose via scattering in a remote spot.
Aren't rich people mostly lizards anyway? What do they taste like? I know that frogs are meant to taste like chicken.
Most things (eg crocodile) taste like chicken. Ostrich is like beef.
Sheep’s testicles taste like death however. Never order stupid things in an Azerbaijani restaurant whilst drunk.
Useful to know. I am quite comfortable with kidneys etc so might otherwise have given them a go.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
Rich people do not feel pain like normal people and any vocalisations or spasmodic movements are purely reflexive and are not actually screams or running away, Heavens no.
As hairless animals they do not need to be skinned with the same assiduousness as other creatures, although there are health risks involved with eating brains. The corpse should be hung upside down and bled (collect the blood for later use). The head should be removed: contrary to popular belief the eyes are not pleasant. The tongue (which is surprisingly large) is seen as a delicacy by some. The viscera should be removed, although the heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas are usable, and like a haggis the stomach can be used to wrap. The hands and feet are too bony for realistic use, and the genitals only really usable for superstitious rituals.
Rich people are usually fatter, so when roasting make sure the fat runoff is collected.
Carefully preserved and prepared, a rich person can feed a family of four for about a week, although by the end of that week be advised it will be stew, so don't forget to bring herbs, onions and - inevitably - carrots.
Disposal is difficult, due to various acts regarding the disposal of human remains, so (absent access to a pig farm) boil and macerating is the order of the day. Do not flush the remains as it will inevitably clog. Instead, separate into smaller containers and dispose via scattering in a remote spot.
Aren't rich people mostly lizards anyway? What do they taste like? I know that frogs are meant to taste like chicken.
The Jewish Nazi Muslamics Who Are Replacing Us With Beaker People are the lizards.
I believe some of you were interested in the deadline for voluntary NI contributions. The deadline has been extended to 31 July 2023. You have twelve days left.
"The deadline for making voluntary National Insurance contributions for eligible taxpayers with National Insurance gaps between April 2006 to April 2018 has been extended to 5 April 2025."
So, I have gaps 2014-2022 BUT the website tells me I can get a max pension if I make contributions in future from now to 2028 when I get the pension. It just says Contact the Future Pension Centre about filling past gaps. So are these two alternative routes to the same result?
Yes. If you can reach the required minimum number of full years contributions (35 IIRC) you get the full state pension. It doesn’t matter how you do that - NI paid during employment, voluntary contributions, parental rights gained due to received child benefit (for a child under 12 IIRC). It all counts towards the total.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Cremation comes with a hefty GHG footprint and dominates in UK, I believe. Burial is greener, as long as you don't import a fancy headstone.*
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Why not just Eat the Rich (who tend to have the biggest carbon footprint), as predicted in the Comic Strip film of the same name? An ethical source of meat, and no cremation.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
Rich people do not feel pain like normal people and any vocalisations or spasmodic movements are purely reflexive and are not actually screams or running away, Heavens no.
As hairless animals they do not need to be skinned with the same assiduousness as other creatures, although there are health risks involved with eating brains. The corpse should be hung upside down and bled (collect the blood for later use). The head should be removed: contrary to popular belief the eyes are not pleasant. The tongue (which is surprisingly large) is seen as a delicacy by some. The viscera should be removed, although the heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas are usable, and like a haggis the stomach can be used to wrap. The hands and feet are too bony for realistic use, and the genitals only really usable for superstitious rituals.
Rich people are usually fatter, so when roasting make sure the fat runoff is collected.
Carefully preserved and prepared, a rich person can feed a family of four for about a week, although by the end of that week be advised it will be stew, so don't forget to bring herbs, onions and - inevitably - carrots.
Disposal is difficult, due to various acts regarding the disposal of human remains, so (absent access to a pig farm) boil and macerating is the order of the day. Do not flush the remains as it will inevitably clog. Instead, separate into smaller containers and dispose via scattering in a remote spot.
