The government coalition has decided against endorsing an EU directive designed to co-ordinate European efforts to combat the trade in sex slaves.

The coalition is invoking a special British right on any EU justice and home affairs measures. The directive will be decided in the EU by the system known as qualified majority voting, according to which no member state can wield a veto. But Britain has the right to decide whether to opt in.

A Home Office spokesman said: Human trafficking is a brutal form of organised crime, and combating it is a key priority for the government. The UK already complies with most of what is required by the draft EU directive.

The government will review the UK's position once the directive has been agreed, and will continue to work constructively with European partners on matters of mutual interest. By not opting in now but reviewing our position when the directive is agreed, we can choose to benefit from being part of a directive that is helpful but avoid being bound by measures that are against our interests.

Law enforcement agencies estimate that 2,600 foreign women have been forced into prostitution in brothels in England and Wales. Only five people were convicted of human trafficking for sexual exploitation in the first six months of this year, according to figures from the UK Human Trafficking Centre, compared with 33 and 34 in the previous two 12-month periods.

The number of prosecutions has remained reasonably steady, at 114 in 2008/09 and 102 in 2009/10, according to figures released by Dominic Grieve, the attorney general; but the conviction rate has dropped.

A spokesman for the CPS said the number of convictions varied for several reasons, including the fact that fewer cases may be brought to prosecutors for consideration, and that fewer defendants may be involved in each trial: We acknowledge that it is challenging to successfully prosecute human trafficking cases, but we are committed to bringing prosecutions when there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to do so, he said.

Over the next few weeks, as students start filtering back for the new term, we'll no doubt witness the return to our streets of the dreaded slogan T-shirt. Personally, I've never quite been able to grasp this quaint custom of wearing one's heart on one's… heart. No matter how noble the sentiment, going public with your polemic leaves you open to ridicule – and the occasional slap if the dictum is provocative enough. When I was a student, such sloganeering tended to be simplistic: No to war! or Yes to peace! For the hip post-feminists of the new millennium, there was a low-cut novelty T-shirt (available in pink for that added sprinkle of irony) that pulled no punches with its These tits are real! declaration, and underneath, in italics: Touch them and see! Once, and only once, I observed the command and felt the full, stinging force of girl power, right across my cheek.

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The first academic research project into lap dancing has found that, rather than being uneducated young women who have been coerced into the industry, one in four dancers has a degree and has been attracted by the money.

Dancers took home an average of £232 a shift after paying commission and fees to the club, with most working between two and four shifts a week – giving them annual incomes of between £24,000 and £48,000 a year.

The researchers found no evidence of trafficking in the industry, and concluded that career and economic choices were motivations for dancing rather than drug use or coercion.

Aspiring actresses, models and artists used exotic dancing as a career strategy which fitted alongside their other work, training or studies. Unemployed new graduates – mainly with arts degrees – were also dancing because they could not find graduate jobs and found that lap dancing paid much better than bar work.

The main attraction of the work was the flexibility it offered to combine different work options and studying.

The research by Dr Teela Sanders and Kate Hardy, from the University of Leeds, found the vast majority of dancers reported high rates of job satisfaction.

However, the researchers also found dancers' welfare was often disregarded. They called for better regulation to improve dancers' safety and security, including the banning of private booths in clubs, arguing that women could be in danger when alone with customers or that standards could be lowered by women offering more than was allowed in dances. Dancers were also open to financial exploitation by the clubs who could impose charges and fines.

The preliminary findings of the year-long study, which will include interviews with 300 dancers, reveal that all the women interviewed had finished school and gained some qualifications. Most (87%) had at least completed a further education course, while one in four had undergraduate degrees.

Just over one in three dancers were in some form of education, with 14% using dancing to help fund an undergraduate degree, 6% to help fund a postgraduate degree, and 4% using it to fund further education courses.

American restaurant chain Hooters, known for its female waitresses, has received permission to license a new site in Cardiff and has filed applications to open sites in both Brighton and Bristol.

These join the only UK branch of Hooters in Nottingham, which has been trading for 12 years.

The new Cardiff branch will serve Hooters' all-American menu. Diners will be served as usual by waitresses in orange shorts and a white tank top.

Although the brand is popular in the US, with locations booming across 44 states, the proposal for its expansion to Cardiff has not been welcome by some.

The Cardiff Feminist Network, an online community of feminists has been promoting its Say No to Hooters campaign petition to fight for the image of their Wales's women.

Sally Hughes, an activist for the cause said: Hooters is an American family restaurant chain come porn-shop, lap-dancing strip club. The objectification of women is not taken seriously enough in our society.

The decision to grant a license to the Cardiff venue comes at the end of the statutory consultation period, in which the council said no valid objections were made.

The Croydon Advertiser has recently run an exposé of a sinister brothel operating in the same building as a charity for the elderly.

The quality piece of investigative journalism recounts how a fearless undercover reporter was offered sex with a prostitute for £50 at the seedy enterprise in London Road, West Croydon.

Having made absolutely certain he was being offered sex in return for cash, the hack made his excuses and left, as journalistic tradition requires.

The Advertiser notes that the establishment was advertised as 'Oriental Massage Croydon' through a card in the window of Eshop General Stores, in London Road.

