Melon Farmers Original Version

UK Parliament Watch


2010: Oct-Dec

 1996   1997   1998   1999   2000   2001   2002   2004   2005   2006   2007   2008   2009   2010   2011   2012   2013   2014   2015   2016   2017   2018   2019   2020   2021   2022   2023   2024   Latest 
Jan-March   April-June   July-Sept   Oct-Dec    

3rd December   

Parliament's New Nutters...

And for Labour...Gloria de Piero, 'outraged' at pole dancing exercise videos
Link Here

The Mirror has spewed a nonsense story about pole dancing exercise videos being sold free of BBFC classification.

The Mirror spouts:

An outrageous legal loophole means that children are able to buy violent and sexually explicit DVDs without any restrictions.

Producers are taking advantage of an E rating which is meant for material that educates or instructs.

DVDs showing pole dancing can be bought by children because it is classified as exercise.

The British Board of Film Classification is not allowed to put a minimum age on E-rated material.

It is up to producers and distributors to decide if the DVDs are educational.

They also add:

Cage fighting DVDs full of swearing and extreme violence are permitted as it is categorised as sport. Explicit music lyrics and video games are also slipping through the net.

Shadow Culture Minister Gloria De Piero said:

It's outrageous. Young people should not be able to go into any shop and buy DVDs that are violent, sexually explicit and full of bad language.

The government needs to act now to bring in a proper classification system. Parents deserve to know exactly what their children are watching and to be confident that someone is protecting them.

Senior government sources say they are aware of the issue and are considering what to do about it.

 

25th November

 Offsite: Political Lobbying at Parliament...

Link Here
China-inspired 'charity' aims to sex-down society

See article from theregister.co.uk

 

24th November   

I am no Mary Whitehouse Figure...BUT...

Parliamentary prudes make themselves known in first Internet Pornography debate
Link Here
Full story: Internet Blocking Adult Websites in UK...Government push for ISPs to block porn

H ouse of Commons Adjournment Debate
23rd November 2010

Culture minister Ed Vaizey, said the Government was in favour of a lightly-regulated internet. Those who posted illegal material would be prosecuted but ministers wanted to work with ISPs on any changes.

He said: The internet is by and large a force for good, it is central to our lives and to our economy and Government has to be wary before it regulates and passes legislation.

But leading the debate, Claire Perry had a long speech including a nod to yesterdays Safermedia conference and a classic I'm no prude...BUT...

Claire Perry (Devizes, Conservative)

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this matter tonight. I thank Members on both sides of the House who have either made time to attend the debate or expressed support for my proposal since it was announced yesterday. I am asking for a change in regulation that would require all UK-based internet service providers to restrict universal access to pornographic material by implementing a simple opt-in system based on age verification.

...

Statistics are simply red-lining a problem that every parent recognises-namely, that our children are viewing material that we would never want them to see, especially at such a young age. So what can we do about it? The current way of controlling access to pornographic material on the internet is via safety settings and filtering software, installed and maintained by users-parents, teachers and carers across the country. Unfortunately, however, through technological ignorance, time pressure or inertia or for myriad other reasons, this filtering solution is not working. Even among parents who are regular internet users, only 15% say that they know how to install a filter. It is unfortunately also the case that our children know better than we do how to circumvent the filters, while the constant changes in internet technology and content mean that they can quickly become outdated.

I would like to raise two key issues about the current, unsatisfactory situation. The first, as Fiona Mactaggart has just pointed out, is that access to pornography has a profound and negative effect on our children. Against the backdrop of a drip-feed of sexualisation that promotes pole dancing as healthy exercise for young girls and high-heeled shoes as appropriate footwear for six-month-old babies, the availability of soft-core and hard-core pornography in our homes is damaging our children.

Yesterday I attended a Safer Media conference sponsored by my hon. Friend Mr Burrowes, and heard compelling evidence of this damage, including the explosion in the number of children in this country being referred to addiction clinics with a pornography problem , and that fact that many studies demonstrate that watching internet pornography contributes to people seeing women as sex objects, increases sexual risk-taking such as having unprotected or anal sex, and relaxes the boundaries of sexual violence in a completely unacceptable way.

...

The second problem in the current system of internet provision is the presumption that it is entirely the consumer's responsibility to safeguard their family from harmful imagery. I am a fervent supporter of personal responsibility and have an innate dislike of Big Brother regulation, but there is a form of content delivery in this country that, in contrast to the internet, is either regulated by the Government or has a successful self-regulation model that does not appear draconian or heavy-handed. Our television viewing is restricted by sensible Ofcom guidelines, including section 1, which says that material equivalent to the British Board of Film Classification's R18 rating must not be broadcast at any time, and that adult sex material cannot be broadcast at any time other than between 22.00 and 05.30 hours on premium subscription services or on pay-per-view or night services, which have to have mandatory restricted access, including PIN verification systems. We all accept such regulation of our television viewing quite happily.

