Prostitutiona nd Fascist Pond Scum

The number of weird stories in the news today is quite astounding. I'm going to start with prostitution.

The Home Secretary has today announced plans to change legislation governing prostitution in England and Wales. Currently the law is complicated. Buying and selling of sex is not illegal, but brothels and pimping are. So is kerb crawling and standing on street corners soliciting sex. As far as I can tell, the new legislation won't really change any of that. It will become illegal to buy sex from someone controlled by a pimp (like you can prove that). Kerb crawlers are likely to be prosecuted for a first offence (this doesn't require a change in the law since it's already illegal). And most astoundingly, anyone who knowingly pays illegally trafficked women for sex could face rape charges. Rape is a completely different offence. How the hell is that going to work?

This appears to me to be a completely unworkable set of measures. To secure a conviction you have to prove that someone is pimping, that a person was actively looking for a prostitute while driving, or that a punter "knowingly" paid for sex with a trafficked person. All of these things would be ridiculously difficult to prove in court.

The new proposals also include a suggestion that kerb crawlers will be "named and shamed". It's not clear how this will be achieved, but in real terms I suppose it means that the names of people caught kerb crawling will be published somewhere. This bothers me enormously because the potential for getting it wrong is so huge.

I don't understand why governments try to regulate prostitution when they know it's simply not going to work. In the real world, the very best you can hope for is to keep it out of residential areas and separate it from the drug associated crimes that tend to follow it around. Every form of regulation just results in more victims.

In other news, the BNP is having a terrible day. Some high-ranking, disgruntled member of the fascist gang has leaked a complete membership list to the internet. Nearly 13,000 members are listed, complete with telephone numbers, addresses, email details, and other personal information. I downloaded my copy early this morning before the site was shut down. I can't find any members in my street. I did notice that Nick Griffin (party chairman, convicted racist, bastard) is listed. His address is Y Gribin, Llanerfyl,Y Trallwng, Welshpool, Powys, SY21 0JQ (it's Welsh), and his phone number is +44 (0)1938 820560. In case you feel like sending dog dirt to someone or calling him at 4 am.

I don't care at all that personal details of 13,000 fascist scum have been leaked all over the internet. But over and above the obvious Schadenfreude I feel, there is another interesting point here. Whoever leaked this document almost certainly broke the law to do it. The BNP took out an injunction to prevent publication in advance of the leak. So, that just goes to illustrate that all the legislation in the world isn't going to stop disgruntled people giving away sensitive data. And it just takes one disgruntled key-to-disk monkey working on the id card database to release personal data of every registered person in the country. And once it's gone, you can't get it back.

And some late news, the BNP member list is now on line in the form of a proximity search, so you can just enter your postcode and see how close you live to fascist pond-scum. Thanks for that link Dickie.

There is more, but it's late, I'm tired, more tomorrow, including news of Hitler's testicles.