Politico Daily @Politico_Daily 32m "Do you think the last Labour govt did or didn't cover up failings at NHS hospitals?" Did 41% Didn't 31% Don't know 28% #YouGov
Owen Jones @OwenJones84 2m If you want blame someone for the incessant #RoyalBaby coverage, try Oliver Cromwell. He was given a very simple task and he ballsed it up.
You can taste the bitterness..
Brilliant - there are some Lefties on Twitter going bonkers over this and making all sorts of Class War/NHS/toff rants.
It's a baby for heaven's sake. I rather liked this tweet - it summed the TV coverage up perfectly.
RT @StigAbell: Rumour is that Nicholas Witchell is only 6cm dilated at this point, so some time to wait
Glad to be having a final day off while poor Mrs Stodge has had to endure a journey on London's very own mobile sauna (where you keep your clothes on although I'm told stretches of the Piccadilly Line are a bit more easy-going).
On-topic, and this will offend some on here but in truth Nigel Farage isn't a significant political figure - were he to be elected, he'd be as important as George Galloway or Caroline Lucas. Strength comes with numbers I'm afraid and if the current polls are any guide, Farage, even if he gets elected, isn't going to have a lot of company.
On other matters, Clarke could well have been in trouble in 1997 on some of the more extravagant swings to Labour but he survived comfortably and as Nick suggests, it may simply be that he's a good constituency MP and his pro-European views aren't an issue for those in his area.
I feel less than qualified to talk about blocking access to pornography because I'm not a parent and I can't help but think of Mrs Lovejoy in The Simpsons and her catchphrase "won't somebody think of the children?"
For what little it's worth, the issue for me is less about allowing or not allowing pornography to reach the eyes of our children but understanding and dealing with the moral and psychological consequences of it happening. I remember looking at a copy of Hustler (yes, I'm that old) on the bus home from school when I was 12 but I don't recall it permanently shaping my view of women (or girls at the time).
You can probably no more stop the spread of pornography than stop England beating Australia at cricket so it's down to the bigger questions of morality and how parents educate their children and as I'm not a parent, that one's up there with Scottish Independence in my book so I'm not going to get involved.
Hi MPs. I know some of you follow me. You know tabloid hacks are going to be very interested in your Internet use from now on right?
Did they ever do that thing forcing ISPs to keep everyone's browsing histories in case the police need them? And how annoyed are the ISPs about the latest bit of meddling?
I'll put the positive case in favour of the porn filter, since nobody else seems to want to.
Britain's national security will be increasingly dependent on ability to attack and defend networks. Doing this will require young people skilled in network security (both offence and defence), starting at an early age. I can't think of any better way to create a generation of hackers than putting a bunch of network security measures between 14-year-old boys and their porn.
Mrs J said something similar this morning. If we are ever blessed with kid(s), then we'll give them a computer with a compiler and the chrome / firefox sources, and not allow them to browse the web until they've learnt how to build the software.
For extra points, they'll need to learn how to submit meaningful bug reports to the relevant databases.
Once they've done that, they can probably circumvent all the security measures we can put in place. :-)
@Slackbladder It's also historically incorrect. When Oliver Cromwell died, the monarchy was done and dusted, and no one was thinking of restoring it. The person to blame is this guy:
The chaos that ensued following his failed reign as Lord Protector led to the return of the monarchy.
He was one of the very few heads of state of England to outlive his successor (indeed, I think only Edward VIII is in this elite club).
EDIT James II survived Mary II, though not William III, so you could argue that he is a member of this club too. Since Richard Cromwell was still alive then too, the end of the 17th century had a record-breaking number of former heads of state knocking around.
Giles Dilnot @reporterboy PM tells WomansHour he has seconded someone from GCHQ to his office to advise on this internet porn thing. Snowdenites will go loopy
Good grief, well he's taking it seriously even if I think its a stupid idea. There are plenty of ways around this such as basically 'opting-in' to stuff that Mary Whitehouse would be appalled by.
At times like this, I'm reminded of the Swedes view of porn. When my hubby worked for Ericsson in the UK - the software dev guys would have their new servers stuffed with porn by the IT chaps to stop them filling it with home-projects/games.
His screensaver was a nude woman with a discretely placed rose - she looked like me so I was rather flattered. This was in the early 2000's - if their HQ building was still open, I wonder if it'd be the same today?!?
I'm opting in to online porn, but opting out of voting for mainstream politicians. I might take up smoking, just to pee Cameron off, whilst supping ale from a 3 for 2 offer, just for good measure.
Reading tributes to the late Mel Smith , I came across this ;
" He happily baited the Scottish health and safety jobsworths, though, threatening to light a cigar on stage and reminding everyone that while Churchill would have hated the smoking ban, ‘Adolf Hitler would have been delighted’. "
Churchill and Roosevelt were heavy smokers. Hitler and Mussolini were fanatical anti-smokers.
It'd create a government database of people who enjoy, er, racier parts of the internet, and given recent history one imagines it'd be about as well-kept a secret as Katie Price's private life.
Besides which, adult material's legal. Nobody has to opt-in to read Suetonius (paedophilia, castration, rape) or Ovid (cannibalism, rape, mutilation, and that's just in Tereus, Procne and Philomela).
In my view the most worrying result for Labour is that while few of their supporters think they covered up the NHS failings (13) more think their attempts to address them failed (36) than succeeded (24)
TGOHF: You do realise that all the results you're selectively quoting are 2-3 days old and were discussed here at the time? Basically most voters think all parties are devious and have the worst possible motives, but Labour preferred on the NHS by the usual 10-point margin.
Porn filters: anyone in the public eye has to be cautious in this area - I once chatted online about having tried to watch a film with a topless woman in a hotel 35 years ago and being so bored that I kept going back to a Times article on the balance of payments; constituents immediately slagged me off for admitting watching porn and thereby setting a bad example to my voters. That said, I gather that things have moved on a bit even if those constituents haven't, and some stuff out there would disgust almost anyone.
But I think it's simply inevitable that young people will have a look at anything and are hard to stop - a reasonable policy is to try to block the extremes (child porn, rape, etc.) and encourage warnings for anything else vaguely dodgy. Anything more is probably gesture politics.
It'd create a government database of people who enjoy, er, racier parts of the internet, and given recent history one imagines it'd be about as well-kept a secret as Katie Price's private life.
Besides which, adult material's legal. Nobody has to opt-in to read Suetonius (paedophilia, castration, rape) or Ovid (cannibalism, rape, mutilation, and that's just in Tereus, Procne and Philomela).
Mr D chav porn = depravity, posh porn = art.
It will be interesting to see how HMG plans to address this.
@Slackbladder It's also historically incorrect. When Oliver Cromwell died, the monarchy was done and dusted, and no one was thinking of restoring it. The person to blame is this guy:
The chaos that ensued following his failed reign as Lord Protector led to the return of the monarchy.
He was one of the very few heads of state of England to outlive his successor (indeed, I think only Edward VIII is in this elite club).
I think that's a very harsh judgement on Richard who never really wanted to be Head of State or anything much more than an average man living an average life. For a regime which had removed a dynastic family, it was curious that they fell back on dynastic succession on Oliver Cromwell's death.
The split between the Army and Parliament led to the collapse of the Commonwealth and the realisation among men like Monck that the only alternative to implosion and anarchy was restoration but this had to happen with as little vengeance as possible so the Act of Indemnity was the price the Royalists had to pay for a smooth transition.
