After months of head-scratching, endless policy committee meetings and (no doubt) lots of expensive conferences and retreats at the taxpayers expense, Jacqui Smith our latest "Home Office Hero" has presented plans to further criminalise men who pay for sex.

And no surprise that after all the hoo-hah we find that the half-baked proposals, presented to the public are pretty much exactly like Smith herself; well-intentioned...but entirely unfit for purpose.

After all, this is the Home Secretary who just last week made the gobsmacking not-from-this-planet claim that people 'can't wait for ID cards'. The cards will start to be really pushed on us all from 2012 but Smith said: "I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long." Who exactly? Ed.

So when Smith outlined new legislation to oblige the clients of the sex industry to ensure that the sex worker has not and is not been trafficked, my first thought was: How exactly can this be achieved? I mean seriously, how exactly would a punter go about this? Is simply asking the question: "Are you being trafficked?" enough? Is a written Affidavit required? And how exactly will this be policed? or prosecuted?

Unfortunately, Smith seems to think that the demand created by the punters can be destroyed by a few signatures on a parliamentary bill. If you criminalise the punters she claims, you destroy the demand and solve the problem.

But in true fence-sitting style, Smith and her Home Office "Ho's" have backed away from the Swedish solution (on which they have based their doomed bill), which was to make it illegal to pay for sex...full stop. This has apparently worked in Sweden and at least there is no ambiguity. But Smith has refused to go this far, ostensibly on the basis that the Swedish sex industry is considerably smaller than the UK's and it would be more difficult to police.

But how much more difficult is it going to be to obtain a successful prosecution on the basis of the wishy-washy legislation she is proposing?

I don't think any sane person would argue that human trafficking of any description is a horrific thing and as a (somewhat) civilised society, we are obliged to do our best to eliminate this terrible practice and help protect and support the victims of the trade.

But if history has taught us anything, it should have taught us that you cannot legislate morality. Every time we try to do this, not only do we fail to solve the problem, but we end up making the problem much worse!

Not only is Smith's legislation in it's current form unlikely to help the victims of sex trafficking, it is more likely to harm them further, as tighter legislation forces the trafficking rings further underground, making it's victims less visible and forced by economic imperatives to service the much more sociopathic end of the punter scale. So says the English Collective of Prostitutes, in a BBC article published over a year ago when Jacqui started climbing her political beanstalk.

Frankly, it's no surprise to me that countries with a more liberal approach to the sex industry seem to have a proportionally lower rate of serious sex crime and instances of trafficking. The Netherlands for example has long had a policy of tolerance towards it's sex workers. They can legally operate from brothels, under the watchful eye of the authorities. The workers are required to register, undergo regular health checks and pay taxes. This makes it much more difficult for pimps and traffickers to operate, because the sex workers band together and protect each other. It also offers an equal measure of protection for the punters from blackmail and extortion.

And because the sex industry is more socially permissible in Holland, sex workers and punters alike are not regarded as pariahs within Dutch society and are taken seriously by the police when reporting genuine criminal offenses. This of course encourages victims to come forward, provides a framework to properly protect victims and witnesses, increases trust and helps maintain workable community relations in an atmosphere of goodwill.

So if we seriously want to curtail human trafficking in the sex industry (and we can't avoid the over-riding urge to create yet more legislation), why aren't we looking to restructure our current legislation along the lines of the Netherlands?

One last point to mull over: Jacqui Smith claims that almost 70% of sex workers operating in the UK are being trafficked (a statistic disputed by the English Collective of Prostitutes who claim the figure is much lower). But let's give the old bat the benefit of the doubt for the moment...

How is it that the Home Office is capable of obtaining such allegedly accurate statistics and yet has been unable to use this intelligence to smash the trafficking rings themselves?

Answers on a postcard to:-

Ms J Smith
c/-
New Labour (Detached-from-Reality dept.)
Bullshit-and-Pointless-Spin Division
Houses of Parliament
London

(the first 3 correct entries win a free trip to Hollyrood)

The US election results announced today are a significant milestone in many respects.

Beyond the obvious landmarks such as Barrack Obama's ethnic background and the strong shift in voting trends from Republican to Democrat, today's events herald a resurgence in many of the fundamental ideals and beliefs that the US has purported for many years, but has failed to live up to. Concepts such as freedom and liberty have throughout most of the post-war years been subverted by a series of administrations for the purposes of US hegemony, to the detriment of people the world over.

And the result has been that those of us living and working outside the zone between the big apple and the big orange have increasingly viewed the foreign policies of successive US governments with a growing level of distrust and cynicism. In recent years especially, we have often heard the US government use words such as "freedom" and "liberty" in situations where the actions that follow those words are the diametric opposite of what is claimed.

