Tabloids prove – yet again – that they won't learn

Here’s a thing: what will be the tipping point that means that the UK press faces regulation – however much it doesn’t want it?

The mainstream media has, thus far, managed to squirm out of any form of independent regulation, following the Leveson Inquiry.

And that bit about “independent” is important: no matter what some papers claimed, there was no plan for what the press publish to be subject to the machinations of politicians.

To remind ourselves: Leveson followed revelations about widespread phone-hacking – which, it is increasingly clear, did not just happen at the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World, although there was an industrial amount of hacking there. The Mirror group is now in the spotlight too.

In an interesting little side note, it seems that four members of staff on the Mail on Sunday were told by the police in 2006 that their phones had been hacked by the NotW, but bosses at the Mail group decided to keep it secret – and they didn’t bother to mention it in evidence to Leveson either.

Mail on Sunday editor at the time, Peter Wright, has been a member of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) since 2008, taking over the position previously held by Mail editor in chief, Paul Dacre, from 1999-2008.

During that time, the PCC issued two reports on hacking, in essence backing up the version of events from News International that it hadn’t happened often and that it was all just the work of a “rogue reporter”.

Which is all rather odd.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, though, Wright and Dacre have subsequently succumbed to amnesia over the entire business of the hacking of their members of staff’s phones.

Mind you, amnesia, ignorance or straightforward incompetence seem to be the defence de rigueur of senior newspaper folk when it comes to such matters.

After all, her admitted total lack of knowledge of anything that went on in Rebekah Brooks’s newsrooms was accepted as a defence by the court in the recent hacking trial, while News International godfather, Murdoch himself, has been known to be remarkably vague when being questioned over the affair.

It says something for the confidence many of these people have in their power over government that the revelations have not noticeably improved the behavior of the tabloid media in particular.

Not that it’s the tabloids alone: Murdoch’s Times – which used to be the paper of record – has plummeted so far since he bought it that it’s current idea of political ‘debate’ is to call the leader of the opposition “weird”.

Such an approach, by nobody’s definition, can be remotely positive for the public discourse.

But for the sake of this article, let’s stick with the tabloids.

It’s not so long ago that several papers revealed themselves entirely happy to splash pictures on their front pages of the moment that Mick Jagger was told that his partner had taken her own life.

Public interest, anyone?

In the last few days, the odious Richard Littlejohn,whose bilious ignorance was just the most well-known example of the ‘mostering’of Lucy Meadows, who also took her own life, has again used his column in the Daily Mail to illustrate his ignorance of and attitude toward trans issues, with comments about Kellie Maloney – formerly known as boxing promoter Frank – looking as though she is in “drag”.

But a glance at this morning’s tabloids reveals a general approach that blithely ignores basic humanity, together with any idea of journalistic ethics (yes, they do exist).

The subject is the death of Hollywood star Robin Williams, who died by suicide.

The front pages alone seem to be competing to see who can publish the most details.

In the rush for sales, editors have chosen to deliberately ignore the guidelines on reporting suicide issued by the Samaritans.

These call, among other things, for great care to be exercised on details about how a person ended their life, precisely because readers who are themselves in a vulnerable situation can be influenced to copy a sensationally-reported suicide.

But sensation boost sales and sales matter more than human beings when it comes to the tabloids.

Point six of the National Union of Journalists’ Code of Conduct says that a journalist “does nothing to intrude into anybody’s private life, grief or distress unless justified by overriding consideration of the public interest”.

That’s the biggie, isn’t it: what is ‘the public interest’?

What was in the public interest that justified seeing Jagger’s reaction to the death of a loved one?

What was in the public interest that justifies the additional pain being inflicted on Williams’s family, and the potential danger to other vulnerable people caused by the nature of the reporting?

Here’s a clue: there is none.

The apologists can whine all they like that the public interest is what the public is interested in, but this is nonsense.

Let’s look at an example of ‘the public interest’.

Some years ago, during John Major’s time as Prime Minister, with a government set on promoting ‘family values’, a junior minister called Tim Yeo stood up at the Conservative Party annual conference and made a speech lambasting single mothers as the biggest problem of the day.

A couple of months later, it was revealed (in the News of the World) that he had been having an affair himself, and was the father of a child to a single woman. He resigned.

Here was a member of a government that was promoting one thing to the public, and condemning those who didn’t behave as it wanted, who included members who were themselves behaving in the same way.

