The main news bulletin tonight is about a NAUGHTY VICAR
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/7596168.stm

This shows the media obsession with some very sad and obviously lonely middle aged people who view porn. Albeit of an illegal nature ( all Porn should be illegal in reality - it is all exploitation and according to New Labour we operate an EQUAL society so children should not receive any more ( or less ) protection than adults in my view )

The whole way in which this is presented is very slick and smacks of the "witchhunt" style of reporting that the media is adopting against Terrorists and suspected Paedos.

This vicar has as far as we know harmed no one and killed no one. Yet he gets more media coverage than say those who are killing teenagers on our streets. This is a bigger story for the media than probably 20 of the 25 murders of teenagers on the streets of London this year.

I just dont see why this is an important story that it leads the news - can anyone out there come up with a reason why this story is the lead story ?

New Labour are cranking the Paedo Scare because the terrorist scare has quite visibly run out of steam and they are trying to take the focus off the collapsing economy ( UK is the ONLY economy heading into recession in the World - USA had 3% growth last quarter )

Charles Clarke also attacked BROWN at about 5p.m. - and this seems to be the BBC's response.

This is an important story. It sells papers and gets people like you talking on forums about it. Call it what you like but it got you're attention.

The difference between child porn and regular porn is that in regular porn the participants have chosen to take part in such acts and thus are not been exploited, whereas in chlid porn the children are we can assume, being abused or of not legal age to consent to such acts. As regards the vicar not doing anyone any harm, not directly maybe, but it could be argued that viewing this kind of material and especially paying for it perpertrates the abuse. If there is no market for something then it will decline.

BR wrote:

This shows the media obsession with some very sad and obviously lonely middle aged people who view porn. Albeit of an illegal nature ( all Porn should be illegal in reality - it is all exploitation and according to New Labour we operate an EQUAL society so children should not receive any more ( or less ) protection than adults in my view )

I totally agree with the bulk of your post. This story might just about warrant front page space in some local rag, but headline national news? Sheer lunacy and quite sinister.

I do find the paragraph I have quoted quite bizarre though. Why should all porn be illegal and why is it exploitation? What is wrong with consenting adults earning good money for the purposes of entertainment? How you can liken the abuse of children to adult porn and use "equality" to substantiate this opinion is beyond me.

I suppose it stems from your religious views, illustrating how faith drags intelligent people down. You generally display intelligent insight but when a topic touches your faith you descend into irrationality. I don't know why I'm surprised by this. Where there's religion, irrationality is never far away.

I disagree that if there is no market for images of child abuse the activity will decline. People who abuse children do so for their own gratification. Any financial profit made from it is a mere bonus. The internet is a place to store photos so that they are not on your hard drive. Web sites based abroad are harder to regulate or shut down, and the owners are harder to trace.

Those who enjoy abusing children will continue even if the market is closed down. They do not need money to commit their acts. It appears that most images of child abuse are passed around via file sharing and swapping rather than being paid for. The sites which charge a fee appear to be a cover so that those curious few who pay, using credit/debit cards, are detected while those who share the bulk of images via personal contacts remain free. It is also suspected that the images on the fee charging web sites are several years old, so that the current victims are not included and less easy to identify.

So the abuse continues, even if thousands of pay-to-viewers are caught and jailed. This shows how difficult the task is for police.

And may I add (I say it and sing it again and again - Plead Guilty) - the fact that he pleaded guilty to having 2 million 400,000 pictures of children being abused by donkeys on his laptop does NOT mean they were there.

It is police and CPS policy to inflate numbers and levels SO HIGH that the victim gives up and admits anything to get it over with (and get a lighter sentence).

He probably had half a dozen photos of naked babies being christened (a silly enough concept in any case) and decided to hold his hand up to anything DCI Littledick demanded in order to get it over with.

Torture comes in many disguises these days.

The thing is Porn is so selfish. Non religious groups oppose Porn - Women's Groups in particular see it as exploitation - so I am not on my own in this particular view.

Most men do think that as long as someone "consents" to something it is therefore per se RIGHT. I dont really agree - because many women would much rather be earning money doing real jobs.

Today;s SEX SURVEY has found that in London the price for a prositute is

BR wrote:

Finally - I said I was a Christian on here last week. Since then despite having posted on the Tipsheet for nearly 10 years every post about my view seems to now mention it Not sure what that means but it is interesting ? anyone got any thoughts on that ?
To be fair, I think I'm the only one who mentions it! I've only been posting on here for about two years, but have only noticed your posts quite recently, so have always associated you with your faith. I hope I don't offend you too much. Knocking religion is one of my few pleasures in life now I can't smoke in pubs! And I do genuinely believe the world would be a better place without organized religion.

I do agree with you that the ideal is for love and sex to go together, but that isn't possible all the time. Pornography serves a purpose and there are far more pressing issues right now than this.

