The “sex and travel” option
Special rates for the Met? Certainly!
In a depressing tale of the police taking their apparent role as the state’s bully far too seriously, they have decided to “name and shame” a number of prostitutes. In case you were wondering, the laws around prostitution are mind-bogglingly incomprehensible, but prostitution is not illegal. These women have not been convicted of a single crime, yet still their details are paraded around police websites as though they had.
Six street-based sex workers in Newham, east London, were named on the Metropolitan police website. Police posted their photos, full names and dates of birth.
In a second case, two Polish women who were selling sex from their home in Aldgate, east London, were raided by City of London police as part of Operation Monaco.
Ah, yes:
Operation Monaco was launched in May 2009 but police have admitted that just one charge of controlling a prostitute for gain has been made, as well as 52 charges for placing cards in phone boxes advertising sexual services.
So, after more than a year, Operation Monaco has netted one possible criminal, and because he or she was only listed as charged, it’s apparent that it’s not even managed a conviction yet. In more than a year. Clearly, this is valuable police resource and money that is being very, very well spent.
Especially since being a prostitute is not a crime, and a voluntary financial transaction for services rendered between consenting adults is no business of anyone else, especially not the police.
I think it’s time for the ladies of the night to strike back and provide the full names of any Met Police or, indeed, any other sanctimonious busybody, who happens to make use of these services.
It’s only fair.
August 17, 2010 at 12:28
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Viking, I think you are making some very sweeping generalisations about the
educational backgrounds of prostitutes. How many prostitutes do you actually
know ?
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August 17, 2010 at 17:49
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Four.
- August 14, 2010 at 21:24
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Jesu Christe Domine Noster : may we be spared socialists and
moralizers !
1. As Anna says, a prostitute
- August 14, 2010 at 15:22
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To Clarissa. I read both your comments and I would like to say that you are
absolutely right.The legalisation of brothels would mean that the men and more
importantly the women would be safe. Secondly if you tax the income from
prostitution, you could use that money to help women leave the trade thus
reducing the number of women involved. In effect the men who use prostitutes
would be paying to reduce prostitution . Ironic???
As for annoying Harriet
Harmsmen, I couldn’t think of a better way of spending my time……
- August 14, 2010 at 15:06
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English Viking, I am by no means an expert in such matters, but I am led to
believe that prostitutes actually prefer to work for a pimp because the pimp
offers them some protection against violence and actually generates more
profit for them.
I don’t subscribe to the view that every prostitute or lap dancer is a
helpless victim with no control over their life.
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August 14, 2010 at 15:37
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Thaddeus,
Lap-dancing and prostitution are two different things.
My experience of these matters is that the girls are usually dependent on
their pimp for almost everything. The violence they fear is mostly from him,
not the customers.
It is true that not all are helpless victims. Some choose it willingly.
But not many do so if there is another option. Once in it, it rarely ends
happily ever after.
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August 14, 2010 at 13:12
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Prostitutes solicit, and that is illegal. No soliciting, no customers, it’s
that simple.
They are committing crimes, not least of which will be living off immoral
earnings, benefit fraud and tax-evasion.
I know this a Libertarian site, and that that my views will not be popular,
but let’s not pretend that these people are ‘working’. Let’s not imagine they
are engaged in some sort of ‘business’. For the most part, they are either
pimped, drug-addled, sex abuse victims, alcoholics, mentally ill or a
combination of all of these things. They degrade themselves with strangers to
feed their habits or pay their pimps. It is a filthy, humiliating way to
‘earn’ a living, and for every ‘successful’ madam or tart that hits the
headlines earning thousands from one or two rich clients a week there are
literally thousands of other girls who will not see another five years of
life.
The purpose of good government, Libertarian or not, is to promote a happy,
healthy, well adjusted society. Prostitution is none of these things, and it
is none of these because of what it intrinsically is, not because it is
illegal. The kind of men that use prostitutes are not your average,
well-adjusted role-models either. They are usually emotionally or mentally
inadequate, with no respect for either themselves or the girls they
degrade.
Legalisation is not the answer. It is a most dangerous thing for a
Government to scrap a law because they have so inadequately enforced it that
every man and his dog flout it. The issues which cause a person to do this for
money in the first place are what need to be addressed.