Aren't rich people mostly lizards anyway? What do they taste like? I know that frogs are meant to taste like chicken.
Most things (eg crocodile) taste like chicken. Ostrich is like beef.
Sheep’s testicles taste like death however. Never order stupid things in an Azerbaijani restaurant whilst drunk.
Useful to know. I am quite comfortable with kidneys etc so might otherwise have given them a go.
They were grim, I had been on quite a thirsty afternoon on a hot summer day in St Petersburg and so by the time I ordered I was refreshed. I assumed they would at least be diced in some sort of ragu with flat bread but no, these six giant bollocks arrived on a plate. Had to follow each mouthful with about half a bottle of wine.
I believe some of you were interested in the deadline for voluntary NI contributions. The deadline has been extended to 31 July 2023. You have twelve days left.
"The deadline for making voluntary National Insurance contributions for eligible taxpayers with National Insurance gaps between April 2006 to April 2018 has been extended to 5 April 2025."
So, I have gaps 2014-2022 BUT the website tells me I can get a max pension if I make contributions in future from now to 2028 when I get the pension. It just says Contact the Future Pension Centre about filling past gaps. So are these two alternative routes to the same result?
Yes. If you can reach the required minimum number of full years contributions (35 IIRC) you get the full state pension. It doesn’t matter how you do that - NI paid during employment, voluntary contributions, parental rights gained due to received child benefit (for a child under 12 IIRC). It all counts towards the total.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
.
@Cyclefree I am usually sympathetic to your points but this goes way too far. Of course prostitution can be a form of rape if the woman is not truly consenting because she has been trafficked, or is dependent on a drug supply or scared of her pimp.
But prostitution per se is not rape. Many prostitutes enter into transactions freely and because they want money for whatever purpose. You can argue about the morality of that, the desirability or otherwise of using the criminal law to try and discourage that but you cannot say that is rape.
But, given the current somewhat ambiguous state of our current law and the risks of corruption and extortion arising I do agree that serving police officers should not be paying for sex.
I find it amusing to see all the lefties on here this morning taking one bit of news they disapprove of - Starmer's decision to retain the two child limit on benefits - and using it to build a completely fictional narrative about the state of the nation and the moral and societal degeneration of its peoples.
There are many and varied reasons why people support the benefit limit and almost none of them have anything to do with the 'meanness' or selfishness of people. I should say I don't agree with the benefit limit but, as with so many other things, I am also not willing to simply fall into the trap of ascribing selfish/uncharitable reasons to the views of others.
We are continualy being told there are too many people in the world. We are also being told there are too many people in the country and that we need to build millions of new houses to provide homes for an ever expanding population. We are told that the expanding population is bad for the planet and we are all heading for disaster as a result. Under such circumstances with such a message being continually pumped out by all sides for their own diverse reasons (and I personally think the message is wrong) it is no surprise that, when asked, people are supportive of a policy that implies a limit on the expansion of the population.
There are a significant number of younger people who are taking an active decision not to have children because they think it is bad for the planet. Again I disagree with them but this is a very strong message amongst the young these days. So why on earth, having made that decision to limit their own families, would they support a policy of giving money to others so they can have more kids? It is not a passive/selfish view, they are actively deciding that there are too many people and bringing more children into the world is selfish and harmful because that is the message being pumped at them all the time.
But for the left and the remainers it is much easier to just blame nasty people with nasty parochial views and tie it to Brexit/the right/the Tories rather than going out and actually trying to find out why people have such views.
Excellent post. For those who think there should be an incentive for 3, what about 4?
5 ...
I'd reduce it to one, for environmental reasons.
If you collapse the population like that, the working age vs retired pyramid will fuck the welfare state.
That's a human concern. I'm talking about the environment. (I do hope that those who want incentives to reward a large number of children don't dare to identify themselves as environmentalists.)
Absolutely. We should be rewarding the child-free for their selfless contribution to reducing humankind's impact on the planet, rather than the Bozos of this world who have enough offspring to form a football team.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
Yes, but why does Stocky want to reduce to 1 rather than zero?