In addition, the generals were fortunate to be dealing with Charles who was relatively apolitical rather than his younger brother and if you want a counterfactual to muse on, how about asking what would have happened had Charles either been killed or captured at Worcester?
Porn filters are way too easy to get past,with proxies,and onion routers etc,most teenagers will have no problems. Just look how many proxies there are for Pirate Bay,it has never been easier to access it despite the ISPs banning it. As a moderately lucrative hobby I repair PCs,and have done about 500 machines,I do not look for porn on them,but it is hard to miss when you are cleaning out malware cookies etc,a large number show evidence of porn. I have had a few very suspicious repairs where I am virtually certain the customer has destroyed the hard drive deliberately,usual excuse is"I just bought it like this on ebay". If I were to find bad stuff I would report it. I think this is how Gary Glitter got caught.
@stodge I'm being a bit unfair, I know. But blaming Oliver Cromwell for the restoration of the monarchy is rather more unfair. At the time of his death in 1658, no one was thinking of it at all.
"...Today the outcome of that effort to create a new Code of Conduct will be published, although the Prime Minister has already revealed the basics of what will be included.
* Adult content filters to be enabled on all new mobile phones (this already happens for most people).
* Adult content banned from public Wi-Fi services (some public hotspot operators already do this).
* It will be a criminal offence to possess pornography that depicts rape.
* Google, Bing and other major internet search engines will have to block any results/sites and specific search terms blacklisted by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (i.e. this mostly relates to child abuse content). It should be said that Google and the like already remove related sites once they’ve been notified.
* The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) will also gain new powers to examine P2P (internet file sharing) networks for child abuse content and to hopefully help trace their users (working alongside the police).
* People whom attempt to access websites that contain child abuse content will also be met by a strict warning about the risks of doing so.
* The country’s largest broadband ISPs (BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Virgin Media) will all need to enable automatic network-level filtering of adult websites (i.e. Active Choice+), although you will be given a choice to opt-out (though the opt-in “Yes” box will stay pre-ticked if you ignore it).
The government expects all of these new measures to be introduced by the end of 2014 and the communications regulator, Ofcom, will be tasked with overseeing this effort. But arguably one of the most contentious elements continues to be the enforced adoption of network-level filtering.
Essentially network-level filtering means that the broadband provider controls the website blocking at its end of the service and this allows the restrictions to be imposed across all of your networked devices.
"...The “deep web” and the “dark net”, areas of the internet where robots.txt files are not in place for Google to crawl, are where sites like the Silk Road – an online market for illicit goods – hide. They are also where the bulk of illegal images are shared. The unpleasant fact is that the majority of child sexual abuse online is perpetrated beyond even the all-seeing eye of Google. It looks good on front pages, but Cameron’s call for internet firms to fulfil their “moral duty” barely touches the edge of the problem. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! make easy targets because the average voter knows who they are. A crusade against software that enables online anonymity like Tor, and provides access to the lawless depths of the dark web, doesn’t have such a ring to it.
Many of the figures quoted in the press about the British public and its exposure to “child porn” are wrong. In June, the Internet Watch Foundation took to BBC Breakfast touting shocking research that 1.5 million people in Britain had stumbled upon images of child sexual abuse while surfing the internet. However, as the Ministry of Truth blog exhaustively detailed, the "research" was, in fact, based on an opinion poll. ComRes surveyed a representative sample of 2058 British adults concluding that the vast majority of people in Britain think child sexual abuse content and computer generated images or cartoons of child sexual abuse should be removed from the internet. Of those 2058 adults, three per cent said they had “seen/encountered ‘child pornography’”. The IWF applied that percentage to the population of Britain and declared that 1.5 million have stumbled upon child porn..." http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/micwright/100009396/david-cameron-cant-protect-us-from-child-porn-because-he-doesnt-understand-the-internet/
As were Stalin, Mao and of course the most famous political smoker of all, Fidel.
Probably explains Mao's , Churchill's and Castro's longevity. Roosevelt sadly was a polio victim which led to the hypertension that shortened his life and the cause of Stalin's death remains a mystery.
It'd create a government database of people who enjoy, er, racier parts of the internet, and given recent history one imagines it'd be about as well-kept a secret as Katie Price's private life.
Besides which, adult material's legal. Nobody has to opt-in to read Suetonius (paedophilia, castration, rape) or Ovid (cannibalism, rape, mutilation, and that's just in Tereus, Procne and Philomela).
I'm very against anything that involves a central database here - its totally asking for some numpty to come along and start fishing - just as RIPA was abused.
The *idea* is all very worthy until one applies the simplest of tests as we've seen on PB where sites that are nothing to do with illegal activities are banned by ISPs using arbitrary criteria. I recall a while ago a silver bullet bit of technology that'd block sites by matching the % of skin tone in the graphics hosted - this apparently would block porn. I imagine lingeries and swimwear and gym sites would be caught by these as well.
ToryHealth @Toryhealth The Guardian: @Jeremy_Hunt is a good egg, and "Doctors are beginning to realise Jeremy Hunt may be right" >>> guardian.co.uk/healthcare-net… #NHS
After reading the comments on here and especially the BBC forum on this porn opt in, I think everybody is reacting a bit hysterical. My points to make are:- 1) the woman (cannot remember her name) who argues that because the murderer of April Jones first watched legal porn and then went onto illegal porn and then went onto child killing ,its the legal porn that sowed the seeds is being a bit illogical. I am sure the killer also used Friendsreunited or amazon as well. 2) On the other hand porn is not being banned by this measure. It will just make it less viewed . 3) the technical argument of whether it can be done 100% effectively is not an argument really (it is used in so many arguments). If a measure is good then merely cutting down on whatever is bad is better than doing nothing. 4) hardcore and scary people will still access this stuff but then again ,as Nick Palmer says, it will stop casual use more . That may even help weaker willed people . In the pre internet past people had to buy porn from a shop or at least get it delivered by post , not wanting to do either stopped a lot of people from doing this fairly unsociable (if not actually dangerous) 'hobby'. With easy access on the internet more people especially the young do see porn - Is that really a step forward ? No I don't think so and so on balance think a opt out is a good way . LOTS OF HYSTERICAL STUFF FROM BOTH SIDES THOUGH
Porn filters are way too easy to get past,with proxies,and onion routers etc,most teenagers will have no problems. Just look how many proxies there are for Pirate Bay,it has never been easier to access it despite the ISPs banning it. As a moderately lucrative hobby I repair PCs,and have done about 500 machines,I do not look for porn on them,but it is hard to miss when you are cleaning out malware cookies etc,a large number show evidence of porn. I have had a few very suspicious repairs where I am virtually certain the customer has destroyed the hard drive deliberately,usual excuse is"I just bought it like this on ebay". If I were to find bad stuff I would report it. I think this is how Gary Glitter got caught.
As were Stalin, Mao and of course the most famous political smoker of all, Fidel.
Probably explains Mao's , Churchill's and Castro's longevity. Roosevelt sadly was a polio victim which led to the hypertension that shortened his life and the cause of Stalin's death remains a mystery.
a stroke allegedly ( not hard to believe giving his heavy smoking and drinking ) though warfin also suspected.
There was a kind of rough justice in Stalin lying in his own piss as his life drained away while his colleagues watched on afraid to call a doctor in case they got framed for killing him.