Actually your information is incorrect the average price according to the bbc survey was

This, I realise, is way off topic. However, views such as robbiex's really shouldn't go unchallenged. While agreeing that we have to be careful making moral judgements about prostitution {often called "the oldest profession", although smacking someone's head on someone else's behalf perhaps predates it}, I have to take issue with the idea that any woman actually wants to sell her body. I't's more likely that she sees little financial alternative. The idea that prostitution is an expression of nymphomania should surely have passed with the Victorian age. No woman wants to sell herself like this. That's just an excuse blokes make in order to legitimise their exploitation of someone elses vulnerability.

The radio news I heard clearly stated it was

Well BR, if, like me, you do not believe in dictating individual morality, if both people want sex to be a financial transaction, why not? It's not for me - my ego would wilt at having to pay for it - but horses for courses.

As long as one party is not forcing the other.

As for prostitution being always something the object does not want to do - not necessarily. Again, some people enjoy different things.

And why not?

One would have to define what their own concept of pornography is first-before this debate can continue.

Are you referring to sexual acts only or do you include the Page 3 Cor Blimey girls in The Sun or the stuff the Daily Express-whilst writing outraged stories in the Great Witch Hunt-but also carrying adverts for their own soft porn DVD's produced by one of the same owner's companies ( and we all know he made his money as one of the biggest porn distributors in the UK).

About 20 years ago-for 6 months I managed a gay porn shop in Notting Hill Gate-for the owner-a very dear friend ( now deceased ) who went to jail for tax evasion. The police had been after him for years but they could only get him on tax in the end. He was one of the first to open adult shops in the UK the Ann Summer's chain ( which was the name of his secretary-she got a nice bonus for lending her name-was about 65 , a grandmother and her family thought it a great hoot !).

This was all a last minute arrangement-I was the only one he could trust and the day before he got sent down he called me to ask me to take over.

Amongst the instructions he gave me was that every 7/8 weeks the police would raid the shop and take away most of the stock which could all then be replaced immediately from his warehouse in the East End. The profits are amazing-a magazine costing 40 pence to manufacture sold for 10 or 15 pounds.

But he did say-just take note of the coppers who are in the raid ( they did raid and were most polite)..and then watch over the next 2 or 3 weeks. At least 2 will come back in civvies and buy some products for their own use. And it was true and I realised ( I'm very naive in many things) that 1. that police like porn and 2. there are obviously a lot of gay coppers !.

BR you seem to be only saying sex should be an act of love-I don't agree but everyone is entitled to their own viewpoint or belief.

One of the biggest complaints now from the established porn producers is the number of "homemade" porn now flooding the net and cutting into their profits. It has literally becoome a huge cottage industry with couples filming themselves and selling their product or giving it away.

What about the extraordinary proliferation of people posting nude snaps or videos of themselves on the net on MySpace (owned by Rupert Murdoch)? Often these are under the legal age as well ( depending what country you are in).

As for the 'sex for sale' industry-there are a host of reasons people go into it. Some are desperate for money-some just young and drift into it via friends or because of drug addiction ( a big problem). But some people are just-well not lazy-but realise they can make as much money from a quick paid session as they would in a week in a full time job.

I make no judgements on people for anything they do with their own bodies-I only believe people are entitled to be protected from predators who may physically force them to commit acts they don't want to...( which was also a very valid reason for legalising prostitution) but that doesn't mean "pimps" still don't exist and weild power. Unfortunately there are a lot of damaged people out there who fall into the prostitution game-as opposed to an awful lot who work part-time, make a lot of money and create a good life-give it up or marry a rich customer.

For those who are at the lowest end-that's a failing of our governments to protect people.

I agree with JK though-I've been around long enough to know the police exagerate or at times-completely fabricate evidence. That's what they did with my friend with his gay porn business ( who was incidently from an aristocratic family)-they got him via the tax department and even though he had the best briefs who said the evidence didn't stack up-they advised him he was going to jail one way or another.

He finally sold his Ann Summers chain at a knock-down price to Richard Desmond ( before he bought Express Newspapers)-moved to the South of France to a beautiful villa and opened a small gay book shop and lived happily until he passed away without ever seeing a French cop.

As the economy gets worse-as the current government's woes grow and more real criminal acts happen ( kids knifed by other kids etc) I think you will see a lot more sex related scandals-whether under-age sex dramas, child porn busts ( and I don't subscribe that customers drive the trade-it's far too complex than that and absolutely no studies have been done to prove this-authorities just pump out theories without proof).

As an example-the totally discredited US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last year stated that the child porn business was worth "billions of dollars a year and that there were thousands of professional web-sites in the USA who weekly changed thier internet service providers"-this was pure bunkum-made up by the man and even the FBI scratched their heads wondering where the hundreds of thousands of internet service providors were, needed to back up this claim.

These are are actually crimes in the minority although you wouldn't believe it by media reports.

And that is why-all of this is a modern day Witch Hunt in every sense of the word.



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