Ice cream and porn

Big Ice Cream

It’s still peeing down with rain. It’s been doing that all week. This is bad just because it’s rain, and because I have to pick the car up from the garage this evening. I’m hoping it will stop raining by then. I’m going to try and slip out of work early. Actually I should check that I don’t have any meetings. I don’t, that’s good. It failed by the way, headlights, like I said, and it cost a fortune to fix the damn things.

There seems to be a lot of talk lately about whether ISPs should provide filtering of adult websites to protect children from porn. An inquiry has been set up, led by Conservative MP Claire Perry. Ms Perry appears to be broadly in favour or filters that are turned on by default. That would mean that customers would have to contact their service provider and actively request that the filter was turned off if they wanted access to adult material. I’ve read one or two reports in the news about this and there seems to be quite a bit of support for just leaving things the way they are. I think most people realise that filtering isn’t going to work well and that most smart teenagers will be able to circumvent it anyway. There are some voices speaking up in favour of filtering however. The thing that strikes me is that no one seems to be able to actually explain what is so bad about porn. I’m not suggesting that porn is good or bad incidentally, but it’s not easy to come up with anything very solid to demonstrate that it harms or corrupts in any way.

I did see a piece on the BBC website with some comment from feminist Julie Bindel. She came closer than any of the anti porn squad to defining what the problem with porn actually is. She claims, “Porn is depiction of horrific sexual violence”. That view however is of course both completely wrong, and makes her look like a lunatic. As a parent I have to say that I think it’s my job to make sure my children are not doing anything inappropriate on the internet, or indeed anywhere else. As a taxpayer I can think of much better ways to spend money than trying to filter porn. And as a right-thinking free-speech warrior, I’m against censorship. This may just be another one of those policy things that governments investigate when they feel they should be doing something but don’t know what. It could be that nothing comes of it. In fact the ISPs are all against legislation and I don’t think the public are keen either.

Here’s an interesting little nudity story from today’s news. Apparently Romanian traffic police were surprised when they came across a naked female passenger on the back of a motorbike. So they pulled the bike over. There concluded however that the only offence that she’d committed was riding without a helmet. So they gave her a ticket and she continued her journey with a helmet, but still without clothes. Definitely my kind of woman. Depending on where you work, that link may not be safe until you get home by the way.

And this is a picture of me eating a slice of pigs’ eye. Don’t do it ladies and gentlemen. I have tested this for you and I can confirm, it’s not something I would do again.