Regulation of the internet confuses three different things:
1) stopping things that should be illegal anyway (selling drugs, child pornography etc etc);
2) restricting access to things that society believes should not be readily available to children;
3) ensuring that those who do not wish to are not confronted in their own living room with things that while legal they find distressing, disturbing or offensive.
The first of these is perfectly ok to seek to crack down on, and it's perfectly ok to expect the big service providers to do their share of the work.
The third has to be a matter of individual responsibility and judgement, and the government should confine its role to making sure that it is easy for individuals to make whatever choices they think appropriate about access. Again, the service providers can reasonably be expected to do a lot of the work here and to make it as easy as possible for individuals to vary their choices.
The second is the difficult one, because the individuals whose access is to be restricted may have a very different view from the individuals doing the restricting of access, and indeed society as a whole may wish to set norms rather than leaving the matter exclusively to parental judgement (just as it does with film ratings).
The government could do plenty in categories 1 and 3 before turning to the much tougher decisions in category 2.
What I'm noticing about this porn debate, is that very gradually it seems the media is mixing up general "porn" with "pedophilia"
I would assume someone that enjoys watching "porn" can do so without being a "pedophile?"
I think the "opt-out" is a reasonable way forward as long as the people that want to "opt-in" don't find themselves on some sort of "dodgy internet users list" and find themselves being monitored by the authorities without any evidence that they are doing something wrong - The "opt-in" list shouldn't be used for the police for endless surveillance and fishing expeditions.
Right, now I've given my two-pennith on that, the other big news:
Woman giving birth to baby in London!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I came onto the thread expecting at least 15 posts from tim on Lynton Crosby's firm's private medicine links during the tories' NHS reforms.
Stangely there aren't any.
Is this because in the period Crosby's firm was advising the private medical firms, he wasn't actually an advisor to David Cameron? (buried in paragraph ten).
Oh look, you sign the petition to support "family friendly" Dave and your tickbox to get emails from the Conservative party has already been ticked for you.
I used to get weekly emails from the Lib Dems despite never consciously signing up to any of their communications (will the porn-filter cover political parties?). They stopped after I replied to an email from David Laws by suggesting that his personal trustworthiness wasnt the strongest issue they could be campaigning on.
Are they in favour of controls, appealing to socially conservativ Tories. Or is it like the right to be able to smoke, a libertarian party pushing for freedom of the individual.
They could go either way on this and whilst I expect them to go the former they could conceivably be the latter.
What about the Lib Dems, and well lts face it we already know where 'Ban page 3' watermelon greens are on this issue.
CON - Censors LAB 'As a father Ed will no doubt support Camo. Greens 'Page 3 disgrace' will too.
Leaves UKIP and Lib Dems, what are their views on this.
David Cameron @David_Cameron 1m Join the campaign to protect our children online, and read the speech I’m about to deliver, at http://j.mp/16OoJHU #ProtectingChildren
Oh look, you sign the petition to support "family friendly" Dave and your tickbox to get emails from the Conservative party has already been ticked for you.
How's the rape porn thing going to work? Are the courts going to have to figure out whether fictional characters in porn films gave consent or not? This is going to produce an amazing new branch of ero-forensic literary criticism.
anyway yesterday restored my faith in the BBC not being uber politically correct in that at the History Live English Heritage event at Kelmarsh they were giving out toy guns as prizes to the kids who correctly filled in a quiz. Got my daughter to do it (only helped on one question) so I could get the shooter. Bit nervous when the young lady from the BBC history team studied the answers like they were enigma codes being decoded at Bletchley Park but eventually she said 'well done' and handed over the gun!!
"...Today, The Times reports on a landmark decision by Lord Justice Munby, the most senior family judge in England and Wales. In future, he has decreed, judgments involving decisions by local authorities over where children are to live will be published unless there are “compelling reasons” not to. This is a victory for those who have campaigned for openness and transparency in the family courts, this newspaper among them.
This should not be mistaken as a triumph for the nosy over those committed to privacy. For while the interests of children should always be paramount, it is those who are most intimately involved with the family courts who have the most to gain from effective scrutiny of a system that until now has been hopelessly opaque. In 2008, as a result of a campaign by The Times, led by the columnist Camilla Cavendish, the law was changed to allow media access to family hearings. In practice, the presence of media remained rare, largely because the process remained shrouded in such fog that few journalists could know which hearings would be worth attending. This remains a problem.
This new ruling, however, means that there must be clear and explicit reasons for a judge to decide against the publication of rulings and that those pertaining to children in public care will be effectively published by default. The identities of children will, of course, be withheld. But the identities of public authorities and “expert witnesses” involved in their cases will not..." http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/leaders/article3821955.ece
Are they in favour of controls, appealing to socially conservativ Tories. Or is it like the right to be able to smoke, a libertarian party pushing for freedom of the individual.
They could go either way on this and whilst I expect them to go the former they could conceivably be the latter.
What about the Lib Dems, and well lts face it we already know where 'Ban page 3' watermelon greens are on this issue.
CON - Censors LAB 'As a father Ed will no doubt support Camo. Greens 'Page 3 disgrace' will too.
Leaves UKIP and Lib Dems, what are their views on this.
I think all parties will support the "opt-in" as it's a pretty harmless way if trying to ensure young eye's don't see things they shouldn't, while people that enjoy looking at porn can still do so.
I suspect Lib-Dems, UKIP and liberal Tories will say this shouldn't go any further though while Labour, Greens and some of the madder elements of the Tories will no doubt see this as just the start of the state getting control of the internet.
I'm waiting for the "internet" to start being taxed (email tax etc...) It's going to happen sooner or later, I'm sure.
How's the rape porn thing going to work? Are the courts going to have to figure out whether fictional characters in porn films gave consent or not? This is going to produce an amazing new branch of ero-forensic literary criticism.
It is already illegal in Scotland so I assume there is some phrasing that works
""Possession of such material is already an offence in Scotland but because of a loophole in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, it is not an offence south of the border," he is to say."
OT Do you own a suitcase big enough to hide a body in?
Crime & Justice @ukcrime A body has been found in suitcase in Thornfield Avenue NW7
There was a time when suitcases the size of single beds used to be hauled around airports - I don't see many of these today. I'd be hard pressed to squeeze a Filipino bride into any of mine...
How's the rape porn thing going to work? Are the courts going to have to figure out whether fictional characters in porn films gave consent or not? This is going to produce an amazing new branch of ero-forensic literary criticism.
It is already illegal in Scotland so I assume there is some phrasing that works
""Possession of such material is already an offence in Scotland but because of a loophole in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, it is not an offence south of the border," he is to say."
Are the courts going to have to figure out whether fictional characters in porn films gave consent or not? This is going to produce an amazing new branch of ero-forensic literary criticism.
There are depictions of rape in 'mainstream' movies. Would these films be banned??? Could you be prosecuted for watching them? Could cinemas be prosecuted for showing them?
I came onto the thread expecting at least 15 posts from tim on Lynton Crosby's firm's private medicine links during the tories' NHS reforms.
Stangely there aren't any.
Is this because in the period Crosby's firm was advising the private medical firms, he wasn't actually an advisor to David Cameron? (buried in paragraph ten).
Honestly the Guardian is losing its marbles.