I like to believe that I am able to think for myself. I refuse to be put in
a certain box, marked with a certain tag. I fail to understand why a person
who calls themselves a Libertarian therefore blithely accepts all and
any
forms of behaviour, even when they can see it is clearly harmful, not
just to the persons allegedly making informed choices, but to lots of others
too, just because it would jar with their Libertarianism to condemn it. Anna,
in her post on Aug 3 concerning the healthcare appealed for help in forming a
Libertarian view on the matter, as it appeared that her own, naturally formed
view did not fit well with the tag she wears of Libertarian. Instead of
picking and choosing the good, sensible ideas from Libertarianism, and other
political systems, and rejecting the rubbish, it seems that once a person has
decided that they are a Libertarian, they will construct all kinds of
nonsensical arguments to avoid being called a hypocrite, all because they
claim to be a Libertarian.
Kingbingo and I had a lengthy ‘discussion’ a while back on prostitution,
and in order to maintain his Libertarian ideology, he was prepared to say that
he would be perfectly happy to see his daughter become a whore, so long as it
was her choice and she was happy. I think he is either a liar or callous
beyond belief. His politics have so hardened his heart that he, and the others
who speak the same way, cannot see that their own children are worth more than
their political views.
PS Just my thoughts, I don’t want or have time for a massive row over the
matter, and please don’t ‘…think of the cheeeldren…’ me. Sometimes we must,
especially when they are own.
- August 14, 2010 at 13:48
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English Viking,
What precisely is it that you fidn so distasteful
about prostitution that it makes you foam at the mouth so?
Is it the sex
or is it the payment? For prostitution is merely a combination of the
two.
This has absolutely nothing to do with my Libertarian beliefs and
everything to do with the fact that prostitution isn’t ilegal. It is daft to
say ‘no soliciting, no prostitution’. If the girl remained at home and her
present customers visited her there, she would not be soliciting – if they
paid her, she would still be a prostitute.
You are conflating two issues
to ‘assume’ – as you have done – that she is also committing benefit fraud.
As it happens, Oxford has also published the names of those who have been
prosecuted for benefit fraud today – none of whom are called NIcola. do you
not imagine that if she was so high profile a prostitute as has been claimed
, she would not have appeared on this list?
Zaheeda Parveen (AKA Zaheeda Begum), Cricket Road, East Oxford
Rudo
Mudiwa, Pickett Avenue, Wood Farm
Emilia Monteiro, Ladenham Road,
Blackbird Leys
Paulin Noubissi, Alice Smith Square, Littlemore
Vikki
Clark, Thistledown Close, Greater Leys
Lola Harizaj, Windrush Tower,
Blackbird Leys
Caroline Woolcock, Faulkner Street, St Ebbe
- August 14, 2010 at 14:04
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If, if, if… If your granny had testicles, she’d be your grandpa, but
she hasn’t, so she’s not.
Please don’t have me down as mouth-foamer, just because I disagree. I’m
not sexually repressed either, nor deprived.
I disagree with prostitution because I have seen, first-hand, what it
does to the women involved, to the family, friends and loved ones of the
girls involved. I disagree with it on the grounds that it is immoral. I
disagree with it because it attracts all sorts of scum-bags and weirdos to
the area where girls are operating. It spreads disease, it degrades women
in the eyes of those who pay for them, and those who condone it. I
disagree with my family having to fight at my father-in-law’s funeral,
because one of my sister-in-laws was brave enough to ignore her pimp’s
advise not to attend, and he and his ‘oppos turn up halfway through the
service to ‘retrieve’ her.
You are white-washing a cess-pit with your cheerleading for this seedy
and wicked crime.
Do you imagine that because her name is not on the list, that she just
has not been caught yet? I’ll give you 10-1 that she is on benefit.
- August 14, 2010 at
14:13
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English Viking,
If she is prosecuted for benefit fraud, I shall
not defend her. I defend her becasue she has been criminalised for
something which is not an offence.
I have also seen prostituion first
hand. Many years ago I unwittingly rented a room owned by a brothel
madam. It was the house where the girls went to sleep during the day. I
knew them all well.
They were far more aware of the dangers of
disease than your average night club goer. Of course some women have as
customer ‘weirdos and scum bags’ – as do some women have them as wives
and husbands. It was a far more honourable transaction than that
performed by many women who marry men they have no respect for, nor find
sexually attractive, merely in order to maintain a certain standard of
living.
Prostitution is not a ‘seedy and wicked crime’ – it is not a
crime. End of.
- August 14, 2010 at 14:40
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Soliciting is a crime, as is tax-evasion and living off immoral
earnings, all of which she must have been doing. Just because there
nuanced difference in soliciting and prostituting, this will not
normalise nor legalise this kind of behaviour.