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
Freeze-drying? (I'm not so keen on the liquidising variety which is now on offer.)
Not sure I'd like to be turned into ersatz coffee
I quite fancy being compressed into a diamond, though I suspect that has a shocking GHG footprint.
Seriously, I'd like a 'green' burial, in some kind of easily decomposable coffin with a tree on top turning me into apples or something.
Friend of mine did that with his mum and dad somewhere in Somerset, perhaps this one complete with orchard if you are looking*?
Aye, something like that, but a bit southern for me.
Not looking currently! Also, haven't specified anything, partly due to it hopefully being a long way away and also because, if it wasn't, I'd rather my nearest and dearest did whatever they wanted, rather than burnening them with my wishes, which by that point would seem irrelevant.
I do appreciate that carrying out the wishes of the deceased may also be, in it's own way, cathartic. Which reminds me that End of Sentence is a fine film, as is Last Orders.
I've just had a quick look through Susan Hall's twitter likes and I'm not sure she's a good fit for London Mayor. 😬
What is happening to the Tories? This is desperate stuff.
The pendulum has swung. The Tories now have a dearth of talent, and will find it hard to attract fresh and exciting blood to the ranks while they remain so deeply unpopular.
This is probably more pronounced than in previous twilight years of government given the 2019 Brexit fallout.
In time new faces will start to emerge but it needs the cooling off of opposition before that process can start.
Give her a chance, I guess, but bloody hell it doesn't look good. David Kurten-lite. Safer with Susan indeed; suspect most people will take one look and think err, no.
London should always be a target for the Tories, even at this low ebb they've got a beatable opponent in Khan.
I believe some of you were interested in the deadline for voluntary NI contributions. The deadline has been extended to 31 July 2023. You have twelve days left.
My wife has tried to explore this but simply cannot get into the HMRC site. She has given them the requisite information but it won't let her in. Trying to find assistance on this has proven impossible to date. If anyone has an idea of how to get someone, anyone, from HMRC respond or assist I would be grateful if you would share it.
"The Italian government issued a red alert for 23 of the country’s 27 main cities on Wednesday, along with warnings of the dangers of extreme temperatures. In Rome, temperatures surpassed 41 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, beating last year’s record of 40.7C, while Licata, in Sicily, saw the highest temperature in the country with a high of 46.3C. ... The heat wave is wreaking havoc across Europe, with ongoing wildfires in Greece and Switzerland and dangerously high temperatures across southern Europe. "
But the point remains, bogs are either there or not. we can't create them on a sub 1,000 year timescale. We can create additional fire hazards by planting trees, where lower lying and less hazardous vegetation would do the same job. This may sound silly for the UK in 2023, but 2043...
Trees aren't really a big fire hazard in the UK except in non-native plantations.
What we might have to change is which trees we want to keep.
It used to be that Sycamore were the enemy and most woodland plans said they should be removed. This thinking is now starting to change as they tolerate hot weather very well, as do Beech.
On bogs, we have a local plan to grow on Sphagnum from one uncut corner of our local bog to try and start repopulating the rest. It might take 100 years (by which time the place might be a salt marsh) but we're hoping to find some shortcuts.
If you want some quickly the people you want are https://beadamoss.com/. They have been providing moss for Moors for the Future and other similar projects.
We will have to change the cultivation of all our low lying farmland soon as the soil is rapidly disappearing via oxidation. Growing crops in wet conditions will have to form part of the solution, although which crops work best is still under investigation.
"An often outspoken character with a robust and active Twitter presence, Hall was criticised by the Conservatives in 2021 for arguing that the deadly storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Trump was the equivalent of UK politicians who opposed Brexit."
What happened was that the leadership/CCHQ nixed the good candidates in favour of their 'modernising' candidate, and then he was brought down by groping allegations. Leaving someone (and I am not criticising the lady as I know nothing about her) who was never meant to be the candidate. The current incumbency really is having a good go at being the ill wind that blows nobody any good.
