"He looks deep in your eyes, he seems only to be talking to you. You can't believe how sexy and charismatic he is" - Dame Judi Dench is bowled over by Bill Clinton.
"I am fat. Calling me fat has never been an insult because I am fat. If I had a hang-up about my weight, I've got a simple way out of it which is to exercise more, but I'd rather read a book" - Dawn French.
"Let's hope that he can bring something new; some reliabiliity, common sense and lack of ideological nuttiness" - John Bird, founder of The Big Issue, on David Cameron.
"The sign of a civilised country is that it executes its drug dealers" - Peter Horton, of Ilfracombe, Devon, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph.
9 comments:
Peter Horton needs to stand for elective office : many will support his view - I know I would.
I have a better one.
Robert Fisk in todays' Independent:
"Hizbollah is a strict and moralistic organisation, but it uses drugs as currency"
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2076121.ece
One more good reason to legalise drugs, they finance terrorists.
Btw Anonymous Mr. Horton fan, some guy(s) in Ipswich already applied the death penalty to the heroin-addict prostitutes. Would you also vote for him?
mmmmm.......
anonymous 12:45 - Yes, I could vote for that programme.
Cinammon - "heroin addict prostitutes" (are you sure you know that was their drug of choice?) got the "death penalty" -- not in a court of law, sweets, so the appropriate word is "murdered".
What is your point?
Some prostitutes, who knew they were living seedy, shadowy lives, have been murdered and I am genuinely sorry to read of this. Genuinely sorry.
But people enter the netherworld of prostitution and drugs of their own free will, and stay in it of their own free will.
This life suits them and they choose to remain in it.
They know that help is avalable. If they want to get out, all they have to do is walk into any church and ask for help and someone will care enough to put them in contact with the right people. Or call the Samaritans' freephone number and talk and a Samaritan will give them contact numbers. They are not trapped.
These women were living in the seedy netherworld of prostitution and drugs because they were OK with it. Some of them had families who loved them and would have taken them back in a NY minute. They knew there were places to go. They chose not to. The choice to stay in drug addiction and prostitution was theirs.
Prostitution is legal in Britain; living off immoral earnings is not. If you legalised brothels and taxed them - and frankly, I don't care one way or the other - then the state is complicit and is also living off immoral earnings. Just a point.
The state wants to control prostitution because the state is aggressive against the private citizen. These murdered women were aware of the alternatives and chose not to follow them. It was their business.
While we are at it, there is an argument that legal brothels "would protect, through rigid health control, the wives of men who use prostitutes".
I'm sorry, but this is none of society's business. Men are responsible for their own behaviour. As are we all.
Verity, I don't know where to start with you, but I'll try. You mean well, but somehow, you do not appear to have a solution other than 'letting them swirl in a cesspit of their own making'.
I think they are ok to swirl if that is what floats their boat, but not in a cesspit, which I would very much like to see drained.
Legalising and regulating prostitution and drugs will put an end to 'seediness' allow people who want to chose this life to do so safely (and without needing to rob me, very important point this) and best of all, Hezbollah, the Taleban and the rest of the terrorist organisations would cease to have a steady river of cash which they use to murder people with. That is what is immoral, not the addicts nor the prostitution.
In Germany prostitution is legal and very professional and the ladies pay their taxes like every one else. A lot of them function like social workers too, with regular customers who not only visit (or are visited) for sex but also for human company, and, funnily enough, often for marriage counseling -- a lot of marriages are saved by them.
Would you say that a prostitute serving a paraplegic is immoral?
Immorality involves inflicting suffering and aiding and abetting destruction, but sex is something nice in general, and there are prostitutes that are good at what they do, and they like the job because they they are doing something productive. Men need prostitutes for a variety of reasons, it isn't always idle boredom, some can't get girlfriends (fancy going out with a guy who has serious eczema or, more extreme, no face due to a car crash?) others are too shy and stay virgins into their late 30's, the list here is endless, some hedonistic, and a lot of it for practical and humanitarian reasons.