It is illegal to solicit in public, either as a ‘customer’ or as a
whore. It is not illegal to accept payment for sex in the privacy of
your home, so long as there has been no ‘advertising’. She has
repeatedly chosen to ignore the law, not conduct ‘business’ privately
and as such should be punished.
Her substance abuse and that of the man she is currently living
with, her criminal behaviour and general selfishness, probably coupled
with being threatened/exploited by a pimp has resulted in at least one
child growing up in care. She is defrauding the tax-man, repeatedly
breaking the law and her criminality has had a marked, detrimental
effect on her family.
In what way is defending this nonsense ‘Libertarian’. I thought the
basic mantra was ‘Do what you like, just don’t harm others’?
PS ‘End of’ is not. The end, I mean.
- August 14, 2010 at 14:49
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Soliciting is a crime, as is tax-evasion and living off immoral
earnings, all of which she must have been doing.
so now you are adding two further crimes that the police have
ignored in favour of this ASBO – and which you have evidence of?
How do you know she is defrauding the tax man?
It is you who is accusing her of a litany of crimes – the police
have only accused her of walking down the road with a coat over her
arm as far as I can see.
- August 14, 2010 at
15:47
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Now you are being pedantic.
She must be evading tax, otherwise she would have to declare to
the taxman her source of income, which has come from her
soliciting, which is illegal, and she is unlikely to have done so.
You’re right, I can’t prove it from here, but neither can you
disprove it. I can prove that she is guilty of the other things,
as you have highlighted in the post that she takes her ‘customers’
to the local park, therefore she must have committed these other
offenses.
All business must be registered in the UK, from a one man band
to a multi-national. Has she? Really?
Has she completed her VAT returns? Is she even registered for
VAT? Does she pay Uniform Business Rates on the square footage of
‘her’ house that she uses for ‘business’. Are her books up to date
and in order?
This is a woman, a mother even, that cannot look after her own
child, let alone herself. It’s not likely that she did a Degree in
Business Studies before embarking on her career, is it?
I can’t prove anything, except that I exist, and even then I
can only prove that to myself. On the other hand, there is always
the balance of probabilities.
- August 14, 2010 at 15:54
- August 14, 2010 at 16:44
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@English Viking: They are committing crimes, not least of which will
be living off immoral earnings, benefit fraud and tax-evasion.
Whether she is committing benefit fraud and tax evasion is purely surmise
on your part, however, you are wrong in both fact and law about “living off
immoral earnings” – which was defined as long ago as 1957 by the Wolfenden
Committee as – ‘In its simplest and most usual form, “living on the earnings
of prostitution” consists of an arrangement by which a man lives with a
prostitute and is wholly or mainly kept by her.’ . A shorter definition
would be “the offence of making a living from money obtained from
prostitutes”. Thus, her “partner” might be LOIE, but she isn’t.
Indeed, if she is being law-abiding and paying Income Tax there could be
grounds for an action against The Commissioners of The Inland Revenue for
LOIE.
- August 15, 2010 at 18:07
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“The purpose of good government, Libertarian or not, is to promote a
happy, healthy, well adjusted society.”
No, it bloody well isn’t.
Patronizing, totalitarian tosh.
- August 14, 2010 at 12:19
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Why don’t these alleged “ladies of the night” get a website together and
put up the faces of any coppers who’ve visited them, or their mates?
Sauce. Goose. Gander.
- August 14, 2010 at 12:09
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Any figures available about how much ‘Operation Monaco’ cost? They might
make interesting reading.
- August 14, 2010 at 09:52
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And these are the people that complain (police) when the public look up
suspects on facebook!!
- August
14, 2010 at 09:43
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Like with drugs, the sooner that all the laws which criminalise certain
aspects of sexual interaction between consenting adults are abolished the
better. If they want prostitutes off of the street – which appears to be the
reason behind legislation these days – then legalize brothels. As an added
bonus it’ll irritate the hell out of the stuck in the 70s feminists such as
Harperson.
- August 14, 2010 at 08:26
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When on plain clothes operations as a young PC attached to the DPCU I was
approached by a rather rotund Jamaican prostitute near Soho,
“You want boom boom ?”
I produced my warrant card
“Half price ?”
I didn’t nick her. We had bigger fish to fry, but her face was an absolute
picture.
- August
14, 2010 at 09:44
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Comments are closed.
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