What we see on our cinema screens is subject to regulation by the British Board of Film Classification, and we have accepted that for years. Our high street hoardings and general advertising are regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority, which displayed its teeth recently by removing posters from the Westfield shopping centre. Government guidelines inform newsagents' displays of lad magazines and porn magazines. Even the mobile phone industry, which has arguably seen even more change than the internet in the past 10 years and whose products are increasingly used to access the internet, has introduced a reasonably successful self-regulation model that requires an adult verification check before users can access inappropriate material on the internet.

Why should internet service providers be any different from other content providers? Why is the onus on parents, teachers and carers to act as web guides and policemen? Where is the industry responsibility?

Three objections are usually raised when such changes as I am proposing tonight are discussed. The first is that any restriction on access to pornography on the internet is an infringement of free speech. I hope I am no Mary Whitehouse figure, although she was right about many things ,...BUT... the nature of the internet has led to a proliferation of imagery and a discussion of sexual practices which is quite mind-boggling in its awfulness. I will not read out some of the information that was provided at the Safer Media conference yesterday, but I, at the age of 46, was introduced to sexual practices-one or two clicks away-that I have never heard of and simply cannot conceive of having my daughters view. It was simply sickening.

...

Britain has taken steps towards internet safety before. The industry acted independently and responsibly on child abuse imagery by setting up the Internet Watch Foundation, which finds sites displaying abuse that the industry then works to block. We have led the world in introducing that technology, and the people and organisations involved are to be strongly commended. It has been a huge success: the amount of child sex abuse content reported or found to be hosted in the UK has dropped from 18% to less than 1%; and 95% of our broadband services use that blocking technology. It can be done.

Mr Straw is also to be commended for introducing the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which brought in a ban on the possession of extreme pornographic material. That is highly commendable, but of course the content is there on the internet and available for viewing by us and our children with one or two clicks of a mouse.

All that progress has been made, but regulating internet access to inappropriate content continues to stump successive Governments and, in my view, the industry. I believe the time has come to stop ducking an issue of enormous concern to parents, teachers and carers throughout the country. We are often ridiculed for raising it, barraged with information on why the internet should be treated differently, bamboozled with the problem of international co-operation and told that it is our responsibility and no one else's to keep our children safe,

I beg to differ. It is time for Britain to take a lead on the matter and for the Government, with their commitment to family friendly policies, to act. Without action, and with technological convergence, we will increasingly be able to access internet pornography and all internet content via television, raising the prospect of this damaging and degrading material, which is shocking enough when viewed as thumbnails or on an A4-sized computer screen, being piped into our homes and displayed in high-definition glory on 4-foot-wide television screens.

The arguments for passive acceptance and self-regulation are past their sell-by date, and it is time to regulate the provision of internet services in this country. We already successfully regulate British television channels, cinema screens, high street hoardings and newspaper shelves to stop our children seeing inappropriate images, and mobile phone companies have come together to restrict access to adult material, so why should the internet be any different?

British internet service providers should share the responsibility for keeping our children safe, and there should be an opt-in system that uses age verification for access to such material. I urge the Minister to engage with the internet service providers to set a timeline for those changes and, if they will not act, to move to regulate an industry that is doing so much damage to our children.

 

11th November   

Updated: Intercept Modernisation Plan...

Cameron avoids denying central communications database snooping facilities
Link Here
Full story: Communications Snooping...Big Brother Extremism

The idea of a a central communications database was already dropped by the New Labour Stasi.

Instead they had stepped down to to distributed database held locally by internet/communication service providers. These component databases would then be connected by some sort of query interface that would allow most of the functionality of a centralised database, albeit a bit slower.

However Cameron was rather noticeably not denying this current approach to a communication snooping facility.

Prime Minister's Questions
27th October 2010

Julian Huppert (Cambridge, Liberal Democrat)

Can the Prime Minister reassure the House that the Government have no plans to revive Labour's intercept modernisation programme, whether in name or in function, and that he remains fully committed to the pledge in the coalition agreement to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and to roll back state intrusion?

David Cameron (Prime Minister; Witney, Conservative)

I would argue that we have made good progress on rolling back state intrusion in terms of getting rid of ID cards and in terms of the right to enter a person's home. We are not considering a central Government database to store all communications information, and we shall be working with the Information Commissioner's Office on anything we do in that area.

Update: Big Brother Dave

11th November 2010. Based on article from  theregister.co.uk

Government measures to massively increase surveillance of the internet will be in place within five years.

In its departmental business plan, the Home Office said it aims that key proposals [will be] implemented for the storage and acquisition of internet and e-mail records by June 2015.

The plan is the latest incarnation of the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), a much-delayed initiative, backed by the intelligence agencies, to capture details of who contacts whom, when and where, online.

