Ban This Filth!!

All the proper bloggers are presumably offering their pennyworth on the election of “The Emissary from the Planet Fuck” as the new Labour leader. Maybe I'll take a swing at that later on, but frankly I just can't do it justice without first reading a few Greek myths and most of the Old Testament for all the literary references and Freudian overtones of the whole thing.

I'm also staying with family out of London, so what other topic to turn to but an intricate consultation currently being run by Hackney Borough Council. Now that may sound boring, but this particular consultation is about... sex!

Now, seeing as sex is dirty and wrong, the good folk of the Mare Street People's Republic have decided to do something about it. They want to ban all forms of licensed sex establishment from the borough – sex shops, sex cinemas and “erotic dancing venues.”

Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I am not a patron of any “sex cinema” and even if I did find myself in receipt of a lapdance, I ain't buying what she's selling. Of course, like anyone who has ever wanted to buy an embarrassing gift for a friend to opened in front of his mother, I have been to a sex shop, but not on a regular basis. This is important to note, because I am blogging here to say that I am utterly opposed to Hackney's “nil policy.”

Firstly, these businesses are legal enterprises. They provide legal goods or services for which there is a market. The claim that “We don't want them here” flies in the face of the fact that the few such premises that exist in the borough evidently turn a profit. Someone obviously wants them and those people should be free to do so.

I am utterly unconvinced by suggestions that the adult entertainment industry and pornography in particular causes violence against women or sexual abuse. If every man who enjoyed porn went on to beat his partner, women would have risen up centuries ago and wiped us chaps from the face of the Earth with a fiery vengeance. Violence against women is abhorrent, but it is caused by men behaving like idiots, not by men watching porn. I've also heard unsubstantiated rumours (whisper it!) that women enjoy sex and even occasionally watch porn too!
Equally, most legitimate adult film studios take great care to respect their performers precisely because it is a legal industry operating in the open with the free participation of its actors. Like any form of prohibition, making the porn industry “illicit” would merely result in worse conditions for porn actors, the mainstreaming of coercion and abuse and put money in the hands of criminals.

Secondly, while I personally don't see the appeal to men in suits of watching a gyrating woman surrounded by other men in suits, the fact that these clubs operate legally and can be regulated means that there is some control over what goes on there. People trafficking is a real problem in the UK and a great deal of it is linked to the sex industry, but it is utterly foolish to think that the (mainly) women trapped in this modern-day slave trade are working in licensed clubs with neon signs outside. They are working in the underground brothels and sex clubs that operate outside the law, trapped by the very laws that prohibitionists think protect them. Yes we must do something urgently to redouble the war on human trafficking, but putting yet more areas of the sex industry beyond the reach of the law is not the way forward.

Thirdly, a nil policy for Hackney is a huge abdication of responsibility by our councillors. There are clearly some areas where a sex establishment would be utterly inappropriate and any licence application would rightly be thrown out. Equally there are places where such a licence could be granted without causing problems or disruption. We elect councillors and our council runs a Planning Department to make those judgements. To adopt a blanket policy across all 19 wards means refusing to do that job of assessing each application on its merits, instead deciding the outcome of an application before it is even submitted. That cannot be right.

Finally, I object to the whole tone of the consultation. It is framed in the usual insulting weasel words about Hackney being a diverse borough with many different cultures – all of which is fantastic, of course, but what bearing does that have on the wisdom of this policy? Do people from other cultures not like sex? Judging from how many people live abroad, I'd say they do. There's billions of them!

Either Hackney's Labour administration is trying to curry favour with some of the borough's more conservative religious groups by hanging everyone else's freedom out to dry – which is inexcusable – or worse, they have now taken to hiding any old authoritarian nonsense they cook up behind the diversity agenda to try and stop anyone from voicing objections. And that, apart from being totally cynical and dishonest, is the first foot in the door for extremism; something Hackney has thus far mercifully kept out.

If you live in Hackney and want to see the sex industry legal, regulated and fairly dealt with, please respond to the council's consultation: HERE and tweet with the hashtag #dontbansex

(Tower) Hamlet - or Something Rotten in the State of Labour

After a summer of by-electioneering in Earl's Court (congrats to new K&C Lib Dem councillor Linda Wade) and in Manor House (thank you to all 61 people who voted for me!) it's now time for something a bit meatier in the form of the inaugural election of an executive mayor in Tower Hamlets.

Being possessed of an Oyster card, a 254 bus and some spare time, I headed down there this evening to the Lib Dem campaign HQ in Bethnal Green. Tower Hamlets is somewhere desperately in need of Lib Dem success, having been ruled, like most of East London, by cliquish Labour Party administrations for most of its recent history.

Our candidate John Griffiths is a former local councillor who has previously exposed fraudulent use of regeneration funds in the Town Hall and is involved in social housing and green transport bodies. His CV is impressive but I'm much more taken with the fact that, unlike a lot of candidates I've seen - including some from my own party - he is totally willing to get out delivering his own leaflets and doing the grunt work. Bravo that man.

Meanwhile on the other side of politics, I would imagine Tower Hamlets Labour are pulping more leaflets than they are delivering, the party NEC having just nullified their choice of candidate. After a court battle to be allowed to stand, Cllr Lutfur Rahman was originally selected and even endorsed by the local branch of RESPECT. Yesterday we hear he has been removed and a replacement candidate installed. Whether this is the final outcome of the Labour selection, who can say? What makes it more interesting is the suggestion that RESPECT may now nominate their own candidate after all, either Rahman or ex-MP George Galloway - both of whom may end up standing as Independents if not as official candidates.

Rather makes you fearful of what they'd be like actually running the borough - or at least understanding or how badly is is already run!

The Tories on the other hand do have a candidate in place, but he is not mentioned on their local party website (which also seems to think there's an apostrophe in the name of the borough) so I've no idea what they're up to.

Either way, the maps on the wall and stacks of leaflets at the campaign HQ tell me that John and his team will be taking the Lib Dem campaign to all corners of Tower Hamlets - so good luck to him.