Indeed.. clearly to be a an adviser in guardianland you have to have never had a history of advising anyone about anything ever before taking a post..
Wonder if this could go the same way with online gambling. "Protecting poor families from themselves", "Highly addictive", "Kids hooked on online slots" scare type stories.
If it does, well it could lead to losses in liquidity on Betfair as mug punters' wives and husbands make sure they can't tick the box...
Are the courts going to have to figure out whether fictional characters in porn films gave consent or not? This is going to produce an amazing new branch of ero-forensic literary criticism.
There are depictions of rape in 'mainstream' movies. Would these films be banned??? Could you be prosecuted for watching them? Could cinemas be prosecuted for showing them?
That's a good point actually.
What would happen to the graphic rape scene in The Accused for instance?
Perhaps there will be a distinction for movies as quite obviously Jodie Foster wasn't actually raped?
Are the courts going to have to figure out whether fictional characters in porn films gave consent or not? This is going to produce an amazing new branch of ero-forensic literary criticism.
There are depictions of rape in 'mainstream' movies. Would these films be banned??? Could you be prosecuted for watching them? Could cinemas be prosecuted for showing them?
That's a good point actually.
What would happen to the graphic rape scene in The Accused for instance?
Perhaps there will be a distinction for movies as quite obviously Jodie Foster wasn't actually raped?
Pulpstar -its a very similar argument in stopping a anti social ,non productive hobby that can ,in some cases, lead to bad consequences.
Again would a opt in be that bad if it stopped the weak willed from gaining access. Plenty of punters who bet too much do want to have temptation removed from themselves . Again a better option than say banning online gaming/betting I would say .I don't like banning things as many people can cope with a little gambling or a little porn or a little drugs but some cannot and just want temptation removed .
Are the courts going to have to figure out whether fictional characters in porn films gave consent or not? This is going to produce an amazing new branch of ero-forensic literary criticism.
There are depictions of rape in 'mainstream' movies. Would these films be banned??? Could you be prosecuted for watching them? Could cinemas be prosecuted for showing them?
Indeed: at this rate books with rape scenes will be banned. No more reading of the Forsyte Saga or Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
Another issue that we could discuss if we had all day would be our sharp definition of "children" - loads of things that we officially consider appalling at age 15 years 364 days become perfectly OK a day later. In reality people gradually develop balanced judgment (and most of us never really get far, do we?).
The main public interest issue seems to be to prevent kids' expectations of sex from being distorted by porn before they've had enough experience to categorise it as far-out stuff. It'd be helpful to have some research on how far this is really a problem - is there any?
I'm starting to get the feeling they've not really thought this one through...
I suspect its another Dangerous Dogs Act where if its this or that sort of dog its illegal, but not this sort of dog that looks that sort of dog but isn't quite and on and on and on.
How's the rape porn thing going to work? Are the courts going to have to figure out whether fictional characters in porn films gave consent or not? This is going to produce an amazing new branch of ero-forensic literary criticism.
Quite. And suppose it's not a fictional rape that's being depicted in the film, but two characters who are fictionally acting out a rape fantasy, consensually? Or, suppose it's a scene of very rough, but consensual sex?
This proposal seems to be either unworkable in practice, or else likely to lead to real injustice, like that City of London Councillor who got professionally ruined for downloading "extreme" porngography.
If one is looking for material depicting *actual* rape, then prosecution is appropriate, because one is creating a demand for actual criminal activity to take place. But in the case of depictions of fictional rape, that rationale doesn't apply.
Anyone know if the search terms Dave wants banned will include
"Bereaved relatives for David Cameron to pose with"
That's one of the most sickening.
It's not so much the posing which is the problem but the belief - shared, alas, by Ed Milliband and Nick Clegg - that victims of crime or their relatives should be given some special say in the formulation of laws. This is the source of this and the Leveson nonsense.
What happened to April Jones and Tia Sharp was wicked and horrible but that is not enough - on its own - to justify new laws, anymore than it would justify laws criminalising leaving a child playing alone unsupervised or leaving your child with your mother's boyfriend.
Another issue that we could discuss if we had all day would be our sharp definition of "children" - loads of things that we officially consider appalling at age 15 years 364 days become perfectly OK a day later. In reality people gradually develop balanced judgment (and most of us never really get far, do we?).
The main public interest issue seems to be to prevent kids' expectations of sex from being distorted by porn before they've had enough experience to categorise it as far-out stuff. It'd be helpful to have some research on how far this is really a problem - is there any?
I agree with that Nick, but you do have to have arbitrary limits, otherwise things like consent do get very murky indeed.
Miss Cyclefree, Journey to Altmortis almost had a rape scene in it. I decided against it, because to fit with the rest of the chapter (10 - Khagan) I probably would've had to make it rather vicious, and that's not really my cup of tea.
Mr. Palmer, if gaming is meant to lead kids to be gun-wielding lunatics presumably porn will make everyone want to be kitchen sink repairmen?
The banners' view is that surfing the wrong sort of sites will warp you.
tim what have YOU been looking at? How come you are so warped? We've had a small additional window into your personality on today's PB - and it ain't pretty.
Isn't there precedent over S&M as well despite consenting adults taking part but the courts claiming that actual bodily harm occured so prosecuted them anyway?
It's a very murky area when consent is explicit and its behind closed doors.
How's the rape porn thing going to work? Are the courts going to have to figure out whether fictional characters in porn films gave consent or not? This is going to produce an amazing new branch of ero-forensic literary criticism.
Quite. And suppose it's not a fictional rape that's being depicted in the film, but two characters who are fictionally acting out a rape fantasy, consensually? Or, suppose it's a scene of very rough, but consensual sex?
This proposal seems to be either unworkable in practice, or else likely to lead to real injustice, like that City of London Councillor who got professionally ruined for downloading "extreme" porngography.
If one is looking for material depicting *actual* rape, then prosecution is appropriate, because one is creating a demand for actual criminal activity to take place. But in the case of depictions of fictional rape, that rationale doesn't apply.
There are all sorts of oddities relating to the law around sex. For example, it's fine to have sex with a 16 year old, but if you take a picture of yourselves doing whatever it is you do together in bed, that's child pornography.
Miss Plato, at university a lecturer told me of a case involving four gay men (1990s, I think) who had all consensually participated in sexual activity with one another. It included very vicious physical punishment (lots of blood, permanent marks etc) and they were convicted of something or other, despite consent being given and them all being adults of sound mind.
How long does OGH allow this bile from tim, appalling.
tim should be allowed to continue. Cameron can safely pose with bereaved relatives while his hero Blair has to be protected from them by a twenty-four-hour team of armed body guards.
@Morris_Dancer That police investigation was called Operation Spanner, because if you watched the video of the activities, it would make your nuts tighten.
Miss Cyclefree, Journey to Altmortis almost had a rape scene in it. I decided against it, because to fit with the rest of the chapter (10 - Khagan) I probably would've had to make it rather vicious, and that's not really my cup of tea.
Mr. Palmer, if gaming is meant to lead kids to be gun-wielding lunatics presumably porn will make everyone want to be kitchen sink repairmen?
I don't find the idea of opting-in particularly objectionable. I do find the idea of banning the depiction of lawful activity (even if the participants are pretending it is unlawful), in a pornographic film, more problematic.
Isn't there precedent over S&M as well despite consenting adults taking part but the courts claiming that actual bodily harm occured so prosecuted them anyway?