The Labour government shelved IMP before the election, but it has been revived by the coalition, despite a promise to end the storage of internet and email records without good reason .

Confusingly, the Home Office document says it will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason via proposals for the storage and acquisition of internet and email records .

It also pledges to introduce legislation if necessary . While in opposition the security minister, Baroness Neville-Jones, sharply criticised any move to gather more communications data without primary legislation.

The government has said it will give details of its proposals before the end of this year. It is currently unclear whether it will retain the IMP label, but the aims of the programme are unchanged.

 

10th November   

Update: Vaz Strikes Out...

Keith Vaz raises another anti-games EDM after a trivial newspaper comment about the Malmo gunman
Link Here
Full story: Keith Vaz...Keith Vaz in votes for knighthood claim

Keith Vaz has widened his blame game in Swedish territory. He has posted the following Early Day Motion before the British parliament

VIDEO GAMES AND SHOOTING 27.10.2010

That this House notes with concern that the recent race shootings in Malmo, Sweden have been associated with the violent video game Counter-Strike; further notes that the internet-based, first-person shooting game that pits a counter-terrorist team against terrorists was previously banned in Brazil and in 2007 was associated with US College Campus massacres; recognises the potential impact of violent video games on those under 18 years; and calls on the Government to ensure the purchase of video games by those under 18 years is controlled and that parents are provided with clear information on the violent content of certain games.

The background is that police in the Swedish city of Malmo have confirmed that an as yet unnamed 38 year old man has been arrested in connection with a series of gun attacks on people with ethnic minority backgrounds.

Prior to the arrest, local police had suspected that more than a dozen unsolved shootings over the last year, in which one person died and eight more were wounded, may have been the work of lone gunman. The man arrested at the weekend has now been charged with one count of murder and seven attempted murders.

So how do we get from racist nutjob shooting at the local migrant population to a three-year old video game?

It appears to have been The Times that decided to have a bit of dabble in stirring up a faux moral panic by quoting the opinions of a Mr Ahmad al-Mughrabi in its coverage of the story…

I am sure that this is down to some crazy kid who plays that sniping game Counterstrike all day. I don't believe in the lone Nazi theory

So who is our mysterious Mr al-Mughrabi? Is he a police officer? A city official? A representative of the Swedish Justice Ministry?

No, as far as anyone has managed to ascertain, to date, he's just some bloke that The Times picked off the street at random and that's all the evidence that Keith Vaz needs to put down an EDM and start banging on about violent video games, yet again.

 

15th October   

Inflated Figures...

Denis MacShane referred to the police over parliamentary expenses
Link Here

Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister, has been referred to the Metropolitan police over allegations about his expenses and suspended from the parliamentary Labour party.

Denis MacShane has been noted on Melon Farmers many times for a bad censorial attitude, but particularly for his roll in the exaggeration of sex trafficking figures. His figure of 25,000 trafficked sex workers in Britain hung round for ages before being discredited. Of course to give his due, it is far less than the travelling band of 40,000 trafficked sex workers that tour the world's major sporting events.

An inquiry by John Lyon, parliamentary commissioner for standards, into the complaint against the Rotherham MP has been suspended until the question of possible criminal proceedings has been resolved .

The complaint against MacShane is understood to have been submitted by the British National party and relates to travel expenses for work conducted in Europe in the last parliament. The Commons committee on standards and privileges, which oversees Lyon's work, said it had agreed that MacShane's conduct should be reported to the Met.

MacShane said: I have been informed by the parliamentary commissioner for standards that he has written to the Metropolitan police in connection with his inquiry into a complaint against me filed in June 2009. I will of course co-operate fully with the police, as I have with the commissioner. Scotland Yard confirmed that it had received the complaint.

A Labour party spokeswoman said MacShane had been suspended from the parliamentary party and had had the whip withdrawn pending the outcome of any investigation.


 1996   1997   1998   1999   2000   2001   2002   2004   2005   2006   2007   2008   2009   2010   2011   2012   2013   2014   2015   2016   2017   2018   2019   2020   2021   2022   2023   2024   Latest 
Jan-March   April-June   July-Sept   Oct-Dec    

melonfarmers icon

Home

Top

Index

Links

Search
 

UK

World

Media

Liberty

Info
 

Film Index

Film Cuts

Film Shop

Sex News

Sex Sells
 
 

 
UK News

UK Internet

UK TV

UK Campaigns

UK Censor List
ASA

BBC

BBFC

ICO

Ofcom
Government

Parliament

UK Press

UK Games

UK Customs


Adult Store Reviews

Adult DVD & VoD

Adult Online Stores

New Releases/Offers

Latest Reviews

FAQ: Porn Legality
 

Sex Shops List

Lap Dancing List

Satellite X List

Sex Machines List

John Thomas Toys