Getting a few things off my chest

A bunch of stuff has been on the news that is causing a mini-rant to bubble from my unconscious mind. So here I go:

First things first, the murders in Suffolk. While the responsibility for the murders must always be that of the perpetrator there are a few things that annoy me about how the law makes the situation worse. It is perverse that the law forces the women to choose between walking the streets on their own and running their business from the relative safety of their own premises. When you look at the cold hard numbers of penalties for solicitation compared to running a brothel it's little wonder a large number of women go for the former. In the current legal framework the only brothels that do exist tend to be run by organised crime who have as little respect for the women as the law. It may offend some peoples morals if society accepts prostitution however it does and will continue to exist. No amount of wishing it didn't will improve the situation of some of the most vulnerable women in society.

Secondly a constant theme for a lot of these women is heroin. While I have a pretty liberal view of what should happen with this countries drug laws I accept it's unlikely to happen for a good while. One thing we could do however is give addicts free heroin which they can shoot up under medical supervision in safe locations. The cost of providing heroin (and also support to ween people off it) would be dwarfed by the savings to society in crime reduction. Without having to earn ?250 a night to feed their habit a lot of women wouldn't be forced into selling their bodies. Not to mention the addicts that steal up to five times their habits worth of goods a day. We could even source the heroin from the farmers in Afghanistan (and pay them considerably more than the drugs barons do) and kill two birds with one stone. There are plenty of examples in Europe we could look to on how to improve the situation with hard drugs and why we don't is a mystery to me.

I caught the interview with Al-Fayed this morning. The guy comes across as a complete idiot. Everything seems to be about him and peoples relationship with him. I may hold a certain amount of distrust with some enquiries but to accuse Lord Stevens of being nobbled by MI6 without offering any proof was astounding. I'm pretty sure that report will come to the conclusion that they died for 3 reasons: speed, alcohol, and failing to wear seat belts. Any one of those reasons kills people on the road every day so it's not exactly a stretch to believe.

And finally I was going to comment on the story I saw in the paper this morning about the approximately 1000 unanswered questions that have been tabled in Parliament (and apparently don't have to be if the current session ends). However seeing as the paper was the Metro which is barely a real newspaper I shall hold my pontification on the nature of parliamentary democracy until I can actually find some supporting evidence for the story.