I believe some of you were interested in the deadline for voluntary NI contributions. The deadline has been extended to 31 July 2023. You have twelve days left.
My wife has tried to explore this but simply cannot get into the HMRC site. She has given them the requisite information but it won't let her in. Trying to find assistance on this has proven impossible to date. If anyone has an idea of how to get someone, anyone, from HMRC respond or assist I would be grateful if you would share it.
There should be a phone number on the site, which worked when I tried it several Prime Ministers ago.
"An often outspoken character with a robust and active Twitter presence, Hall was criticised by the Conservatives in 2021 for arguing that the deadly storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Trump was the equivalent of UK politicians who opposed Brexit."
What happened was that the leadership/CCHQ nixed the good candidates in favour of their 'modernising' candidate, and then he was brought down by groping allegations. Leaving someone (and I am not criticising the lady as I know nothing about her) who was never meant to be the candidate. The current incumbency really is having a good go at being the ill wind that blows nobody any good.
Any idea who? I know Paul Scully was nixed. Passes the "not on-the-record bonkers" test, but a fairly small beast politically. People were talking up Justine Greening, but I don't think she was ever that interested.
I believe some of you were interested in the deadline for voluntary NI contributions. The deadline has been extended to 31 July 2023. You have twelve days left.
My wife has tried to explore this but simply cannot get into the HMRC site. She has given them the requisite information but it won't let her in. Trying to find assistance on this has proven impossible to date. If anyone has an idea of how to get someone, anyone, from HMRC respond or assist I would be grateful if you would share it.
There should be a phone number on the site, which worked when I tried it several Prime Ministers ago.
Mrs C had the same problem - if it is with Government Gateway. We've never been able to sort it. Crap, crap HMG service in a core area.
You need to phone. It worked for us too if that helps.
The other issues are -
- sometimes it is Pension service you need and sometimes HMRC. I get thoroughly muddled in memory but basically ISTR that PS dealt with how many more years one could add before it was worthless adding any more, and HMRC dealt with the actual NI (including any voluntary contribs that can helpfully arise from even minor income from e.g. rentals or freelance work to help fill gaps). But really they were very helpful.
- often the 'simple' online forecast is misleading: the advice has been, always check by phone
Comments
I think SKS did the combat fatigues thing a while back, are we about to see him on a tank?
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
I suppose a man using violence during sex with a woman he has paid for could cause her bleeding. Is that what @Miklosvar was referring to I wonder?
https://www.forces.net/politics/labour-leader-promises-appoint-armed-forces-commissioner-if-he-becomes-prime-minister
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
Quite how police officers who are customers of pimps are expected to investigate their criminal activities, quite how we are expected to trust that they will do so properly is a question I will leave you to ponder.
What I see is that the moment an organisation which has some very serious problems in relation to how it deals with women tries to do something about this by asking its employees, including the men, to behave differently, a lot of men immediately jump in with reasons why asking men to change their behaviour is somehow impossible.
I wonder if it was women who were being asked to change their behaviour and attitudes would the response be the same? We're always being told to "Be Kind"
Well, here's a thought: you men be kind. For a fucking change.
Let's be realistic: I cannot find any stats on male vs female use of prostitutes in the UK, searches just throw up stats about how many men use female vs male prostitutes. This is because the proportion of prostitute users who are not men is statistically invisible. Leaving aside our common ground about the general and universal abhorrence of men who use prostitutes, can we agree that this means that a prostitute ban is not gender neutral and that this has EA implications?
It is like a mirror image of the views of misogynistic religious bigots.
Your answer should deal with the fact that analogies usually have one point in which they agree with the situation being analogised, not more. If I say that tomorrow's by elections are a sword of Damocles hanging over Sunak's head, I do not expect the response that that's quite wrong, because by elections are not cutting and stabbing weapons 2-4 foot long and made of steel.