That is why it was in the public interest to publish a story revealing that Yeo had been having an affair – not because of the affair itself, but because of the double standards by a member of the government.

And yes, the people that buy tabloids – particularly when they buy promises of lurid, sensationalist copy inside – are complicit in this pimping of other people’s private lives.

And as long as there is no regulation of the industry, it is a situation that seems likely to continue.

So, as I asked at the top of this: what will be the tipping point? What will it take before tabloids are forced to clean up their act?

After all, the hacking of a murdered schoolgirl’s phone quite clearly wasn’t enough.

MediaGuidelines for Reporting Suicides from the Samaritans [PDF]

The National Union of Journalists’ Code of Conduct

Grave dancing and when I might make an exception

The look of hate

It is tempting, when someone dies whose legacy is particularly negative, to make one or two choice, splentic comments.

It was very much the case with Fred Phelps, who died last week.

The octogenarian preacher became famous not because he founded a small, extremist Christian sect in the US, but more because, in recent years, he and his followers (many of whom were from his extended family) picketed the funerals of people who had died of Aids-related illnesses and US soldiers who had been killed on active duty.

‘God hates fags,’ became their slogan – designed to get as much publicity as possible, which it duly did.

There has been speculation that Phelps himself might have had a homosexual encounter or even homosexual inclinations that left him with such an apparently deep-seated hatred.

Members of the family who have left it have reported a violent home life.

But what is left is the memory of hate – which will continue as long as his sect continues. Indeed, he was apparently ‘excommunicated’ from his own church last summer, with some versions of events having it that he was thrown out for wanting to soften the sect’s image.

And there is something pitiful about an old man dying, with some of his family not allowed to see him a final time, while others had rejected him in other ways.

Phelps may have been at the extreme end of fundamentalism – mostly because of his actions rather than his beliefs – but he was not alone.

Also last week, one Susanne Atanus, won the Chicago primary for the GOP, and will now challenge the Democrat incumbant for the 9th Congressional district of the city.

Among her views, Atanus is opposed to abortion, marriage equality and LGBT rights.

She has stated that: “God controls the weather. God is angry. We are provoking him with abortions and same-sex marriage and civil unions.

“Same-sex activity is going to increase Aids. If it’s in our military, it will weaken our military. We need to respect God.”

So, three stops short of Upminster, yes?

Well according to unofficial totals, this bona fide loon received 15,238 votes compared with her opponent’s 13,864 votes.

No matter how much the Republican Party itself is trying to distance itself from her and urge her not to stand, we’re still left with an equation where a whole load of people went into the ballot box and cast a vote for someone who espouses such views in public and during her political campaigning.

Thank goodness that the US is part of the civilised West.

Phelps’s death was widely reported in the UK, such had been the publicity surrounding his actions.

The face of someone who makes a living by being nasty

“Founder of hate-filled Westboro Baptist Church Fred Phelps dies aged 84,” said the Daily Mail headline. In reports and comments it also called Westboro a “hate church” and a “hate group”. And all without even a hint of irony.

This was on the same day that the paper’s infamous click-bait columnist Jan Moir declared that she had only heard of the recently deceased L’Wren Scott because she was Mick Jagger’s partner, and Jagger himself was “seedy”.

Moir is no stranger to controversy, having penned a particularly poisonous piece about Stephen Gateley that tried to suggest that his death from natural causes was actually unnatural and somehow linked to his “dangerous lifestyle”.

And now, with editor Paul Dacre’s approval, she has shown once more her utter lack of humanity and decency. She and the paper are perfectly suited.

The Mail was one of a number of publications that had earlier decided that it was entirely appropriate to splash a picture all over its front page of Jagger at the moment he learned that his partner had taken her own life.

So that’s what Dacre and so many of his fellow editors meant by a ‘free press’ when facing the possibility of actual regulation.

There was no public interest argument: it was sensationalism, voyeurism and intrusion into a moment that should have been respected as private.

You don’t need to like or dislike Jagger, or to be profoundly aware of the life and work of L’Wren Scott to understand this.

Forget Phelps and live life

And to understand that, on Dacre’s watch, the likes of Moir and others pour poison from their keyboards – regardless of whether they actually believe it – simply to gain hits and gain advertising revenue. Which makes them far more morally bankrupt than Phelps and his ilk.

But back to the preacher.