The Bush administration has been particularly guilty of this type of hypocritical spin; whenever Dubya used these words, you just knew that he and his Whitehouse cronies were about to perpetuate another crime against these concepts, such as the Iraq war, Guantanomo Bay and the infamous Patriot act.

But Dubya and his cohorts are still merely the latest in a long line of US administrations who have talked the talk and then done exactly the opposite. Most previous US presidents have been much the same, waxing lyrical about freedom while implementing foreign policy that suppresses countries, cultures and governments who are not willing to bend their beliefs to favour the business interests of corporate America.

But as with any democracy, the ultimate faults of the leadership are (at least partly) the fault of the voters.

Someone once wrote: "We get the government we deserve". This has been particularly true in many of the G8 democracies in recent years, where a combination of self-interest, media spin and voter apathy has resulted in leadership which rarely reflects the interests, hopes and aspirations of the many and instead provides a system for the filthy rich to get richer...and always at the expense of the rest of us.

The election of Barack Obama therefore represents something more fundamental and noble than a mere shift in the political status quo or the fulfillment of important aspirations of African Americans. It represents a desire and hope by the millions of voters who have been disenfranchised by the likes of Bush and the big business lobbies, to make the long-held US ideals of freedom, liberty and democracy mean something more than just empty terms trotted out by grey-suited government mouthpieces.

Obama's campaign pledges include:-

• Closing the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center, rejecting the Military Commissions Act and adhering to the Geneva Conventions.
• Withdrawing US troops from Iraq in a controlled manner.
• Removing the political factors influencing the US intelligence network, which directly led to the Iraq war.
• Properly safeguarding all nuclear material under US control within four years, stopping development of new nuclear weapons and strengthening nonproliferation treaty legislation.
• Increasing regulation of the financial industry, reforming the bankruptcy laws and improving consumer credit protections.
• Acknowledging the impact of climate change and committing to begin moving the oil-addicted US economy to more sustainable alternatives.
• Implementing policies to ensure that key government posts are filled, based on experience and expertise in the applicable field, instead of political affiliation and cronyism.
• Restricting the power of special-interest lobbyists, bringing an end to no-bid government contracts and disclosing contractor lobbying publicly.
• Fighting for an independent watchdog agency to oversee the investigation of congressional ethics violations.
• Working to make sure China plays by international rules.
• Providing universal health care to all Americans who need it.

Mr Obama certainly has his work cut out for him; he will shortly inherit the heaviest national debt in US history, a faltering economy with spiraling unemployment and poverty and keeping even a good portion of his pledges may prove difficult or even impossible. Still, with a Democrat majority in Congress and a Republican-controlled senate with a fairly narrow majority, it may very well prove possible for the Whitehouse to push through many of the proposed reforms...

But the mere fact that the pledges are being made (and supported by the voting public who turned out in record numbers) is a very positive sign.

For the first time in years, there appears to be a ray of hope that the US will start to move away from it's doomed policies of unwarranted political and military interference, Ivy-League cronyism and commercial usury and start moving back to the kind of nation that it's founding fathers and presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy had the vision and foresight to commit their lives to.

In his book: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, Noam Chomsky argued that the last surviving obstacle to the total domination of repressive regimes is public opinion.

I reckon he was right.

A few days ago, I was listening to one of a seemingly endless series of radio discussion programmes about the credit crunch. Most of these programmes have a fairly low-to-middle range annoyance factor, but this particular programme really got my blood boiling, because the interviewee had the gall to state:

"this has caught everyone by surprise; it's just impossible to say with any degree of certainty that this could have been prevented"

Let's briefly visit the not-too-distant past and look a little closer at some of the red flags in more detail...

Anyone remember a guy called Nick Leeson? The North-London barrow boy whose increasingly desperate attempts to conceal ever-growing trading losses in the futures market eventually resulted in the collapse of Barings Bank in 1995?

How exactly did he manage to do this? By acting as both a front-office trader and a back-office contract manager, he was able to effectively remove all checks and balances within the Singapore office of Barings. And thanks to his smooth sales talk and apparently impressive ability to knock up a good-looking balance sheet, his mistakes went entirely undetected by the army of accountants at the head office in London...until it was too late.

Although Leeson claimed to have never profited personally from his trading fiasco, he was certainly motivated - to some degree at least - by his bonus structure, as were his superiors in the London office, who had become obsessed with profits, completely ignoring the fact that high profit schemes by their very nature carry an exponentially high risk. Their failure to properly examine Leeson's claims and figures (especially in a new office in an emerging market) were contributory negligence of gigantic proportions.