The seediness and immorality comes from the moralisers, the same people who used to vilify gay people.
Now, legalising prostitution does away with forced (child) prostitution, and also, pimps who make a living out of extortion. And it does do a lot for safe sex too, which is in everyone's interest.
I cannot work out why you are so against having less crime, less HIV, less NHS expenditure on the carnage that illegal drugs as opposed to clean legal supplies) does. I also cannot work out why you would deny people to interact in positive ways that helps both people. It strikes me as illogical, I just cannot see how you can argue against drying out the swamp.
To me, people like you are the real problem, because you tolerate the mess this all makes, maybe because it makes you feel righteous?
Chances are good that the the Ipswich killer is killing those women to 'protect them from this bad life'.
Think about it.
And merry Christmas.
Cinammon - You say, regarding me, "You mean well." I mean neither good nor ill. My post was my objective thoughts on the subject of prostitution and drugs.
You write: "you do not appear to have a solution other than 'letting them swirl in a cesspit of their own making'." I'm not a socialist and it is not my business to have solutions for other people's problems. (Which they personally, by the way, may not see as problems.)
You appear to think that if we legalise prostitution and drugs, Hezbollah will be impoverished. Well, it's a new approach, if a little naive. If we legalised prostitution and drugs AND took over the oilfields in the ME, that might do it.
"In Germany prostitution is legal and very professional and the ladies pay their taxes like every one else. A lot of them function like social workers too, with regular customers who not only visit (or are visited) for sex but also for human company, and, funnily enough, often for marriage counseling -- a lot of marriages are saved by them."
Iain, how do you say Pretty Woman in German? "very professional", eh? And what are the academic qualifications for entry into this profession?
"Would you say that a prostitute serving a paraplegic is immoral?" This is not a pleasant alley to be walking around in over toast and Marmite, but I would not say prostitution is immoral at all, no matter who the customer is. It's sleazy, but some people like sleaze and it's not my business to try to direct their lives for them.
"Now, legalising prostitution does away with forced (child) prostitution," Child prostitution is already illegal. I'm not following this argument. There are already the means to prosecute for forced prostitution and child prostitution, both of which are already illegal.
" I also cannot work out why you would deny people to interact in positive ways that helps both people. It strikes me as illogical," I'm not a socialist busybody. I don't think I know better than other adults how they should run their lives.
"Chances are good that the the Ipswich killer is killing those women to 'protect them from this bad life'.
"Think about it."
Unlike you, I do not have a hotline into the mind of the killer. Why should I "think about" your supposition? We don't know yet.
And prostitution is legal, by the way.
To repeat, these murdered young women were adults living a life they entered into freely and were not making any effort to escape. Of course it's a terrible thing to happen, and so is an old lady being murdered for her pension.
These women were living on the underside of life, but we do not have any evidence at all that any of them had been trying to escape it.
Is it just me or do others think that cinnamon and verity really need their own blogs.
Good for you Mr. Horton. I seem to remember the Gov't of Singapore telling Clinton in no uncertain terms that they need no lessons on what happens in civilised countries shortly before they flogged the American car vandal.
Peter Horton for PM
expat - V kind, but I am tired of people suggesting I set up my own blog. If I wanted a blog, believe me, I would have one.
Re the American vandal, I was living in Singapore at the time, and this kid's mother just couldn't accept that her rotten kid was going to be punished and wrote to Clinton to intervene, which he stupidly did. The reason Singapore has an infinitesimal amount of crime is because they, uh, punish miscreants.
Anyway, the two Chinese boys he'd been hanging around with gritted their teeth and took their punishment - and it is a truly horrifying punishment - like men. Not a squeak of complaint. No one, including Americans living in Singapore, had an ounce of pity for that cowardly American kid and his pushy mother.
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