On the one hand, I rather like the idea that his funeral will be picketed by flamboyant drag queens miming to I Am What I Am.

On the other, if nobody attended, if the streets around were deserted, it would stand as a message that his views have no place in the world today. And that his legacy may well be, as many have suggested, an increase in tolerance for LGBT people rather than the increased intolerance that he might have wanted.

The people to feel for are the family – the ones who have managed to break free from a life of hate, and the children who are still there, locked into a world where hate is central to the daily diet.

Feel sorry for the children, taught to hate

A form of child cruelty? Probably. Remove them from their families? If we start doing that, perhaps we'd also have to start removing children from homes where the Daily Mail is part of the daily landscape.

And that would be a slippery slope.

However, in the case of Dacre, I may break every possible promise I could make about not dancing on graves, when he himself finally self-combusts after spending so many years trying to poison the public discourse.

It was Oscar Wilde who said, with great beauty and poignance: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”.

With Dacre and his unholy rabble, who pimp other people’s lives and loves and deaths and grief to line their own pockets, they’re so deep in the sewer that all they can ever hope to see above them are the rats swimming away to the surface.

It's not all bad: how to feel better about Britain

Just some of our amazing fellow citizens

How often do you watch or read the news and feel that it’s only ever bad, and that it leaves you wondering whether you’ve strayed into the Slough of Despond?

And even if you don’t fall into a trap of assuming that the unrelenting drip, drip of crime and corruption and scandal is a mirror of society as a whole, it can still give you a sense of being rather depressed by it all.

Last night’s Pride of Britain awards were, for precisely those reasons, a very good antidote.

Yes, there was a red carpet and yes, there were plenty of celebrities to hand out the awards, but the winners themselves were, for the most part, hardly household names.

Yet each had a story of courage or dedication that had seen them take the stage to receive an award.

There was Margaret Aspinall, the mother of one of the Hillsborough dead, who has never given up campaigning for justice for the 96.

Karin Williams, a lollipop lady from Wales, threw herself in front of an out-of-control car to save a group of children – and remains, for the present, in a wheelchair.

Every Saturday night, 86-year-old Anne Scarfe goes out with a team of volunteers in Plymouth to help young people get home safely after an evening on the tiles.

The members of the RNLI flood rescue team in Devon were honoured for their bravery.

Twins Trevor and Ray Powles, now in their 70s, suffered TB as young men, but then dedicated their lives to becoming doctors, and have made enormous steps forward in the understanding and treatment of breast cancer and leukaemia respectively.

After nine years without a job, Clifford Harding felt that his life was going nowhere, but he developed a way of helping children to learn their times table by using rap.

June Kelly founded and runs a football team in Cheetham Hill, one of the most deprived areas of the country, where she’s helped to keep youngsters off the streets and out of trouble – her team has even been lauded for the politeness of the players.

Sharon Grey was named teacher of the year for turning around a school near Nottingham that was threatened with closure, while 12-year-old Balie Kershaw won for giving CPR as he waited for an ambulance to arrive after his father had suffered a massive heart attack.

An award also went to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager that the Taliban tried to murder because she was campaigning for education for girls. As the possibility has been raised that she might win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Taliban has said that it is committed to trying to kill her again and will be “proud” if it can do so.

And so the stories went on.

It would take a very hardened cynic to have maintained a dry eye throughout – and I happily admit that even I am not that cynical.

So many ordinary (what does that even mean?) people doing remarkable, generous things – or even just overcoming incredible odds. It was a humbling yet uplifting watch.

Good news rarely makes the headlines – audiences seem wedded to sensational and negative stories: or rather, news organisations tend to have decided that that is the case and that that is what they will provide.

And it can warp perceptions. For instance, when did you ever read a report about a social worker who has successfully saved a child from an abusive home?

The answer is that you won’t have: social workers feature in the news when things go wrong, and then there’s a culture in a large section of the news media of vilifying them – often because of a barely-veiled ideological hatred of the public services/state/PC etc.

It’s important to say that it’s not always easy for news media to find good-news stories and give them prominence – I know, having been a duty chief sub editor on a national paper, and having made the sort of decisions that I’m referring to.

In those days, I tried to balance out the usual unpleasant or ‘serious’ news at least a little with, if nothing else, one ‘happy’ picture in an edition. And – I hope it goes without saying – a fact-based, non-hysterical approach to the rest of the news, which can also make a difference.