It's a very murky area when consent is explicit and its behind closed doors.
How's the rape porn thing going to work? Are the courts going to have to figure out whether fictional characters in porn films gave consent or not? This is going to produce an amazing new branch of ero-forensic literary criticism.
Quite. And suppose it's not a fictional rape that's being depicted in the film, but two characters who are fictionally acting out a rape fantasy, consensually? Or, suppose it's a scene of very rough, but consensual sex?
This proposal seems to be either unworkable in practice, or else likely to lead to real injustice, like that City of London Councillor who got professionally ruined for downloading "extreme" porngography.
If one is looking for material depicting *actual* rape, then prosecution is appropriate, because one is creating a demand for actual criminal activity to take place. But in the case of depictions of fictional rape, that rationale doesn't apply.
The Operation Spanner case. Consent is a defence to a charge of assault at common law, but not a defence to a charge of assault under Statute.
Seems pretty reasonable to set up the defaults so that kids don't accidentally stumble across hard porn.
Anyone who disagrees better explain why they aren't fussed about Vodafone, Orange and all the other mobile phone companies doing the same, why they think newsagents should display porn next to kids' magazines, etc etc.
Seems pretty reasonable to set up the defaults so that kids don't accidentally stumble across hard porn.
Anyone who disagrees better explain why they aren't fussed about Vodafone, Orange and all the other mobile phone companies doing the same, why they think newsagents should display porn next to kids' magazines, etc etc.
I'd be very surprised if children *stumble accidentally* over porn - I recall a friend who clicked on his interweb history and discovered his young teenage kids had been busy whilst he was out...
@Slackbladder It's also historically incorrect. When Oliver Cromwell died, the monarchy was done and dusted, and no one was thinking of restoring it. The person to blame is this guy:
The chaos that ensued following his failed reign as Lord Protector led to the return of the monarchy.
He was one of the very few heads of state of England to outlive his successor (indeed, I think only Edward VIII is in this elite club).
EDIT James II survived Mary II, though not William III, so you could argue that he is a member of this club too. Since Richard Cromwell was still alive then too, the end of the 17th century had a record-breaking number of former heads of state knocking around.
Apart from the oddity of Edward VIII being head of state of England ?!?! your "EDIT" throws up the cases of the English Kings Henry VI and Edward IV.
Edward succeeded Henry and then Henry succeeded Edward who then finally succeeded Henry.
Seems pretty reasonable to set up the defaults so that kids don't accidentally stumble across hard porn.
Anyone who disagrees better explain why they aren't fussed about Vodafone, Orange and all the other mobile phone companies doing the same, why they think newsagents should display porn next to kids' magazines, etc etc.
Like I say, I'm fine with "opt-in"/"opt out" as long as it's not part of a progression for putting all people who "opt in" under surveillance by the authorities as potential pedophiles.
The "rape" issue does seem more problematic for reasons highlighted on here.
Anyway, that's enough "Porn Talk" for me. I'm off to enjoy the sun before the storms arrive (I hope sitting in the sunshine hasn't been banned? The sense I got from the media all last week is that you take your life into your hands if you venture into the hot July sunshine? :O )
I'd be very surprised if children *stumble accidentally* over porn - I recall a friend who clicked on his interweb history and discovered his young teenage kids had been busy whilst he was out...
Yeah, and they probably get hold of alcohol too. That doesn't mean that it's a good idea to stock bottles of vodka in the school canteen.
@Slackbladder It's also historically incorrect. When Oliver Cromwell died, the monarchy was done and dusted, and no one was thinking of restoring it. The person to blame is this guy:
The chaos that ensued following his failed reign as Lord Protector led to the return of the monarchy.
He was one of the very few heads of state of England to outlive his successor (indeed, I think only Edward VIII is in this elite club).
EDIT James II survived Mary II, though not William III, so you could argue that he is a member of this club too. Since Richard Cromwell was still alive then too, the end of the 17th century had a record-breaking number of former heads of state knocking around.
Apart from the oddity of Edward VIII being head of state of England ?!?! your "EDIT" throws up the cases of the English Kings Henry VI and Edward IV.
Edward succeeded Henry and then Henry succeeded Edward who then finally succeeded Henry.
Before I go, I need to know where JackW stands on porn?
Does this debate remind you of the secretive Victorian era?
@JackW - If I can't leave some bait for the cybernats, what is this place coming to?
I hadn't considered the case of Henry VI and Edward IV, and on that basis Edward IV has to be added to the list as a very special case.
I suppose there is also the possibility that Edward V outlived Richard III, though I wouldn't bet a brass farthing on that.
Going further back, Edgar Atheling was proclaimed king but never crowned, and outlived both William I and William II. But I wouldn't include him on the ground that he never got the gig properly in the first place.
And what has any of this got to do with Dave's photoshoot with the Sharp and Jones families? Does he expect us to believe that any of this guff will have any impact whatsoever on crimes like these?
Farage bottled it in Eastleigh. Had he stood he'd almost certainly be an MP already, and UKIP might have 'done an SDP' in the polls.
He can hardly come crawling back to Eastleigh now...
I'm inclined to agree, especially given how good Diana James was. To shove away a rising UKIP star is both costly and risky. Better off leaving her to try and keep building her personal vote and have a go somewhere else.
@Slackbladder It's also historically incorrect. When Oliver Cromwell died, the monarchy was done and dusted, and no one was thinking of restoring it. The person to blame is this guy:
The chaos that ensued following his failed reign as Lord Protector led to the return of the monarchy.
He was one of the very few heads of state of England to outlive his successor (indeed, I think only Edward VIII is in this elite club).
EDIT James II survived Mary II, though not William III, so you could argue that he is a member of this club too. Since Richard Cromwell was still alive then too, the end of the 17th century had a record-breaking number of former heads of state knocking around.
Apart from the oddity of Edward VIII being head of state of England ?!?! your "EDIT" throws up the cases of the English Kings Henry VI and Edward IV.
Edward succeeded Henry and then Henry succeeded Edward who then finally succeeded Henry.
Before I go, I need to know where JackW stands on porn?
Does this debate remind you of the secretive Victorian era?
Cameron posturing on looking tough on "protecting the children" is pathetic, as is Milliband's efforts at matching them. Where is Clegg and his Great Repeal bill now?
@Slackbladder It's also historically incorrect. When Oliver Cromwell died, the monarchy was done and dusted, and no one was thinking of restoring it. The person to blame is this guy:
The chaos that ensued following his failed reign as Lord Protector led to the return of the monarchy.
He was one of the very few heads of state of England to outlive his successor (indeed, I think only Edward VIII is in this elite club).
EDIT James II survived Mary II, though not William III, so you could argue that he is a member of this club too. Since Richard Cromwell was still alive then too, the end of the 17th century had a record-breaking number of former heads of state knocking around.
Apart from the oddity of Edward VIII being head of state of England ?!?! your "EDIT" throws up the cases of the English Kings Henry VI and Edward IV.
Edward succeeded Henry and then Henry succeeded Edward who then finally succeeded Henry.
Before I go, I need to know where JackW stands on porn?
Does this debate remind you of the secretive Victorian era?
@JackW - If I can't leave some bait for the cybernats, what is this place coming to?
I hadn't considered the case of Henry VI and Edward IV, and on that basis Edward IV has to be added to the list as a very special case.
