Murders
remind of the dangers of forcing sex workers into the cold
Comment
from Paul
Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart
Gull said police chiefs were "emotionally overwhelmed" after learning
five prostitutes had been found dead. He said there was "stunned
silence" when a meeting of police commanders was given the news.
These tragic events have clearly overwhelmed us... emotionally,
said Mr Gull, who is leading the hunt for the serial killer targeting
women in the Ipswich red light area.
Maybe they'll think of that when they are persecuting sex workers in
future
Comment from The Times,
by Alice Miles
How we let Gemma and
Tania down
The case for legalised prostitution is clear
What a shame that all the prostitutes murdered in Ipswich were not the
product of broken homes. It would have made a solution so much simpler,
at least to propose if not to enforce: marriage for all, home by nine,
in bed by ten. Unfortunately one of the girls at least appears to come
from precisely the kind of nice middle class two-parent happy family
background that is supposed by many jumping on the Conservative Party’s
new-old bandwagon to preclude drug taking, poverty and misery.
One thing I can predict with utter certainty: neither the Conservative
nor Labour parties will propose the sort of steps that would have
protected Gemma and Tania and Anneli and, as looks grimly inevitable,
Paula and Annette. The solutions are too unpalatable for polite
politics, which relies on middle-class votes in “nice” areas like
Suffolk for election.
First, brothels: proper, clean, large-as-you-like, licensed knocking
shops, with medical checks and protection for the girls. And tax credits
too. Not all prostitutes would want to join one, but at least they would
have a choice. At the beginning of this year Labour launched a
“prostitution strategy”, after the most thorough review of the law in
half a century. It abandoned ideas for managed zones in non-residential
areas and instead prescribed a crackdown on kerb crawling, early
intervention, efforts to tackle demand and new attempts to help women to
escape from the lifestyle. It would be laughable if it weren’t so
serious and so sad: a pathetic range of tried and failed “policies”. The
only promising proposal was to allow up to three women to operate from
the same premises in sort of mini-brothels without facing prosecution;
but there has been no sign since of the legislation needed to implement
it.
What there has been in a concerted focus on kerb crawling, with
zero-tolerance zones and the increased use of ASBOs — recently
introduced against women working as prostitutes in Ipswich — which have
forced the women into ever darker corners and more quickly into strange
men’s cars in order to evade arrest. And that, according to prostitutes
in Ipswich and elsewhere, has left them more vulnerable than ever. Funny
how silent Home Office ministers have been this week; it normally takes
but a headline or two for John Reid to pop up flashing a stiffer
sentence or a fundamental review.
And that would be easy compared with addressing the drug issue: Gemma
Adams, like many of the prostitutes on the streets of Ipswich, was a
heroin addict. How much evidence does the Government need before it
concludes that heroin should be prescribed on the NHS for addicts to
short circuit the personal and public chaos an addicted life generates?
It doesn’t mean that society condones heroin use, any more than it
condones or condemns the use of Prozac or benzodiazepams; but it does
mean recognising addiction as a physical condition and not just a moral
failure.
We can only hope that Mr Cameron heard the London prostitute interviewed
on the Today programme (with a sort of “we don’t do this very often”
apology from the presenter by way of introduction for listeners of a
moralistic bent). She explained eloquently how she turned to
prostitution because she needed money to raise her children, and didn’t
want to work long hours in a supermarket never seeing them. Money, Mr
Cameron: it is the basis of general wellbeing if you haven’t got enough
of it, and any family in a low-income bracket needs it, married or not.
It didn’t require the deaths of five women to tell us any of this. Nor
is there a society on earth that can prevent the violence of the
occasional serial killer. What we have done is offered up the street
girls as easy prey while turning up our noses at them and their way of
life and turning our backs. Despite the rest of the country talking
about the murders in Ipswich, the Prime Minister had nothing to say
about them at his press conference yesterday.
If these deaths have helped to shine a light on the desperate world that
exists outside our front doors and under our eyes, well at least that is
something. Not much of a consolation to their families and friends, is
it?
Nutters
browned off over a lap dancing bar in Newcastle
Based on an article from
Based on an article from
Nutter
UUP MLA Esmond Birnie urged Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde to oppose
government proposals to legalise mini-brothels in Ulster.
Spearmint
Rhino, the largest table-dancing club chain in the world, will open its
first Scottish venue by Christmas. The firm's UK bosses have
confirmed that they have acquired an existing lap dancing club in
Glasgow, the Truffle Club, and will rebrand it within the next two
months.
Lap
dancing promoter Matthew Haycox is battling councillors in a bid to
bring the eigth naked dance club to Leeds city centre.
Bournemouth
businessman Richard Carr's controversial "upmarket gentleman's dining club"
was granted retrospective planning permission recently.
A
man and a woman were arrested in Barnsley by the Metropolitan Police's
Obscene Publications Unit after more than 1,500 pornographic films were
found at their address yesterday.
JobCentrePlus
has advertised the job, for a "dancer" at an Edinburgh nightclub on its
website, 
Once
hailed as one of London's hottest nightspots and a place for celebrities
to be seen, Stringfellows in London's West End has lost its sparkle,
according to critics.
East
London nutters are up in arms at the prospect of a lap-dancing club in their
Canning Town neighbourhood.
An
application has been lodged to allow Blues nightclub, in Peckham High
Street, to introduce 24-hour lapdancing,music and boozing.
Nineteen
women believed to have been locked up and forced to become sex slaves
have been freed by police after a raid on a massage parlour.