As Fleet Street Fox rather nicely illustrated in her Mirror column yesterday, the Daily Mail is unlikely to be involved with a Pride of Britain awards scheme any time soon.

But unfortunately, the Mail is believed by many of those who read it: its brand of bile really does inform how many people see this country, even while they somehow continue to think that it is a respectable, honest and truthful organ.

It is none of those things.

I glanced through a copy of the Mail this morning: there was nothing about the Pride of Britain awards. Well, you didn’t really expect there to be, did you?

After all, Paul Dacre and his pack of attack dogs aren’t interested in anything other than serving the whims of their master, the tax exile Lord Rothermere.

And if that means drip-feeding the readership an addictive diet of brutalising, hate-filled paranoia, so be it.

Yet in the last 10 days, the Mail has gone into an overdrive of nastiness, almost as though this will convince some that self-regulation of the industry is working (honest) and should be allowed to continue.

Pride of Britain was a welcome antidote to all the negativity – not least from a publication that really does seem to hate the Britain that we live in today.

On the other hand, if Dacre were to spontaneously combust any time soon – preferably live on TV, facing questions about why he’s such a nasty, hate-sprewing piece of work – it would doubtless make one of the jolliest stories anyone has read for years.

The Mail, the Nazis and the poisoning of British life

Lord Rothermere and, err, some Austrian bloke

It comes to something when Alastair Campbell, former spindoctor to Tony Blair, finds himself being cheered by swathes of the population that normally wouldn’t give him the time of day.

But that was precisely what happened last night, when Campbell appeared on BBC’s Newsnight programme to discuss the Daily Mail’s latest attempts to smear Labour Party leader Ed Miliband.

To put it colloquially, Campbell tore Mail deputy editor Jon Steafel a new one.

Steafel had been sent along instead of editor Paul Dacre to face down accusations that the paper had gone well over the top.

In case you’ve missed the row, the Mail decided that the best way to attack Miliband E was to attack his deceased father, Ralph, and thereby suggest that Ralph’s “evil legacy” was influencing Ed.

So dangerous is Ed, it now seems, that this sort of toxic tactic was the only answer.

Ralph Miliband was a well-known academic and Marxist. Although in terms of the latter, he was no supporter of the Soviet regime and was never a member of any Communist party.

A refugee from Nazism, when he was 17, he wrote in his diary (to paraphrase) that Britain was very nationalistic and a defeat at some point might make people see some reality.

This was the same individual who then went and joined the Navy to do his bit in WWII.

But this comment has been taken, by the Mail, as evidence that Ralph Miliband “hated” Britain. And of course the gist is simple: if the father hated Britain and was such a dodgy political sort, well, what does that say about the son ... nod, nod, wink, wink.

It seems to boil down to this: if you don’t like monarchy, the church and bicameral legislature, then you obviously hate the entire country.

Because those things are the very essence of Britain; the things that define Britain. Obviously.

When you see it like this, the wonder is that it has blown into the full-scale row that it has.

But Ed dared to object to the article last weekend. He dared to object to the Mail setting out to smear a man who was dead and couldn’t answer back – this is the same Mail, after all, that condemned anyone who didn’t do deep grief at the passing, earlier this year, of St Margaret of Grantham.

Ed was particularly peeved by the claim that his father “hated” Britain.

He was given a right of reply in yesterday’s paper – which is more than most people get when they’ve been shafted by Dacre and his minions.

But as an indication that Dacre might really be losing the plot, the paper published an edited version of the original article alongside Ed’s piece, together with an editorial proclaiming that it was standing by the original comments.

There’s more in today’s paper, including a piece about Soviet atrocities as an illustration of what Ralph Miliband believed in. Which just sort of misses the fact, mentioned above, that he was not pro-Soviet and did not support such things as what happened in Czechoslovakia, as it was then.

And so, on last night’s Newsnight programme, Steafel was sent on to defend the paper’s actions. Which he singularly failed to be able to do, merely stalling, while Campbell made himself an unlikely hero by, amongst other things, describing Dacre as a “poison in our national life”, and adding that the Mail was “The worst of British values posing as the best.”

Hilariously, Steafel tried to claim that mentions of the Mail’s own record in the 1930s was irrelevant – but not the diary entry of a teenager from pretty much the same period. Talk about making it up, etc.

Well, I’m sorry, Steafel, but your masters set the terms of this matter.