I suppose there is also the possibility that Edward V outlived Richard III, though I wouldn't bet a brass farthing on that.
Going further back, Edgar Atheling was proclaimed king but never crowned, and outlived both William I and William II. But I wouldn't include him on the ground that he never got the gig properly in the first place.
In the Scottish context Mary Queen of Scots was succeeded by her son James VI in 1567 and she lived through to 1588.
tim seems to have only just discovered that politicians like having photo-opportunities with common people. And kissing babies, shaking hands, or appearing in the local press with an inane grin opposite some current hero.
And, horror or horrors! It's not always genuine.
I too was shocked when Gordon described Mrs Duffy as a bigot yet minutes earlier was smiling and shaking her hands. And for the next twelve hours was round her house like they were old mates. Of course, he should have stuck to his guns. Telling scum like her never to sully the Labour party with their votes again.
It's a cruel world for Panglossians like tim. Have some sympathy.
As the Daily Mail are claiming victory for convincing Cameron that posing with relatives of murdered children to promote a speech, and nannying us over our internet use is a surefire way to "protect children", is this really the sort of article the Mail should have on their puritanical website?
Comments
"Do you think the last Labour govt did or didn't cover up failings at NHS hospitals?" Did 41% Didn't 31% Don't know 28% #YouGov
It's a baby for heaven's sake. I rather liked this tweet - it summed the TV coverage up perfectly.
RT @StigAbell: Rumour is that Nicholas Witchell is only 6cm dilated at this point, so some time to wait
Glad to be having a final day off while poor Mrs Stodge has had to endure a journey on London's very own mobile sauna (where you keep your clothes on although I'm told stretches of the Piccadilly Line are a bit more easy-going).
On-topic, and this will offend some on here but in truth Nigel Farage isn't a significant political figure - were he to be elected, he'd be as important as George Galloway or Caroline Lucas. Strength comes with numbers I'm afraid and if the current polls are any guide, Farage, even if he gets elected, isn't going to have a lot of company.
On other matters, Clarke could well have been in trouble in 1997 on some of the more extravagant swings to Labour but he survived comfortably and as Nick suggests, it may simply be that he's a good constituency MP and his pro-European views aren't an issue for those in his area.
I feel less than qualified to talk about blocking access to pornography because I'm not a parent and I can't help but think of Mrs Lovejoy in The Simpsons and her catchphrase "won't somebody think of the children?"
For what little it's worth, the issue for me is less about allowing or not allowing pornography to reach the eyes of our children but understanding and dealing with the moral and psychological consequences of it happening. I remember looking at a copy of Hustler (yes, I'm that old) on the bus home from school when I was 12 but I don't recall it permanently shaping my view of women (or girls at the time).
You can probably no more stop the spread of pornography than stop England beating Australia at cricket so it's down to the bigger questions of morality and how parents educate their children and as I'm not a parent, that one's up there with Scottish Independence in my book so I'm not going to get involved.
"Do you think that standards in the NHS got better or worse under Labour?" better 22% worse 43% same 25% Don't know 10%
"Is Ed Miliband doing well or badly as Labour Leader?" Well 26% -1 Badly 61% -1 Don't know 14% #YouGov
Politico Daily @Politico_Daily 50m
"Is David Cameron doing well or badly as Prime Minister?" Well 37% +3 Badly 55% -5 Don't know 8% #YouGov
Norman Angell, noted author of 'The Great Illusion' (1928) which argued that war had become obsolete...
Labour History Group @LabourHistory
.@lewis_baston @PlatoSays Norman Angell is one of 3 Labour MPs to have won the Nobel Peace Prize
For extra points, they'll need to learn how to submit meaningful bug reports to the relevant databases.
Once they've done that, they can probably circumvent all the security measures we can put in place. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cromwell
The chaos that ensued following his failed reign as Lord Protector led to the return of the monarchy.
He was one of the very few heads of state of England to outlive his successor (indeed, I think only Edward VIII is in this elite club).
EDIT James II survived Mary II, though not William III, so you could argue that he is a member of this club too. Since Richard Cromwell was still alive then too, the end of the 17th century had a record-breaking number of former heads of state knocking around.
PM tells WomansHour he has seconded someone from GCHQ to his office to advise on this internet porn thing. Snowdenites will go loopy
Good grief, well he's taking it seriously even if I think its a stupid idea. There are plenty of ways around this such as basically 'opting-in' to stuff that Mary Whitehouse would be appalled by.
At times like this, I'm reminded of the Swedes view of porn. When my hubby worked for Ericsson in the UK - the software dev guys would have their new servers stuffed with porn by the IT chaps to stop them filling it with home-projects/games.
His screensaver was a nude woman with a discretely placed rose - she looked like me so I was rather flattered. This was in the early 2000's - if their HQ building was still open, I wonder if it'd be the same today?!?
" He happily baited the Scottish health and safety jobsworths, though, threatening to light a cigar on stage and reminding everyone that while Churchill would have hated the smoking ban, ‘Adolf Hitler would have been delighted’. "
Churchill and Roosevelt were heavy smokers.
Hitler and Mussolini were fanatical anti-smokers.
It'd create a government database of people who enjoy, er, racier parts of the internet, and given recent history one imagines it'd be about as well-kept a secret as Katie Price's private life.
Besides which, adult material's legal. Nobody has to opt-in to read Suetonius (paedophilia, castration, rape) or Ovid (cannibalism, rape, mutilation, and that's just in Tereus, Procne and Philomela).
http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ldttkydv5p/ST results 200713.pdf
In my view the most worrying result for Labour is that while few of their supporters think they covered up the NHS failings (13) more think their attempts to address them failed (36) than succeeded (24)
Porn filters: anyone in the public eye has to be cautious in this area - I once chatted online about having tried to watch a film with a topless woman in a hotel 35 years ago and being so bored that I kept going back to a Times article on the balance of payments; constituents immediately slagged me off for admitting watching porn and thereby setting a bad example to my voters. That said, I gather that things have moved on a bit even if those constituents haven't, and some stuff out there would disgust almost anyone.
But I think it's simply inevitable that young people will have a look at anything and are hard to stop - a reasonable policy is to try to block the extremes (child porn, rape, etc.) and encourage warnings for anything else vaguely dodgy. Anything more is probably gesture politics.
It will be interesting to see how HMG plans to address this.
The split between the Army and Parliament led to the collapse of the Commonwealth and the realisation among men like Monck that the only alternative to implosion and anarchy was restoration but this had to happen with as little vengeance as possible so the Act of Indemnity was the price the Royalists had to pay for a smooth transition.
In addition, the generals were fortunate to be dealing with Charles who was relatively apolitical rather than his younger brother and if you want a counterfactual to muse on, how about asking what would have happened had Charles either been killed or captured at Worcester?
Just look how many proxies there are for Pirate Bay,it has never been easier to access it despite the ISPs banning it.
As a moderately lucrative hobby I repair PCs,and have done about 500 machines,I do not look for porn on them,but it is hard to miss when you are cleaning out malware cookies etc,a large number show evidence of porn.
I have had a few very suspicious repairs where I am virtually certain the customer has destroyed the hard drive deliberately,usual excuse is"I just bought it like this on ebay".
If I were to find bad stuff I would report it. I think this is how Gary Glitter got caught.
"...Today the outcome of that effort to create a new Code of Conduct will be published, although the Prime Minister has already revealed the basics of what will be included.