Here's where the wheels come off the paper's probe, however. As the Guardian explains, the reporter could have saved himself a trip to Eshop General Stores by turning to page 52 of his own paper, which carries an ad for the very bawdy-house he was investigating.

Nutters of the Croydon Community Against Trafficking (CCAT) noted: CCAT is baffled by the utter hypocrisy of the Croydon Advertiser; on the one hand to have a front page article about sinister brothels in our midst, and then, on the other, to take money from the same brothel and help it to thrive, demonstrates an alarming degree of double standards from our local family newspaper.

The Bolton Council deputy leader has backed calls to legalise prostitution.

Lib Dem  David Wikinson, who was responding to a blog by North West Euro MP Chris Davies, in which he called on Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to follow the example of the Dutch, says the issues would split all sections of society.

Wilkinson said: There are crime and disorder issues surrounding drugs and moral and ethical issues around prostitution and assisted dying.

My own personal view is that while I find prostitution morally offensive, I do agree that if it was to be legalised, it would allow greater control.

In his latest online blog — titled Nick, go Dutch! — Mr Davies puts forward the case for Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, whose mother was born in the Netherlands, to promote a more liberal approach to the controversial issues. He said: When it comes to dealing with controversial issues like drugs, prostitution and medically assisted dying, the Dutch are simply more grown-up.

Denise D'Courtenay who has been landlady of the Queen Anne pub in Vauxhall for over 30 years was murdered while on holiday in the Dominican Republic at the end of July.

The Queen Anne was for many years the only strip pub south of the river and has been presenting striptease for nearly 50 years.

And on the subject of London strip pubs, some thoughtful soul has created a google map showing most of the ones in London, see maps.google.co.uk

Sex workers and their support groups have condemned a police operation to out prostitutes even when they have not been convicted of any crime.

Six street-based sex workers in Newham, east London, were named on the Metropolitan police website. Police posted their photos, full names and dates of birth.

In a second case, two Polish women who were selling sex from their home in Aldgate, east London, were raided by City of London police as part of Operation Monaco.

Operation Monaco was launched in May 2009 but police have admitted that just one charge of controlling a prostitute for gain has been made, as well as 52 charges for placing cards in phone boxes advertising sexual services.

Police took photographs of the Polish women, who were not charged. Last Sunday, photos appeared in News of the World. The women said they were distressed by the police raid and the lack of warning that their pictures would appear in a tabloid newspaper. Vicky, one of the two women said:

Why have the police done this to me?  I work as a childminder and a cleaner and do some sex work to make ends meet. I pay tax and national insurance and am not doing anything illegal. A lot of people know me, and even though the News of the World blocked out my face I'm still identifiable by my hair, clothes and jewellery.

The police were looking for money and found £50 from a customer. We never use drugs and are always sober when we're working. The police kept asking us over and over again if we'd been trafficked. We haven't been, and we signed a piece of paper to say that.

The women lodged a complaint with the newspaper, which removed their images from its website.

Prostitutes are expected to flood south Essex during the 2012 Olympics, a Thurrock nutter group has claimed.

So called 'experts' at the South Essex Rape and Crisis Centre have already begun investigating what can be done to discourage an influx of prostitutes and protect women from being trafficked into the area.

Sheila Coates, director of the centre, based in Thurrock, said: Research has shown that during large sporting events, sex crime actually increases because of the large number of participants and a lot of people travelling from country to country. Sadly, pimps see that as a way of increasing their income and we will see women trafficked to the area.

We are going to start looking at research available from the winter Olympics in Canada and the World Cup in South Africa to see what the impact may or may not be. In Vancouver it looks like it wasn't as big a problem as anticipated because they planned for it and planned it out. [or maybe those 'anticipating' the big problem were making bollox claims to forward their own anti-prostitution ends].

A spokeswoman for Essex Police said the force had not been made aware of any expected problems.

Meanwhile in Brent

Based on article from harrowtimes.co.uk

A nutter Brent councillor has called for politicians and police across the capital to work together to tackle the 'problem' of prostitution.

Authorities are expecting a sharp rise in the number of brothels and prostitutes in London to coincide with the 2012 Olympic Games, as millions of people flow into the capital.

Councillor Ann John, leader of Brent Council, led a review while in opposition into the amount of brothels and street prostitutes operating in the borough and what measures should be taken to tackle the 'problem'.

John said she had not appreciated the impact and scale of the problem of prostitution before undertaking the council study, and called on others to take it more seriously than it has been in the past. She said: Perhaps we should be rethinking our attitude towards it. It's not legal so why are we tolerating it? I have asked for it to be a policing priority, I have asked other services to make sure we get support to exiting prostitutes.

John's study called on all newspapers to ban adverts for adult services, or at least take more editorial control over what is printed, but she said this advice has not been adopted. She said: I am a bit disappointed nothing has happened about that. It is difficult to get hard evidence, and difficult to survey punters, but one of the reasons advertising in local newspapers is so high [in Brent] is because of the sporting venues, and other boroughs don't get as much.

She added in one week she counted more than 100 adverts offering adult services in the two local newspapers still carrying them, including some which mentioned race as part of the deal – something which is banned.

Work on tackling prostitution in Brent has now been taken up by the crime prevention strategy group, in conjunction with the borough's police.