So for clarity, the Mail supported Hitler, the Nazis and our own Blackshirts.

Lord Rothermere, the then owner and great grandfather of the current owner, penned a piece that was headlined: “Hurrah for the Blackshirts”, plus congratulatory and painfully crawling telegrams to old Adolph, while he himself was lauded by Goebbels in 1937, in the following terms:

“Very small party for lunch. Rothermere pays me great compliments. Enquiries in detail about German press. Strongly anti-Jewish ... Rothermere writes and good and useful articles in favour of an Anglo-Herman alliance. He is a strong supporter of the Führer”. (p196 Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II by David Faber).

Now who is it that has left an “evil legacy”?

Reaction has not seen a split upon obvious tribal political lines. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have both, if not condemning the Mail, supported Miliband E’s decision to challenge it.

Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith has come out strongly against the paper. The Mail's own website saw damning comments from many readers.

On the other hand, secretary of state for education, Michael Gove, whose wife just happens to write a column for the Mail, called it “robust”.

There’s nothing wrong with “robust”, but this ain’t “robust” – it’s a straightforward attempt at character assassination and smearing.

What's good for the goose ...

If only we did have a “robust” news media, but by and large, we don’t.

Miliband E has, of course, been supportive of independent regulation of the press, which Dacre is completely opposed to, regularly misrepresenting any such plans as ‘state regulation’, which nobody has proposed.

But then, Dacre is not one to let facts get in the way of what he wants.

He’s renowned as a bully. His editorial meetings are known as ‘the vagina monologues’ because of the language he uses – and as someone who’s sat in an awful lot of editorial meetings themselves, let me assure you that you don’t need to be an expert in ‘double-cunting’, as Dacre apparently is, in order to produce decent journalism.

An adulterer himself, he edits a publication that is obsessed with sex and with exposing people’s private lives, even when there is no legitimate public interest argument for doing so.

He presides editorially over an organisation that considers it acceptable to buy paparazzi pictures of an eight-year-old child and label her a “leggy beauty”, along with describing other underage girls creepily as “all grown up”. 

How very British.

The current Rothermere shows his love for Britain by registering his company in Bermuda, claiming that he and his wife live in France – and paying no tax in the UK on all the money he makes from the lies and the sordid attempts to titillate and shock the readership.

The problem with all this is simple: the Mail has been allowed to get away with its bullying, nasty approach for years, to the extent that it has far too much political influence and clout for something that should be merely considered a comic.

There are people who claim that they read it but don’t believe it. There are, however, plenty who read it and allow it to inform their own opinions – no matter how generous the paper’s editorial team is with a definition of ‘the truth’.

You do not have to be uncritical about a country to love it – on that basis, the Mail is so hate-filled that it must, by its own definition, hate Britain.

But in a democracy – a genuine one, at any rate – you should be able to comprehend that people can have different ideas about what a country should be like, but that that does not mean that only some of them love the said country.

And goodness – haven’t there been enough illustrations, throughout history and across the world, of unquestioning patriotism causing untold suffering, for anyone to seriously pretend that they have the monopoly on what is ‘right’ when it comes to loving one’s country?

Perhaps Dacre merely confuses country and cunt?

Increasingly, I wonder whether he and Rothermere actually do care about anything other than profit and the money in their own bank accounts.

They have helped to bring public discourse and debate in the UK to the parlous level it currently inhabits, yet seem determined to carry on along the same route. Dacre has, indeed, just been given a new contract, in spite of rumours that he might retire next month, when he hits 65.

For clarity, I don’t want the Mail banned or prohibited. I’d simply like it – and the rest of the media – to show some journalistic scruples – a journalism realised that the country as a whole would be better off with a “robust” media that questioned and chased, but without mixing editorial and reporting, and with a belief that facts are actually a good thing.

Equally, I have no desire whatsoever to outlaw offence – far from it. There should never be any right to not be offended.

For further clarity, I’m not even suggesting that the Mail should not have published the original article, but that what it has done shows what it is; shows up its own double standards and shows how desperate it is to push its own agenda – and when it cannot do the latter by fair means, it will use the dirtiest that it can.

And if saying that, and believing that there are things that could be done that would make this country a better place to live for more of its population means that I’m a hater, well thank god I’m on this side of that fence.

In the meantime, polling conducted between 30 September and yesterday, on behalf of the Sun [pdf], shows that Ed’s ratings have increased.