* Adult content filters to be enabled on all new mobile phones (this already happens for most people).
* Adult content banned from public Wi-Fi services (some public hotspot operators already do this).
* It will be a criminal offence to possess pornography that depicts rape.
* Google, Bing and other major internet search engines will have to block any results/sites and specific search terms blacklisted by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (i.e. this mostly relates to child abuse content). It should be said that Google and the like already remove related sites once they’ve been notified.
* The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) will also gain new powers to examine P2P (internet file sharing) networks for child abuse content and to hopefully help trace their users (working alongside the police).
* People whom attempt to access websites that contain child abuse content will also be met by a strict warning about the risks of doing so.
* The country’s largest broadband ISPs (BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Virgin Media) will all need to enable automatic network-level filtering of adult websites (i.e. Active Choice+), although you will be given a choice to opt-out (though the opt-in “Yes” box will stay pre-ticked if you ignore it).
The government expects all of these new measures to be introduced by the end of 2014 and the communications regulator, Ofcom, will be tasked with overseeing this effort. But arguably one of the most contentious elements continues to be the enforced adoption of network-level filtering.
Essentially network-level filtering means that the broadband provider controls the website blocking at its end of the service and this allows the restrictions to be imposed across all of your networked devices.
ISPs will also give customers a list of options for blocking other non-porn types of “adult” content (e.g. social networks, gambling, self-harm sites etc.). Admittedly this makes it a lot easier for parents to use but it’s far from perfect (we’ll get to that later) and could give some people a false sense of security... read more here http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/07/new-child-internet-safety-and-censorship-measures-unveiled-for-uk-isps.html
"...The “deep web” and the “dark net”, areas of the internet where robots.txt files are not in place for Google to crawl, are where sites like the Silk Road – an online market for illicit goods – hide. They are also where the bulk of illegal images are shared. The unpleasant fact is that the majority of child sexual abuse online is perpetrated beyond even the all-seeing eye of Google. It looks good on front pages, but Cameron’s call for internet firms to fulfil their “moral duty” barely touches the edge of the problem. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! make easy targets because the average voter knows who they are. A crusade against software that enables online anonymity like Tor, and provides access to the lawless depths of the dark web, doesn’t have such a ring to it.
Many of the figures quoted in the press about the British public and its exposure to “child porn” are wrong. In June, the Internet Watch Foundation took to BBC Breakfast touting shocking research that 1.5 million people in Britain had stumbled upon images of child sexual abuse while surfing the internet. However, as the Ministry of Truth blog exhaustively detailed, the "research" was, in fact, based on an opinion poll. ComRes surveyed a representative sample of 2058 British adults concluding that the vast majority of people in Britain think child sexual abuse content and computer generated images or cartoons of child sexual abuse should be removed from the internet. Of those 2058 adults, three per cent said they had “seen/encountered ‘child pornography’”. The IWF applied that percentage to the population of Britain and declared that 1.5 million have stumbled upon child porn..." http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/micwright/100009396/david-cameron-cant-protect-us-from-child-porn-because-he-doesnt-understand-the-internet/
He's in remission from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
Roosevelt sadly was a polio victim which led to the hypertension that shortened his life and the cause of Stalin's death remains a mystery.
The mighty Helmut Schmidt also deserves mention ;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185439/Helmut-Schmidt-93-year-old-legendary-chancellor-falls-love.html
The *idea* is all very worthy until one applies the simplest of tests as we've seen on PB where sites that are nothing to do with illegal activities are banned by ISPs using arbitrary criteria. I recall a while ago a silver bullet bit of technology that'd block sites by matching the % of skin tone in the graphics hosted - this apparently would block porn. I imagine lingeries and swimwear and gym sites would be caught by these as well.
ToryHealth @Toryhealth
The Guardian: @Jeremy_Hunt is a good egg, and "Doctors are beginning to realise Jeremy Hunt may be right" >>> guardian.co.uk/healthcare-net… #NHS
1) the woman (cannot remember her name) who argues that because the murderer of April Jones first watched legal porn and then went onto illegal porn and then went onto child killing ,its the legal porn that sowed the seeds is being a bit illogical. I am sure the killer also used Friendsreunited or amazon as well.
2) On the other hand porn is not being banned by this measure. It will just make it less viewed .
3) the technical argument of whether it can be done 100% effectively is not an argument really (it is used in so many arguments). If a measure is good then merely cutting down on whatever is bad is better than doing nothing.
4) hardcore and scary people will still access this stuff but then again ,as Nick Palmer says, it will stop casual use more . That may even help weaker willed people . In the pre internet past people had to buy porn from a shop or at least get it delivered by post , not wanting to do either stopped a lot of people from doing this fairly unsociable (if not actually dangerous) 'hobby'. With easy access on the internet more people especially the young do see porn - Is that really a step forward ? No I don't think so and so on balance think a opt out is a good way .
LOTS OF HYSTERICAL STUFF FROM BOTH SIDES THOUGH
Boots used to catch porn makers when they took their films in for processing...
And I couldn't agree more re PirateBay et al. Make it awkward and the geeks love to get round it and show off to the rest of us.
Do perverts mainly vote Labour, Tory or Lib-Dem?
I wonder how much of a "spiral of silence" adjustment that would need?
There was a kind of rough justice in Stalin lying in his own piss as his life drained away while his colleagues watched on afraid to call a doctor in case they got framed for killing him.
1) stopping things that should be illegal anyway (selling drugs, child pornography etc etc);
2) restricting access to things that society believes should not be readily available to children;
3) ensuring that those who do not wish to are not confronted in their own living room with things that while legal they find distressing, disturbing or offensive.
The first of these is perfectly ok to seek to crack down on, and it's perfectly ok to expect the big service providers to do their share of the work.
The third has to be a matter of individual responsibility and judgement, and the government should confine its role to making sure that it is easy for individuals to make whatever choices they think appropriate about access. Again, the service providers can reasonably be expected to do a lot of the work here and to make it as easy as possible for individuals to vary their choices.
The second is the difficult one, because the individuals whose access is to be restricted may have a very different view from the individuals doing the restricting of access, and indeed society as a whole may wish to set norms rather than leaving the matter exclusively to parental judgement (just as it does with film ratings).
The government could do plenty in categories 1 and 3 before turning to the much tougher decisions in category 2.
Tweets MPs Delete @deletedbyMPs
DT @margotjamesmp: All households soon to be barred from online child abuse images and rape porn u... pltw.ps/15aPEjb
I would assume someone that enjoys watching "porn" can do so without being a "pedophile?"
I think the "opt-out" is a reasonable way forward as long as the people that want to "opt-in" don't find themselves on some sort of "dodgy internet users list" and find themselves being monitored by the authorities without any evidence that they are doing something wrong - The "opt-in" list shouldn't be used for the police for endless surveillance and fishing expeditions.
Right, now I've given my two-pennith on that, the other big news:
Woman giving birth to baby in London!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Given The Mails obsession with Google I'm sure Dacre must be a banned AdSense user.
'Oh I know more about the Royal Family than my own country...I could talk forever...'
Presenter 'No, carry on - we've got hours...' There is desperation in his voice as he tries to keep ad libbing about nothing...
Stangely there aren't any.
Is this because in the period Crosby's firm was advising the private medical firms, he wasn't actually an advisor to David Cameron? (buried in paragraph ten).