There you are, an analogy about analogies.
I am not going to express a view about whether prostitution should or should not be legal. That is not the issue here. The issue is whether those who have to enforce the law should be allowed to engage in an activity which will almost inevitably create a conflict of interest with their duties, put them in a position where they may be facilitating criminal acts and expose them to the risk of blackmail and whether it is reasonable for an employer to impose restrictions on such activity.
On the Equality Act point, I will ask my equality expert lawyer friend what they think.
A non-existent person is intrinsically net-zero.
However, indirect discrimination is lawful provided it is proportionate means of achieving a legitimate end.
The legitimate end is avoiding conflicts of interest. On the face of it, the ban seems a proportionate means of achieving that end.
And why aren't we allowed to offset our carbon emissions by bumping people off?
I think I get the point you were trying to make, but I also think that drawing an analogy with menstruation is clumsy at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.
How many are aware that paying for sex with someone who has been subject to coercion is a crime, irrespective of whether the individual paying is aware of the coercion ?
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2009/26/part/2/crossheading/prostitution
That would likely make most police officers paying for sex criminals. That alone justifies the policy, IMO.
Many of "us men" are kind on a similar level to a similar number of women. Putting us all in the same category (as your feminist "womansplaining" comment seems to) is as ludicrous and irrational as any form of discrimination that I have encountered.
There are good men. There are bad men, There are good women. There are bad women. Try and understand this please, if that isn't too "mansplaining".
Plus they were out there in March...
https://www.forces.net/politics/labour-leader-promises-appoint-armed-forces-commissioner-if-he-becomes-prime-minister
https://www.paulmeekins.co.uk/product/59649/IN-DETAIL-FAST-TRACK-18-CHALLENGER-2
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/challenger-2-tanks-give-the-edge-to-nato-in-estonia/
It is dangerous too when it spills over into the corollary that women who have not been visibly coerced are beyond saving. They have brought any misfortune onto themselves, so no-one will be surprised when they are murdered or raped, as by the Yorkshire Ripper or Rotherham child-grooming gangs.
Financially, we probably would need to bump non-working people off if we substantially shrunk the working age population as you would with a 1 child policy.
*Edstones have dire consequences in general, of course
I'm reminded of the rule that university teaching staff shouldn't have relationships with those students for which they hjave any responsibility - much to the indignation of some on PB as I recall, but a very necessary one. Incidentally it's not just sexual ones. See eg
https://hr.admin.ox.ac.uk/staff-student-relationships#collapse4067531
While I wouldn't adopt Cyclefree's rhetoric on this, I think in essence she's absolutely right.
I mean, if human concerns are of no concern.
I quite fancy being compressed into a diamond, though I suspect that has a shocking GHG footprint.
Seriously, I'd like a 'green' burial, in some kind of easily decomposable coffin with a tree on top turning me into apples or something.
The claim was that banning x cannot be gender-biased if the ban applies to both men and women. This is simply not true, as other examples show. The purpose of the counter examples is to illustrate that one point. How difficult is this.
https://www.fevingreenburial.co.uk/
https://www.somersetwillowcoffins.co.uk/how-to-order/find-natural-burial-site/
*Joke. I hope not, really!
What is happening to the Tories? This is desperate stuff.
"The Italian government issued a red alert for 23 of the country’s 27 main cities on Wednesday, along with warnings of the dangers of extreme temperatures. In Rome, temperatures surpassed 41 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, beating last year’s record of 40.7C, while Licata, in Sicily, saw the highest temperature in the country with a high of 46.3C.
...
The heat wave is wreaking havoc across Europe, with ongoing wildfires in Greece and Switzerland and dangerously high temperatures across southern Europe. "
https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-uptick-hospitalization-heat-wave-sweep-eu-continent/
Hence my Down with trees! campaign. Trees and bogs are about equally good at carbon capture, and how many wildfires involve bogs being set alight?