That, of course, is partly in response to a raft of policies, announced at the Labour Party conference less than a fortnight ago, that have had some right-wingers frothing at the mouth.

But one could be forgiven for thinking that the idea of a price freeze on domestic energy bills is a popular one with those polled – and also that this row has done nothing to diminish Ed Miliband in the eyes of the public.

So for all the reasons that the Mail hates Miliband E, from that touted energy policy to Leveson, the poisonous Dacre decided to launch an astonishing attack – not just on Ed, but on a man who has been dead from some years: a man who did serve his country.

Unlike Dacre’s own father, who apparently managed to spend the war as a showbiz correspondent for the Express.

And it’s difficult to imagine that Dacre’s actions in the last few days have done a single thing to advance the cause of those who wish for no regulation of the media whatsoever – unless they’re the ones doing the ‘regulating’.

Perhaps he and Rothermere really have finally lost the plot completely.

Further reading

Telegraph obituary of Ralph Miliband, from 1994.

Porn is a class issue

Oh look – the anti-porn Mail

On Monday, in a blaze of glory, the Daily Mail declared victory in the war on internet porn - and the internet itself died from the irony overload.

Few will have missed the news that prime minister David Cameron has decided that online smut is 'corroding' our children's lives and that search engines and ISPs Must Do More to stop the nasty stuff.

First, let's be clear about a few things. There is no such thing as 'child porn'. There are images of child abuse. Porn requires consent.

There are also already laws in place to deal with images of acts that are themselves illegal - including the abuse of children.

The idea that you find porn everywhere online is nonsense. I have all filters off on my computer and I use search engines regularly. I do not come across pornographic material on a regular basis, by accident, while searching for completely non-porn matters.

And anyone looking online for images of child abuse is highly unlikely to do so via Google. It would be a pretty surefire way to earn a visit from the local constabulary in short order.

The internet though, has layers that are far deeper and more hidden than anything that a search engine can come up with. These layers are where those who want pictures of illegal activities will go and will look and will exchange what they want.

So in other words, the prime minister's performance was meaningless, soundbite rhetoric.

The Mail, of course, loved it. Why wouldn't it? After all, such rhetoric plays to a particular constituency, many of whom doubtless view the internet and porn as evil incarnate to start with, and plenty of whom appear to understand nothing about, say, those deeper levels - let alone other tech stuff that people like me find too complex.

A short time ago, the paper got into a bit of a fix when columnist Amanda Platell revealed in a sensationalist article that she'd searched for dodgy terms and, oh goodness, found Awful Things. The police got involved, because her searching for images of child abuse was, itself, illegal. There are very strict rules for any serious investigative journalist to follow.

And then it materialised that what she'd found was content that involved not a single minor. All involved were over 18. 

But that was not what sent the irony meter into overload.

That was because the Mail itself does a nice little line in online pictures of underage girls accompanied by text that quite deliberately sexualises them. I'm not going into this in detail here, because I've done so before, so as evidence, see here and here.

It is that it is not an accident or an error. It is quite deliberate.

Beyond that, the online version of the story had, as a sidebar, the usual Mail Online content of various stories of women in bikinis, more women with little on, women with very little on, commentary about what they were/weren't wearing, commentary about their bodies - and so forth.

The divine Geoffrey Rush as The Divine Marquis in Quills

It's useful at this point to remember that the Mail's print editor, Paul Dacre, is also the editor in chief of the entire Mail family, so what goes on the web site is every bit as much his ultimate editorial responsibility as what goes in the pages of the daily paper.

So the deliberately sexualised tone of reports on underage girls occur on exactly the same watch as the campaigns against internet porn and the sexualisation of children.

To put it simply, Dacre and the Mail are steaming piles of hypocritical shit.

But now let's examine some of the issues surrounding Cameron's announcement.

And to start with, a very brief introduction to the subject as a whole may be useful.

Pornography comes from a Greek word, basically meaning 'the writings of prostitutes'.

Until the second half of the 19th century, it had no moral connotation - we can see this in how dictionary definitions changed over the second half of the century.

Many paintings of classical subjects deal with themes that could now become illegal - the Rape of the Sabine Women by Rubens, for instance.

Art had represented the erotic for centuries - much Christian art is highly erotic, and, in some cases, homoerotic, as described in Closet Devotions by Richard Rambuss.

