18.06.2013
The latest newspaper to jump on the burgeoning anti-porn bandwagon is the Sunday Times, which recently put its name to a “symposium” on the “dangers to children of online pornography” in conjunction with the Tory Think-tank Policy Exchange:
The Sunday Times is organising a symposium on the dangers to children of online pornography. The aims of the event, which will take place at the Policy Exchange in London tomorrow, are to raise awareness of the issues surrounding online pornography and provide a forum for a range of experts to discuss the growing crisis caused by its easy access for children. Keynote speakers include: Gail Dines – author of Pornland and Professor of Sociology at Wheelock College, Boston will be talking about… Read more »
02.06.2013
Having parked its [septic] tanks on Google’s lawn, the media’s efforts to generate a full blown moral panic around the existence of online pornography continued this morning with an appearance on the BBC’s Breakfast News programme by Susie Hargreaves, tbe current CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation. To be honest, I wasn’t paying too much at the time but Hargreaves tripped my bullshit detector by casually claiming that the IWF had done some sort of research that apparently showed that 1.5 million people had accidentally run across child porn while surfing teh Interwebs. 1.5 MILLION..? No… there’s something seriously screwy going on there but, of course, one should always check primary sources before dismissing dodgy-looking statistical claims out of hand, so off… Read more »
31.05.2013
In the wake of the convictions of Stuart Hazell and Mark Bridger for sexually motivated murders of children, the papers are awash with speculative commentaries on online child pornography. The Daily Mail (of course) wants to know ‘What WILL it take for Google to block child porn?’ even though it has yet to admit that it’s own efforts to find any were an abject and utterly embarrassing failure. What we need here, and what no one will get from the press, is a sense of perspective, so let’s look at just a few figures that will help put things into context. How big is the Internet? Well, no one really knows and things are changing all the time, so… Read more »
22.05.2013
For this article I’m going to return to a subject I covered yesterday, that of ‘porn statistics’ or, to be more precise, statistics published widely on both the internet and by newspapers and other media organisation which purport to show that large numbers of children and young people are encountering or accessing pornography via the internet. To quickly recap where we are with this issue so far, yesterday I showed that a ‘statistic’ cited by the Daily Mail while reporting a survey of parents conducted by the National Association of Head Teachers, which found that 90% wanted some sort of default setting on computers and smartphones that would block access to ‘adult material’, actually originated from pretty much nowhere in 2001 in… Read more »
20.05.2013
Ahead of today’s House of Commons debate on the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill and the raft of wrecking amendments tabled, for the most part, by Tory MPs, I think that it’s well worth reflecting on exactly where opposition to equal marriage is coming from and, particularly, how that opposition is being organised. As far as public opinion is concerned, YouGov President Peter Kellner lays out the actual position with admirable clarity:
The passions of grass-roots Tories who are bitterly opposed to same-sex marriage are not shared by the wider electorate. Most voters back a change in the law – and very few opponents are willing to switch their votes because of this issue. Overall, YouGov’s latest poll for the Sunday… Read more »
17.05.2013
In just the last week or so we’ve seen Iain Duncan Smith publicly rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority for making claims about the government’s policy of capping benefits that were “unsupported by the official statistics published by the department” and Michael Gove caught using unscientific polls commissioned by UKTV Gold and Premier Inn in an effort to dismiss serious criticism of his new National Curriculum by leading academics. One should not, therefore, be surprised to discover that a poll conducted by Ipsos Mori on behalf of the Royal Statistics Society and Kings College London shows that just 9% of the general public believe that politicians use figures accurately when talking about their policies while just 7% place any kind of trust… Read more »
15.05.2013
You would normally expect an MP who has only just had their party whip reinstated after a six month suspension to lie low for a while but not Nadine Dorries:
Conservative MP Nadine Dorries has suggested she might run as a joint Tory-UK Independence Party candidate at the next general election. She told the Spectator magazine she would be “having very much that kind of conversation” with activists in her Mid-Bedfordshire constituency. Ms Dorries also said many Conservatives had “huge empathy” with UKIP, whose poll ratings have risen recently. But Downing Street said a two-party candidacy was against Tory rules. Ms Dorries returned to the Conservative Party last week after a six-month suspension. She had the whip withdrawn last November… Read more »
08.05.2013
Would you be surprised if I told you that, almost six months on from her all-too-public appearance on ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’, Nadine Dorries still hasn’t registered her income from appearing on the show with the House of Commons authorities? In fact, according to the most recent edition of the House of Commons Register of Members’ Interests she hasn’t declared any outside interests or earnings since June 2012, although she did register a gift in kind from Conservative Home in October 2012, which consisted of a Conference Pass, accommodation and travel for last year’s Conservative Party Conference, valued at £700. That’s a little odd isn’t? Between August 2011 and May 2012, the Register of Members’ Interests shows that Dorries was paid:… Read more »
02.05.2013
Yesterday, the chairman of the polling organisation ComRes, Andrew Hawkins, was busily touting a local election poll commissioned by the Coalition for Marriage on Twitter, the headline figures for which were as follows:
Conservative 31%, Labour 24%, Liberal Democrat 12%, UKIP 22%, Other 10%
Okay, so those figures look rather different to current national polling but that’s hardly surprising as this is primarily a Shire counties election in which you’d expect to see Labour, in particular, running behind the national figures because so much of the party’s electoral support is centred on urban areas where there are no local elections this year. Nevertheless, the figures still looked a little odd to me, so I took a look at the data and then ended up having… Read more »
24.04.2013
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, rape convictions have hit an all -time high:
The Crown Prosecution Service has today published new figures that show the conviction rate for rape and domestic violence prosecutions increased once again last year. The statistics show that the conviction rate for rape prosecutions has continued to rise to the highest on record, from 58% in 2007/08 to 63% in 2012/13. CPS recorded data on rape prosecutions includes all cases initially charged and flagged as rape, including those cases where a conviction was obtained for alternative sexual offences or serious offences of homicide or offences against the person.
Ah, but have you noticed the caveat in paragraph 2? In the parallel universe that bureaucrats inhabit a ‘rape conviction’ is not… Read more »
