MAYFLIES ?

Regular readers will have observed that now and again out my dusty old soap box and have a good old rant about something or another, well today,well today I not only dusted it off,I gave it a coat of new paint for the occasion!

Listening to last nights news I learned that assess to on line pornography is to be banned over the next couple of years. This we are told is in order to prevent Paedophiles from watching child abuse on line. On the face of it this is a good thing..but look a little deeper and you will see that this legislation is not as it seems.

If as the article suggested this is to be done by the banning of certain search terms then you and I know that the serious pervert will find other terms in order to access the pornography of his or her choice and while it will certainly prevent or at least discourage most people from viewing (recreationally0 it will not prevent or deter paedophiles from doing what they do

Secondly,and this is important, we are told that these measures will prevent children from gaining access to sites with pornographic content. With the amount of harmful information available on line these day, including how to commit suicide,how to make a bomb, and how to perpetrate a wide variety of cheats,it will be impossible to safe guard our children from imbibing harmful views,such as radicalisation while they surf the net.

It must and should be the responsibility of the parents to ensure that their offspring are safe on line.

If we follow government logic on the subject of pornography we will soon find than many other sites are being banned”for our own good”.

So having made most people believe that what they are doing is for their good ,what is actually happening is the gradual erosion of free speech, and many people will vote for this, by the time they realise what has happened it will be too late.

Freedom of speech is exactly what it says on the tin. It is the freedom to say what you believe and although I would be that last person in the world to condone the abuse of children ,I believe that to use this issue to trick people into voting away their civil liberty is an act of extreme cynicism.

In order to maintain these freedoms which are the envy of the whole world we must occasionally hear thing with which we do not agree,even things which may disgust us,that is the price of free speech, and we must not lose sight of the fact.

I am aware that I am playing devils advocate here and may well alienate many of my readers ,this is the truth as I see it, that is all.

I do not in any way agree with the British Nationalist Party's racist mouthing s but I would defend with my life their right to their own opinion. To do otherwise would be the same as voting to be gagged myself.

This government,and others in the past have made many attempts to curb freedom of speech among other of our civil liberties by manipulating public opinion against, newspapers, trade unions,religious groups and in my day students. I have been fighting for civil liberty since I was fifteen and shall continue to do so no matter what.

We must and should take responsibility for the safety of our children ,online or in the street,they are OUR CHILDREN...there's the clue!

Last night I heard a cabinet minister insisting that the viewing of pornography on line is robbing our children of their chi;d hood., but is this true. A performance of just about any scantily clad sweaty gyrating female pop star,worshipped as role models by young girls is much more likely to be seen by then on line that a pornographic film ,.

We have all seen tiny girls dressed in an adult and frankly provocative fashion,who is buying their clothes?Their parents. Do we then include the likes of Beyonce and the rest of the dump and grind girls in the ban? Well do we? How far can this be taken?

Recently I met the daughter of an old friend our with her mates,there were six of then and all but one were accompanied by a small child in a buggy. Not one of them was older than seventeen and several were not even sixteen. They became pregnant not through watching porn films but through sheer simple ignorance,such as “you cannot become pregnant while on your period”.” You can only become pregnant if your partner comes inside you” The list of these old wives tales is endless and it is what young people believe.

These girls have been robbed of a good deal more that their childhood,they have been robbed of their lives! As I watched then trundle of in to the distance they made me think of May flies. These lovely creatures hatch out,fly for one glorious summer day then their wings fall off and they die.

They grow up feeling that their only value is in being thought “sexy”by boys and “fashionable” by other girls,and I am afraid that many parents inadvertently encourage this erroneous belief.

Poor little creatures their lives are over before they have even begun,ignorance is the scourge of these teenage mothers and their sexual partners,let us address this ignorance first and foremost for it is this which robs our children of their right to grow up at the proper pace.