Graun has a report, more generally.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/19/susan-hall-chosen-as-conservative-candidate-for-london-mayor
"An often outspoken character with a robust and active Twitter presence, Hall was criticised by the Conservatives in 2021 for arguing that the deadly storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Trump was the equivalent of UK politicians who opposed Brexit."
https://www.sfh-tr.nhs.uk/media/9168/hr-0035-relationship-at-work-policy-106-20-v2.pdf
Unless the policy only applies to those of a specific protected characteristic then the direct discrimination provisions of the Equality Act shouldn't apply. You then have to rely on indirect discrimination provisions i.e. the policy applies in the same way for everybody but disadvantages a group of people who share a protected characteristic. In which case the Met would have to show that the policy is a proportionate means of achieving its (presumably legitimate) aim. the example you give would only be indirect discrimination if the officer can show that the policy disadvantages those having a gay (or bi) affair over those having a heterosexual affair. I don't see that. It's just disclosure - not necessarily a prohibition. We've recently had an openly lesbian Commissioner. Why is such disclosure worse than disclosure of a heterosexual affair.
No-one ever cites Article 8 properly, itreads -
Article 8: Right to privacy
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. (my emphasis)
Given that this policy has been brought in to avoid sexual misconduct then the "public safety" exemption the Met would argue applies.
Interestingly the global average salary is US$18000 per year. I would guess that makes most of us on this forum in the edible category
https://www.iawfonline.org/article/the-long-slow-burn-of-smouldering-peat-mega-fires/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXf-5fsqHIo
BBC version:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-52737613
It was nearly 4 months before the fire was definitely out.
As hairless animals they do not need to be skinned with the same assiduousness as other creatures, although there are health risks involved with eating brains. The corpse should be hung upside down and bled (collect the blood for later use). The head should be removed: contrary to popular belief the eyes are not pleasant. The tongue (which is surprisingly large) is seen as a delicacy by some. The viscera should be removed, although the heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas are usable, and like a haggis the stomach can be used to wrap. The hands and feet are too bony for realistic use, and the genitals only really usable for superstitious rituals.
Rich people are usually fatter, so when roasting make sure the fat runoff is collected.
Carefully preserved and prepared, a rich person can feed a family of four for about a week, although by the end of that week be advised it will be stew, so don't forget to bring herbs, onions and - inevitably - carrots.
Disposal is difficult, due to various acts regarding the disposal of human remains, so (absent access to a pig farm) boil and macerating is the order of the day. Do not flush the remains as it will inevitably clog. Instead, separate into smaller containers and dispose via scattering in a remote spot.
1) Removing the limit would be by far the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty. It would target large families, often with a single parents, at relatively low cost.
2) It would be deeply unpopular according to most polling
3) KLAXON In-work poverty is the biggest issue for the UK, with out-of-work poverty quite favourable compared to Nordic countries. None of these policy fiddles deal with that
I'm there now. Ridiculoisly pleasant.
This is probably more pronounced than in previous twilight years of government given the 2019 Brexit fallout.
In time new faces will start to emerge but it needs the cooling off of opposition before that process can start.
This is very much a core vote action.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stewards_of_the_Chiltern_Hundreds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stewards_of_the_Chiltern_Hundreds_1751–1849
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stewards_of_the_Manor_of_Northstead
Some notable names on these lists.
Reckon we're safe from the real JSO here. The Julians rarely leave London.
I think a comparison was made of eating in a NY pizza restaurant. That comparison is meaningless. There is no conflict of interest. I buy a pizza and I pay for it. The mafia aren't going to blackmail me. They might well do however if I use one of their prostitutes and I am a policeman. Hence the need for a ban.