For goodness sake, look at almost any representation of the matryrdom of St Sebastian, as he gazes feyly at the sky, apparently oblivious to the arrows piercing his body, and seriously claim that this does not have an erotic aspect to it.

But then, isn't religion itself erotic too? Research has suggested that the chemicals released during prayer and meditation are pretty much the same ones released during orgasm.

It gives a whole new meaning to the idea of divine bliss.

But the point remains that these were pictures that were not intended for the hoi polloi, but only for those who could afford to have such art created or who were fortunate to live or work in institutions where such art was displayed.

What we see now with the prime minister's pronouncements is not far removed from current ideas that the poor shouldn't have tobacco or booze or TV - or computers, even though they'll need those to claim benefits and look for work.

The Rape of the Sabine Women by Rubens

It's reminiscent of the infamous pleading by the prosecution in the Lady Chatterley obscenity trial: "Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters - because girls can read as well as boys - reading this book? Is it a book that you would have lying around in your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?"

For the well off, there will still be 'erotica' - which is merely a hypocritical name for porn. After all, both set out to arouse the viewer/reader, so what's the difference really?

So what changed that definition of pornography?

In essence, photographic technology, which when it emerged meant that the man in the street could afford to buy a smutty postcard.

The problem, in other words, was based on class.

Indeed, let's go further.

As a result of archeology in the 19th century, many artifacts were uncovered from the ancient world that were, in the Victorian one, considered depraved.

Some were destroyed. Some were placed in a number of 'secret museums' around Europe. These were places where only men of a certain standing and character could apply to see them.

Women, children and the lower classes were all far too fragile and corruptible to ever be allowed access to such works.

Go further: to demonise those that work in pornography - and the wider sex industry - is to demonise working people. And to see some on the left doing this is particularly disappointing, never mind when they fall into hate rhetoric and call for such workers to be 'put up against the wall and shot, come the revolution', as the likes of über-rabblerouser Julie Birchill has.

What is the difference between that and anti-semitism or racism or straightforward, old-fashioned sexism?

Besides, it totally ignores the simple fact that, as women have had more disposable income, some have chosen to buy sexual services, and as women's liberation continues, some have also chosen to become pornographers themselves: Fifty Shades of Grey might not be Nobel-winning literature, but it is written by a woman and has been consumed voraciously by women. And pretending that this is not the case is simply infantile.

But let's got further yet: if people really believe that porn is dreadful (and they also tend to believe that the entire sex industry is dreadful too), and that no woman would ever do these thing voluntarily, then don't campaign to cut porn - campaign for improvements to pay that keeps women in particular in poverty or close to it.

And then, when that serious political-economic battle is won, if there are no longer any women going into the sex industry, clearly it will have been shown to be because of the tyranny of low pay etc.

But equally, if there are still women going into the sex industry afterwards, you'll have to accept it as a matter of free choice.

Did you realise that porn was such a class and equalities issue?

In case anyone wonders, I'm well aware that men also work in the sex industry, but these debates rather tend to exclude them, just as they 'forget' lesbian porn.

Anyhow, let's move on.

Is porn really the end of civilisation as we know it?

No. It's really not.

Is it evidence of a lack of respect toward women?

No, it's not.

Look at countries that ban porn - like Dubai or Saudi Arabia - and ask yourself how they treat women. With more respect than, say, the famously open Netherlands?

Nobody has to like porn. That's not the point. But porn is also not the great evil that it is made out to be by some.

After decades of research to quite specifically prove a link between viewing porn and becoming violent, no such link has been proved, as I mentioned here.

Equally, some research has suggested that serial sex offenders often grew up in homes where they were denied any sexual outlet - including porn.

There are complaints about young people getting their sex education from porn.

Secretary

Given the chronically piss poor nature of UK sex education, that should hardly come as a surprise to anyone, and the solution isn't banning porn, but improving sex education for every single child.

Proper sex education should not be an option: no parent should be able to opt a child out of it.

That's part of the problem: the UK has, in general, more respect for the rights of prudes and religious fundamentalists than it does for the emotional, mental, physical and sexual health of young people.

Experience in the US has illustrated that abstinence education actually worsens the situation of teenage pregnancies and STIs.

And that, of course, is without even mentioning the point that there are plenty of non-religious homes where sex is not discussed for a whole variety of reasons from embarrassment to a lack of interest.

