UK Sex Sells News

The Canadian Parliament has unanimously agreed a motion calling on the Commons Standing Committee on Health to examine the public health effects of the ease of access and viewing of online violent and degrading sexually explicit material on children, women and men.

Kamal Khera, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of health, announced the government's full support for the motion.

Northern Alberta MP Arnold Viersen, the driving force behind the motion told the religious website, LifeSiteNews, loath to raise the issue of internet censorship and that oncentrating on the health implications was a good way to ensure all-party support and also to stress public education rather than legal restrictions. Ultimately, he wants the same kind of widespread condemnation of pornography that has already occurred with smoking. Rather than offering any evidence of harm, he is rather hoping for something to crop up in the future. He said:

Gradually the scientific evidence became known about smoking's impact on the heart and the lungs. Now that kind of information about the health impact of pornography on the user is also being discovered.

When pornography's harms become thoroughly exposed, he hopes that Internet providers will restrict porn use voluntarily.

In Canada, sexually explicit websites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined, with PornHub, the largest free site, alone receiving over 21 billion visits in 2015. Thirty-five percent of all Internet downloads are sexually explicit. Globally, this sexually explicit material is a $97 billion industry. 

With all that porn being used and so little evidence of tangible harm, one wonders what the MPs are hoping to discover. Perhaps they should examine the public health effects of the ease of access and viewing of online violent religious material on children, women and men. The murder and violence caused by religion is far more widespread and apparent than any moralistic hopes that there may be a few moral downsides to porn.

Scientists and robotics experts will gather in London to discuss how humans will incorporate artificial intelligence into their sex lives.

Banned in Malaysia,  the 2nd International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots will be hosted by Goldsmiths University, and will gather top scientists in the fields of robotics and human-computer interaction.

Dr. Kate Devlin, event host, told the Daily Mirror:

I think robots could become our lovers in the future. Does love have to be reciprocated in order to be valid?

Our research aims to carve a new narrative, moving away from sex robots purely defined as machines used as sex objects, as substitutes for human partners, made by men, for men, she said. A machine is a blank slate -- it is what we make of it. Why should a sex robot be binary? What about the potential for therapy? It's time for new approaches to artificial sexuality.

Open to the public, the conference will be held December 19-20.

A flagship London West End lap dancing club is in trouble with the local council for offering a little too much fun.

Platinum Lace at Trocadero just off Leicester Square boasts on its website of entertaining the likes of Pixie Lott, Professor Green, Snoop Dogg, David Haye and a host of Premier League footballers.

It hit the headlines earlier this year after a video emerged of two of its dancers encouraging customers to fondle them. And this week, the miserable bosses at Westminster City Council have announced a course of action.

The Council will put questions about their enforcement action in a public consultation and have now confirmed the venue had its licence temporarily extended ahead of the results of the consultation. When the public have had their say, the council's licensing committee will re-visit the application and decided whether consultation to close the club down or not.

An undercover investigation into practices at the club revealed a number of the dancers openly breaking the council regulations, including two dancers called Mindy and Carla , who were covertly filmed allowing customers to grope them in VIP booths. Further footage, shot in December, shows a blonde dancer called Mindy also placing a customer's hands all over her body at the London venue.

A team of officers from Westminster City Council reviewed video evidence and spoke with club bosses after the evidence surfaced earlier this year.

At present York has one licensed sex shop and two sexual entertainment venues requiring a licence t operate as a lap dancing club.

The council has just drafted the Licensing of Sex Establishments Policy after a year of research. A working party involving councillors, council officers and police visited York's two lap dancing clubs to see how they operate and talk to the managers and the dancers. They also held a public consultation to gauge residents' views on these establishments.

Of the 325 responses, 39% felt it was not acceptable to have lap dancing clubs anywhere in York, while 55% had no issues with them being located here. The survey found that the city centre ( 53% ) and busy late night economy areas ( 54% ) were considered the most acceptable locations for the clubs. Residential areas were considered unacceptable locations for 61% of those who responded.

The new policy also includes new rules such as:

• There will be at least one female member of staff authorised to be responsible for the safety and welfare of the dancers. This staff member must on the premises at all times when licensable activities are taking place

• Throughout the lap or table dance customers will remain seated and fully clothed, with their hands clearly visible, either resting on the arms of the chair/sofa or on the seat cushion, or customers must be asked to sit on their hands.

The new policy will be further discussed at the gambling, licensing and regulatory committee on Tuesday, September 13.

Offsite Comment: Half truths

18th September 2016. See  article from strippingtheillusion.blogspot.com

The UK's poppers manufacturers should be allowed to operate while the government reviews the product's legality, the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has said:

Poppers have been around for decades,The evidence shows they don't pose any great risk to health, and that's why they have never been banned before.

Frankly they could have been made exempt from the new act without the need for a review, but the government didn't want to admit they had got it wrong. While there is a review ongoing, of course the legitimate businesses that produce poppers should be allowed to continue to operate.

The government's psychoactive substances bill will come into force on 6 April, making poppers illegal in the UK. In response to calls to exempt the product from the bill in January, the government announced a review of the ban, which is expected to report before the summer recess in July, leaving a window of around three months in which UK poppers manufacturers risk going bust.

Poppers is the name given to the chemicals alkyl nitrites, which, when sniffed, give the user a short, sharp head rush. The substance was first circulated as an angina medicine before emerging as a party drug on the gay scene in the 1970s.

Poppers are particularly, though not exclusively, used by gay and bisexual men to enhance sexual pleasure, as they relax the muscles and make it easier to have anal sex. They are sold for about £5 a bottle in most sex shops and some cornershops and are available for anybody over the age of 16 to buy.

Offsite Article: The poppers ban...Will it criminalise gay users?

 

8th March  2016. See  article from theguardian.com
 

Offsite Article: The poppers ban is a veiled attack on pleasure

23rd March 2016. See  article from theguardian.com by David Nutt

Lap dancing clubs could be banned from Bournemouth in a repressive review of the borough's sexual entertainment policy.

The possibility of strip clubs being moved out of town or to some sort of industrial estate was mooted during a council discussion on the venues.

Cllr Andrew Morgan, chairman of the licensing board, has asked council officers to examine relevant case law before the authority puts its ideas out to public consultation in the coming months. He said:

If we do decide zero is the right number for SEVs (Sexual Entertainment Venues) we need to have clear reasons why we are doing that or else we leave ourselves very vulnerable to challenge.

If zero is the number for the town centre -- is there any other part of the borough that we think would be suitable? Perhaps some sort of industrial estate or something out of town?

Morgan claimed that the authority was not taking a moral view ...BUT... that the changes would be made on the basis of considering the locality and how the borough is shaping up .

Less concern was expressed about discreet sex shops which are subject to strict regulations restricting what can be displayed outside. Moragan moralised:

What we want to avoid is children walking by saying 'mummy, what is that?' On the SEV side it might be harder for a parent to answer a question like that.