Another reason given for not banning it was 'the consequence' of banning the use of prostitutes. That is abuse, rape and murder if they are not available to certain individuals. We are talking about policemen here. Surely men such as this should not be policemen. Isn't this what the Sarah Everard case was all about. He should never have been a policeman in the first place. OK you might not be able to identify them all and fire them beforehand but you should give it a much better go than we do now. Sadly life is not perfect, but I see no reason for allowing policemen to use prostitutes because it might stop the odd one from raping a poor girl.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/taxpayers-given-more-time-for-voluntary-national-insurance-contributions
"The deadline for making voluntary National Insurance contributions for eligible taxpayers with National Insurance gaps between April 2006 to April 2018 has been extended to 5 April 2025."
https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/check-your-state-pension/account/nirecord
So, I have gaps 2014-2022 BUT the website tells me I can get a max pension if I make contributions in future from now to 2028 when I get the pension. It just says Contact the Future Pension Centre about filling past gaps. So are these two alternative routes to the same result?
I've got as far as evaluating the three potential Conservative candidates as Tweedledum, Tweedledummer, and Tweedledumkopf, all being as mad as hatters.
Suze Hall, with a number of years in the London Assembly, has repeatedly asserted she will do things which are outside the powers of the Mayors of London, so are we to expect a revolution lead by Brian Coleman, and Brian and the Barnet Massive invading Covent Garden Tube Station?
But the point remains, bogs are either there or not. we can't create them on a sub 1,000 year timescale. We can create additional fire hazards by planting trees, where lower lying and less hazardous vegetation would do the same job. This may sound silly for the UK in 2023, but 2043...
Want to eradicate child poverty? Stop poor people from having children.
The RichQAnon are just chicken.
@Cyclefree I am usually sympathetic to your points but this goes way too far. Of course prostitution can be a form of rape if the woman is not truly consenting because she has been trafficked, or is dependent on a drug supply or scared of her pimp.
But prostitution per se is not rape. Many prostitutes enter into transactions freely and because they want money for whatever purpose. You can argue about the morality of that, the desirability or otherwise of using the criminal law to try and discourage that but you cannot say that is rape.
But, given the current somewhat ambiguous state of our current law and the risks of corruption and extortion arising I do agree that serving police officers should not be paying for sex.
Not looking currently! Also, haven't specified anything, partly due to it hopefully being a long way away and also because, if it wasn't, I'd rather my nearest and dearest did whatever they wanted, rather than burnening them with my wishes, which by that point would seem irrelevant.
I do appreciate that carrying out the wishes of the deceased may also be, in it's own way, cathartic. Which reminds me that End of Sentence is a fine film, as is Last Orders.
London should always be a target for the Tories, even at this low ebb they've got a beatable opponent in Khan.
What we might have to change is which trees we want to keep.
It used to be that Sycamore were the enemy and most woodland plans said they should be removed. This thinking is now starting to change as they tolerate hot weather very well, as do Beech.
On bogs, we have a local plan to grow on Sphagnum from one uncut corner of our local bog to try and start repopulating the rest. It might take 100 years (by which time the place might be a salt marsh) but we're hoping to find some shortcuts.
If you want some quickly the people you want are https://beadamoss.com/. They have been providing moss for Moors for the Future and other similar projects.
We will have to change the cultivation of all our low lying farmland soon as the soil is rapidly disappearing via oxidation. Growing crops in wet conditions will have to form part of the solution, although which crops work best is still under investigation.
You need to phone. It worked for us too if that helps.
The other issues are -
- sometimes it is Pension service you need and sometimes HMRC. I get thoroughly muddled in memory but basically ISTR that PS dealt with how many more years one could add before it was worthless adding any more, and HMRC dealt with the actual NI (including any voluntary contribs that can helpfully arise from even minor income from e.g. rentals or freelance work to help fill gaps). But really they were very helpful.
- often the 'simple' online forecast is misleading: the advice has been, always check by phone
- this may be helpful
https://www.which.co.uk/money/pensions-and-retirement/state-pension/can-i-top-up-my-state-pension-aVwgx1p28af4#how-can-i-check-if-i-have-any-national-insurance-gaps