For all those out there who would like to see more mothers of victims getting to shape our laws, this will put you at ease. You see, the man who killed her daughter wasn't just a murderer. No, it's much worse. The Internet did it as well.

People who know me know where I stand on censorship. I think it should be banned. But seriously, folks, if you all just go ahead and assume the I'd make the usual points about "what is and isn't an actual crime", and about "personal choice and whether looking at something actually causes harm (or whether the harm may come from offences that already exist, such as, you know, murder and forced prostitution)", here's what's really dumb about the whole thing. How do we get from something that is violent to something that is violent and pornographic? Because if it's just coupling sexual gratification and violence, then my copy of American Psycho is about to get me into a fair amount of trouble. Similarly, at what point on the S&M scale does fetish material become "violent"? You can't say at the point where some serious harm will be done, because that's surely related to the duration. I mean, you could strangle someone for ten seconds at a time, and allow breathers, and then there would be no long term damage. Would that be OK? I'm guessing no. You will also kill someone if you hit them with a cane for, oh, I don't know, a week? But I don't this this law will really be targetting flagellation websites.

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker, "pointed out that the vast majority of people find extreme pornography deeply abhorrent." This is true: the Home Office state that "a petition signed by around 50,000 people objecting to the extreme websites that promote violence against women as sexual gratification, has been presented to Parliament". I don't think it's easy to find these sites. You would have to look. So are all those people going out of their way to be disgusted, just so they can sign a petition, or have they never encountered the material, but just knowing it was out there, somewhere, probably right behind their children, is keeping them awake at night? He also added, "Such material has no place in our society". I would also keep it away from public libraries and billboards. But statements like this always seems, to me, like an argument in favour of allowing this material on the Internet: it keeps it away from society. It also keeps it in a place where it could be monitered, freely and easily, for the actual crimes of sex slavery, child abuse, and violence that occur without being staged and without the consent of the participants.

At the end of the day, I really just figure that the presence of violent pornographic images don't make people murder other people. The fantasy exists before the pictures. If anything, it's an outlet. I say this about violent video games and other "social evils", and I'll continue to say it until I see proof otherwise. There are plenty of things we may find unpleasant, but I don't think censorship is the answer, and that is mainly because I don't really see as there is a question. To steal from an Economist article on prostitution: It's a dirty business, but it isn't any of the government's. Or as I like to say, in the spirit of tolerance, one man's "vile and obscene" is another man's "chick covered in cigarette burns dangling by her nipples from a cross beam fantasy".

I'm not into any of this, before you ask.

Love.

Today was a good day for lovers of freedom.

Firstly, the police are asking the government for special powers to punish troublemakers without needing to go to court. Cool. Can anyone do that? Is there someone I can write to get these powers? And then there will be old argument: "the police have asked for these powers to help them protect our security". Yeah, I like my job to be made easier for me as well. Of course, I'm filling boxes in a warehouse. We want to bypass the courts, we want longer to question suspected terrorists. The job of the police would be dead easy if we were all made to wear shackles every day, but I guess that probably would cause a fuss.

Then, there's the proposal of profiling in airport, which is a lovely euphemistic term for a less media friendly word: discrimination. You know, acting differently to a person based on their physical charachteristics or ethnic background. Terrorists are a subset of all the people, not a subset of a subset of all the people. When they say the measures will be singling out those who statistically pose the greatest risk to the public, I guess that means "Muslims", or possibly more usefully, "the Brown". They could specialise the image more, but that's going to cause problems. No-one suspected the bombers from last July until their heads popped off, so maybe a criteria slightly more advanced than "I've got a funny feeling in my waters" might be necessary. I could be being hysterical of course. They may just mean, "people who have bombs in their pockets", in which case I'm totally on board. I'm a big fan of people with bombs in their pockets being searched more carefully before boarding an aircraft.

Anyone in Oxford on Thursday?