December 29, 2006
Posted by: Robert at
12:51 PM
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Post contains 45 words, total size 1 kb.
December 15, 2006
I'm simply here to make a point so I can get on with the Christmas baking, unencumbered by a nagging twitch at the back of my brain. Twitches of this sort I've noticed, my neglected Cake Eater readers, tend to spoil the fudge.
I present for your edification, Moralism kills hope of less vicious vice:
{reprinted in its entirety because it'll slip behind the subscription wall soon enough}
Morality is choosing to live one's life by a code of behaviour. Moralism is inflicting a puritanical code upon others. Moralism kills. It leads to making prostitution and the use of drugs illegal. That brings ghastly results. Now, when the murders of five prostitutes in Suffolk are gripping the attention of the UK, all must see just how ghastly these results can occasionally be.Finding prostitution abhorrent is quite understandable. It is equally understandable that people find the sale of dangerous drugs abhorrent. But policy should focus on consequences, not such emotions. Prohibition merely drives these practices further underground, thereby making bad worse.
In the UK, prostitution is not illegal. The position is far worse in the US, where it is illegal in all states, except Nevada. But even in the UK, soliciting and advertising by prostitutes, as well as "kerb-crawling" and, most important, living off the earnings of prostitutes are all illegal.
A brief glimmer of sanity broke out, with the publication of a thoroughly sensible review, Paying the Price, by the often unjustly condemned Home Office in July 2004. It did not take long for the UK's tabloid press, that whited sepulchre of hypocritical moralism, to douse the light once more.
Nothing will now be done to make the business safer for those engaged in it. That can only happen if it is possible to establish businesses, with secure premises, with proper security and medical checks. In other words, it can only happen with the legalisation of brothels. Instead, action against kerb-crawling is being intensified and the idea of establishing legal red-light areas has been abandoned.
This will merely drive the business yet further underground, where it will remain intertwined with another business driven into the darkness: drugs. Paying the Price estimated there were 80,000 people working in the sex industry in Britain, with 95 per cent of the women involved dependent on drugs. A close link exists between illegal drugs and prostitution, with pimps often suppliers of both.
Unable to work within properly regulated businesses, prostitutes are far more vulnerable to violent customers. Nobody can now try to ensure the safety of prostitutes even, as we can see, from the deranged attacks of a serial killer. Public indifference to the fate of these women explains, but cannot excuse, this immoral policy.
We will never eliminate either prostitution or the demand for drugs. But we can minimise the damage done by these twin evils: prostitutes must have the opportunity to work in safe and secure environments; addicts must be allowed safe and secure access, through the health service, to the drugs they crave. This is not to condone vice. It is to recognise the limits imposed by human frailty. Those who persist in peddling moralism instead have blood on their hands.
Am I the only one who finds it curious how, according to the FT editorial board, everyone is to blame for murdered prostitutes except, apparently, for the killer himself?
Supposedly the only one who is allowed to inflict his own particular brand of moralism with impunity is the murderer of these poor prostitutes.
Posted by: Kathy at
10:52 AM
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December 05, 2006
When I originally took it upon myself to try and keep this place warm against the day that Kathy decides to come back to it from her self-imposed hi-atus, I reckoned this would not be too difficult. After all, my general approach to blogging for the past three years has simply been to toss out whatever wanders into my head based on the nooz, what I read on other blogs and stuff that happens in my own little patch of the real world. In effect, I'm just chatting electronically. While this technique can lead to some neck-wrenching segues and necessarily limits the depth into which I can get on any particular subject, I've always found it pretty satisfying. So when Kathy decided to go on vacation, I figgah'd I'd just do the same sort of thing over here.
Well, as has become pretty apparent, I just don't seem to have enough material to jabber consistently on two soap boxes instead of one.
So what to do? Well, I can think of a couple options offhand:
One, I could just give it up. I don't much care for this idea because it makes me feel like I'm letting Kathy down. Also, and perhaps I'm just being selfish here, I really like Kathy and her writing, and long for her to come back. It seems to me that if and when she feels any inclination to get back into regular blogging herself, having the Cake Eater shop already up and running will add just that little extra inducement to get her to do so.
Second, I suppose I could just start cross-posting stuff from over at Llamabutchers. There may be something to this - at least it would guarantee regular updates. But for some reason, I just wouldn't feel right. It seems too much like "regifting" posts.
Third, I could experiment with a different blogging paradigm. Instead of ad hoc mouthing off, I could perhaps develope a more focused model, working on planned, longer essays on given subjects. (Jane Austen, anybody?)
Of course, overshadowing all of this is the fact that this is Kathy's place, not mine. It's one thing just to play around here, but it's something else entirely to start trying to shape the thing in my own pixelated image. When you're house-sitting, after all, it's perfectly okay for you to watch tee vee, raid the fridge and play with the dog, but you can't go and start painting walls to your liking.
What is a devoted Cake Eater fan to do?
Posted by: Robert at
11:33 AM
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Robbo, you know my blogging rule: write about whatever interests you, no matter how inane or arcane. It simply doesn't matter---as long as you've got something to say, say it. Go to town. I never asked you guys to come over here and guest blog when I decided to go on hiatus, but you did anyway, and I'm grateful for it. As such, do what you would like to do---and that includes letting everyone see Cake Eater Girl in her entirety every now and again. 52 queries taking 0.0768 seconds, 154 records returned.
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