Some years ago, a survey by various children's charities found that the group of young people that started sexually experimenting with others at the latest age was the group where sex was discussed openly and without 'moral' judgment at home.

This was also the group most likely to know about and use safe sex and contraception.

Next up was the group whose parents held 'moral' and religious attitudes toward sex.

They started experimenting with others at an earlier age and were less likely to know about/use safe sex and contraception.

The third group were from homes where, in essence, the parents didn't give a toss. The age at which experimentation with others began was lower again, as was knowledge and use of safe sex and contraception.

It's rather obvious, really, but it emphasises the need for a real programme of mandatory sex education - and this needs to be far more than the birds and the bees.

I experienced the latter form of sex 'education'. My mother checked I knew about periods. And that was it.

Not a single word about what 'feelings' I might experience.

When my sister shopped me for drawing topless women, I got a lecture on how such things were inappropriate - except in an art gallery.

And then there were the sermons - both from my father's formal pulpit in church, and also the informal one, at the family dining table.

Sin, I understood early, was shorthand for sex.

Pan & the Goat. Only for respectable, upper-class gents

Producing children who are guilt-ridden about sex is not healthy.

But for some at least - and I am among those - pornography was eventually one of the things that helped me to liberate myself from all that negativity.

As I worked through things, turning my fantasies into stories acted as a form of therapy - hardly hindered when I got paid for it too.

And I know I'm not unique.

In particular, it happens for people who have 'alternate' sexualities.

Is that what people want to ban?

Do they also want to increase the issues that already exist with search engines treating terms such as 'breast cancer' and 'Scunthorpe' as verboten?

Cameron has also announced a ban on porn representations of rape. Will this include literary porn?

If not, why not? A cursory glance at history suggests that the written word has caused rather more wars than pictures of people shagging.

So will my collection of Sade be safe? Or does one only need to worry if they have a DVD or Pasolini's Salo? Where does it leave Quills, the mainstream movie starring the excellent Geoffrey Rush or Secretary, both of which are sympathetic to kinky people?

Here's another little bit of history: Sade actually spent the majority of his lengthy stays in prison because of what was considered blasphemy against the church.

Indeed, porn has been used as a tool of satire and political opposition more than once.

The Beate Uhse Erotik-Museum in Berlin has an excellent exhibition of just such works, including ones by George Grosz.

One of the concerns about this announcement is whether it softens people up for further censorship. Do we trust government on the issue?

I don't. Not least because successive governments, whatever they say in opposition, then get into power and start listening to GCHQ about what additional surveillance powers it wants, and previous policy statements go out of the window.

But back to this issue. What about The Accused or Last Exit to Brooklyn, both of which have very graphic and disturbing rape scenes?

In fact, and in many ways far more to the point, would any ban include all those Barbara Cartland books where the heroine is 'ravished'.

There is a vast amount of 'romantic fiction' out there that and, if one issue with porn is that it creates 'unrealistic expectations', then such fiction does precisely that.

Such stories feature not just in books, but also in magazines aimed at a wide variety of ages, from teenagers up.

Add to that romantic films, including but not limited to rom-coms.

Then there are the newspapers that, for instance, report sex matters as though monogamy is the only decent option, and all people are sexually identical and should conform to the same behaviour.

These are the mainstream; they are consumed by a very large number of people, and they create expectations and guilt. Why are such things not being targeted?

And as for violence in entertainment ...

Now, to clarify, I am not suggesting that such things are banned.

Of course, people also raise other objections to porn - or at least to that which requires performers. They will sometimes attempt to deny that porn can be written.

But that's another issue, where this entire attempt to ban porn is based on 'won't somebody think of the children!' (and the votes).

It's tempting to say that Cameron's announcement is cretinous - for the lack of technological nous it displays etc.

But I don't think it is. I don't think that that was ever what he and his advisors were remotely concerned about.

This is not even soundbite politics - this is dogwhistle politics.

The Daily Mail has whistled, and Cameron and his cohorts have come running, desperate for the master to them a pat on the head - particularly after upsetting Dacre and co with Leveson.

And that alone should warn any intelligent people against this entire shifty business.

Further suggested reading matter

Pornocopia by Laurence O' Toole

Pornography: The secret history of civilisation by Isabel Tang

The Marquis de Sade: A life by Neil Schaeffer

Porn blocking: a survivor's perspective – excellent blog article

Is the rape porn cultural harm argument – blog by lawyer Myles Jackman