Firstly let me apologise for not having posted a blog entry in ages. I have simply been stupidly busy and haven’t really had a chance to do any of the things I have wanted to lately. That out of the way I thought I would come back with a bang. Now that they have finished shafting students with a 300% increase in tuition fees the UK Government are aiming to screw us over by changing something that will have a far more penetrating effect upon many of our lives – They want to take our porn away. Well to paraphrase Charlton Heston “From my cold dead, slightly callus, right hand”.

For those of you who haven’t heard about this let me give you the thrust of the story. The UK Government is currently working on plans to have internet service providers block their customers’ access to pornographic material as a matter of course, the idea behind this being to protect children from “accidently” accessing mature websites. Now if the idea of going without internet porn makes your life seem barely worth living don’t worry as the Government include in the plan a way that you can still get your fix of Japanese anorexic vomit porn, all you need to do is phone up your ISP and ask them to grant you access. I am sure that won’t be too awkward.

Personally I have never been a big user of porn, however it is good to know that if I do have the urge to find out what two girls and a midget can do with a bucket of jelly and six foot of garden hose that the option is available to me without having to phone someone up and tell them about it first. Now obviously I am making light of this story but it does have serious implications. This is very much a case of the Government decided what people can and cannot view in the comfort of their own homes. Porn, except in specific cases, is not illegal and while I agree that there should be things in place to make it hard for children to access it should that really be the responsibility of the Government or should it rest on the shoulders of the individual parents?

Now there is obviously a long hard slippery slope argument that can be made here. Once the Government has blocked easy access to porn how long before they make it illegal to look at it at all. What other things might they decide should be blocked “for the sake of the children” once the ability to do so is in place? Who decides what constitutes porn anyway? After all one man’s porn is another man’s art.

I know this is a little off the usual topic of this blog but I think the heart of the story is very much League of Reason territory. This is censorship, this is telling people what they can and cannot look at, even when it is perfectly legal to do so, and it has implications far beyond what is being proposed. I would love to know your thoughts on this one. Am I overreacting here or am I right in viewing the Government as trying to bend us over and shaft us where it hurts?

PS. Th1sWasATriumph so should have written this post. My attempts to use innuendos pales in comparison to his mastery of the art.