Honestly the Guardian is losing its marbles.
Are they in favour of controls, appealing to socially conservativ Tories. Or is it like the right to be able to smoke, a libertarian party pushing for freedom of the individual.
They could go either way on this and whilst I expect them to go the former they could conceivably be the latter.
What about the Lib Dems, and well lts face it we already know where 'Ban page 3' watermelon greens are on this issue.
CON - Censors
LAB 'As a father Ed will no doubt support Camo.
Greens 'Page 3 disgrace' will too.
Leaves UKIP and Lib Dems, what are their views on this.
Got my daughter to do it (only helped on one question) so I could get the shooter. Bit nervous when the young lady from the BBC history team studied the answers like they were enigma codes being decoded at Bletchley Park but eventually she said 'well done' and handed over the gun!!
"...Today, The Times reports on a landmark decision by Lord Justice Munby, the most senior family judge in England and Wales. In future, he has decreed, judgments involving decisions by local authorities over where children are to live will be published unless there are “compelling reasons” not to. This is a victory for those who have campaigned for openness and transparency in the family courts, this newspaper among them.
This should not be mistaken as a triumph for the nosy over those committed to privacy. For while the interests of children should always be paramount, it is those who are most intimately involved with the family courts who have the most to gain from effective scrutiny of a system that until now has been hopelessly opaque. In 2008, as a result of a campaign by The Times, led by the columnist Camilla Cavendish, the law was changed to allow media access to family hearings. In practice, the presence of media remained rare, largely because the process remained shrouded in such fog that few journalists could know which hearings would be worth attending. This remains a problem.
This new ruling, however, means that there must be clear and explicit reasons for a judge to decide against the publication of rulings and that those pertaining to children in public care will be effectively published by default. The identities of children will, of course, be withheld. But the identities of public authorities and “expert witnesses” involved in their cases will not..." http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/leaders/article3821955.ece
I suspect Lib-Dems, UKIP and liberal Tories will say this shouldn't go any further though while Labour, Greens and some of the madder elements of the Tories will no doubt see this as just the start of the state getting control of the internet.
I'm waiting for the "internet" to start being taxed (email tax etc...) It's going to happen sooner or later, I'm sure.
It is already illegal in Scotland so I assume there is some phrasing that works
""Possession of such material is already an offence in Scotland but because of a loophole in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, it is not an offence south of the border," he is to say."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076
Crime & Justice @ukcrime
A body has been found in suitcase in Thornfield Avenue NW7
There was a time when suitcases the size of single beds used to be hauled around airports - I don't see many of these today. I'd be hard pressed to squeeze a Filipino bride into any of mine...
There are depictions of rape in 'mainstream' movies. Would these films be banned??? Could you be prosecuted for watching them? Could cinemas be prosecuted for showing them?
Which is an interesting position.
"Protecting poor families from themselves", "Highly addictive", "Kids hooked on online slots" scare type stories.
If it does, well it could lead to losses in liquidity on Betfair as mug punters' wives and husbands make sure they can't tick the box...
What would happen to the graphic rape scene in The Accused for instance?
Perhaps there will be a distinction for movies as quite obviously Jodie Foster wasn't actually raped?
Again would a opt in be that bad if it stopped the weak willed from gaining access. Plenty of punters who bet too much do want to have temptation removed from themselves . Again a better option than say banning online gaming/betting I would say .I don't like banning things as many people can cope with a little gambling or a little porn or a little drugs but some cannot and just want temptation removed .
Indeed: at this rate books with rape scenes will be banned. No more reading of the Forsyte Saga or Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
The main public interest issue seems to be to prevent kids' expectations of sex from being distorted by porn before they've had enough experience to categorise it as far-out stuff. It'd be helpful to have some research on how far this is really a problem - is there any?
This proposal seems to be either unworkable in practice, or else likely to lead to real injustice, like that City of London Councillor who got professionally ruined for downloading "extreme" porngography.
If one is looking for material depicting *actual* rape, then prosecution is appropriate, because one is creating a demand for actual criminal activity to take place. But in the case of depictions of fictional rape, that rationale doesn't apply.
What happened to April Jones and Tia Sharp was wicked and horrible but that is not enough - on its own - to justify new laws, anymore than it would justify laws criminalising leaving a child playing alone unsupervised or leaving your child with your mother's boyfriend.
Mr. Palmer, if gaming is meant to lead kids to be gun-wielding lunatics presumably porn will make everyone want to be kitchen sink repairmen?
tim what have YOU been looking at? How come you are so warped? We've had a small additional window into your personality on today's PB - and it ain't pretty.
Chaucer and I wrote a story,
Bawdy, and lewd from the start.
But mine, people said, was just filthy.
While Chaucer's was Classical Art!
It's a very murky area when consent is explicit and its behind closed doors.
It could ruin our favourite Bedfordshire pensioner overnight?
I'd opt in though, even with the "stigma" of being "on the margins of society" because I visit a gambling website,
41% of Britons believe the Labour government covered up failings at NHS hospitals for political reasons - http://y-g.co/15Z4BFQ
Job done...
Horrendous child abuse occurs....campaigners discover the he/she/they had opted in to view porn.
New campaign for opt in status to be part of new CRB checks and that anyone opted in should be deemed as unsuitable for a pass mark
Some Tory and UKIP voters in not liking Labour shocker.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=222858
All roads of lefty policy lead to Detroit.
Anyone who disagrees better explain why they aren't fussed about Vodafone, Orange and all the other mobile phone companies doing the same, why they think newsagents should display porn next to kids' magazines, etc etc.
'YouGov @YouGov 1m
41% of Britons believe the Labour government covered up failings at NHS hospitals for political reasons - http://y-g.co/15Z4BFQ
Job done...
Explains to-day's antics from wee Timmy.
Edward succeeded Henry and then Henry succeeded Edward who then finally succeeded Henry.
He can hardly come crawling back to Eastleigh now...
The "rape" issue does seem more problematic for reasons highlighted on here.
Anyway, that's enough "Porn Talk" for me. I'm off to enjoy the sun before the storms arrive (I hope sitting in the sunshine hasn't been banned? The sense I got from the media all last week is that you take your life into your hands if you venture into the hot July sunshine? :O )
Does this debate remind you of the secretive Victorian era?
I hadn't considered the case of Henry VI and Edward IV, and on that basis Edward IV has to be added to the list as a very special case.
I suppose there is also the possibility that Edward V outlived Richard III, though I wouldn't bet a brass farthing on that.
Going further back, Edgar Atheling was proclaimed king but never crowned, and outlived both William I and William II. But I wouldn't include him on the ground that he never got the gig properly in the first place.
tim seems to have only just discovered that politicians like having photo-opportunities with common people. And kissing babies, shaking hands, or appearing in the local press with an inane grin opposite some current hero.
And, horror or horrors! It's not always genuine.
I too was shocked when Gordon described Mrs Duffy as a bigot yet minutes earlier was smiling and shaking her hands. And for the next twelve hours was round her house like they were old mates. Of course, he should have stuck to his guns. Telling scum like her never to sully the Labour party with their votes again.
It's a cruel world for Panglossians like tim. Have some sympathy.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2373112/Kourtney-Kardadshian-dresses-year-old-daughter-Penelope-mini-leopardprint-bikini-Miami-pool-day.html