At the time, I was working in London, providing technical support to the Foreign Exchange / Money Market (FX/MM) division of Citibank. When the news broke, I expected that the shockwaves would rock blue-chip banking and financial institutions to their very core. We all expected to be deluged by an avalanche of new rules, procedures and auditing policies which would have to be built into the software and the office geared up for these expected changes. But a year later, very little had actually occurred. The tidal wave of new regulation that we expected never arrived and apart from a few tweaks and twiddles around the margins of the system, bugger-all actually seemed to change.

Although Leeson was a prolific gambler with other people's money, his motives could be seen - at least in part - as trying to redress his mistakes. In other words, he wasn't deliberately skimming the till, purely for personal profit. If a desperate trader like Leeson could do so much damage just by trying to cover his arse while he attempted to gamble his way out of trouble, how much damage could someone who was geniunely stealing from a large corporate entity do?

Take a look at the WorldCom and Enron scandals that occurred in 2000 and 2001 respectively.

Both these scandals involved deliberate attempts to protect the assets of key figures at the head of both companies. In both cases, the books were deliberately cooked to drastically inflate the value of the companies - at least on paper. And far more worryingly the books were allegedly cooked with the active aid and participation of key figures within the accountancy firms assigned to make sure that all was present and correct.

The Enron scandal involved the active participation of the firm: Arthur Anderson - at the time one of the world's largest and most trusted accountancy firms. The firm was convicted on obstruction of justice charges when it emerged that they had deliberately shredded documents relevant to an investigation by the US Justice department.

A key figure in the Enron scandal was it's CEO Kenneth Lay. Lay was one of the US's highest-paid CEOs, earning, for example, a $42.4 million compensation package in 1999 and a close friend of soon-to-be-kicked-out Whitehouse incumbent George Bush (who affectionately referred to him as: "Kenny boy").

Both Worldcom and Enron went Chapter 11 and when Lay and his Enron cronies realised the game was up, they collectively dumped some $300 million in stock, while encouraging employees to buy more stock, telling them the company would rebound. The resulting investigations into both scandals were cut short by the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, which not only focused the world's attention on other matters, but (if some conspiracy theories are correct) indirectly resulted in the destruction of vast quantities of key documents being stored on or near the target site by the SEC. In the aftermath of these terrible events, neither scandal was fully investigated. And so nothing changed...

Moving into more recent times again in the US. In 2007 we started hearing nasty news stories about the collapse of the housing market in the US, due largely to something called: Sub-prime mortgages.

But what exactly are sub-prime mortgages?

In essence, they are a form of lending that comes as close to loan-sharking as it's possible to get within the current US legal framework. Banks made large loans to hapless customers (who had little or no deposit and an income that could not possibly meet the repayment schedule), to buy houses that the banks knew they could not afford. They charged ruinous interest rates and demanded that customers purchase overpriced and badly-worded insurance plans from the bank to cover their own arses six ways from Sunday. Then all they had to do was to wait like a pack of hyenas for the customer to default on the loan...and when that inevitably happened, they simply moved in for the kill, foreclosing on the property and seizing whatever other assets to recover their "investment". Insurance covered any shortfall in their balance sheets, which meant that the mortgagee sale of the house was pretty much all profit.

As every loan shark knows, you can make a lot of money by targeting the poor; there's lots of them, they are are often a bit financially gullible and they are therefore easy to get money out of. Worst of all, especially under the Bush regime, the poor have no-one to protect them...easy meat in the eyes of the bankers. The entire concept of sub-prime lending not only flies in the face of common sense, but is - in a moral sense at least - a hideously sick practice, which only a sick and twisted mind could have come up with.

But this time the bankers came unstuck. Their profit margin was tied up in the sale of the house after picking the bones clean and it was based on the market value of the property. But by now, so many thieving, scheming bastards were in on the game, that more and more mortgagee sales were becoming the norm. The supply/demand see-saw tipped over and suddenly repossessed properties were only worth a fraction of their perceived value. The bankers, blinded by their profit projections and bonus expectations had started to believe their own fantasy figures - until they suddenly took another look and realised that (just like their victims) they too were up shit creek in a barbed-wire canoe.

And so they collectively blackmailed governments around the world to bail them out...and the rest as they say is history.

There have been plenty of warning signs over the last 10-15 years, which have been ignored by both governments and regulatory bodies to a degree that is way beyond accident or circumstance. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that they have been part of a deliberate and systematic attempt to avoid learning from these mistakes and putting adequate economic and legal safeguards in place to prevent the situation we all now find ourselves in.

And as voters and consumers, we too must shoulder a proportion of the blame. We who have been brainwashed by the corporate spin-doctors and ad campaigns into believing all these dollar-green gold-plated fantasies. We who insist on designer labels, the latest mobile phones, flash cars and big houses, all of which is financed by an ever-growing mountain of credit card accounts and personal loans. And we who have refused to live within our means must now face the reality of what we have helped to create...

So for fuck's sake let's wake up and get real. Let's start by doing a proper, honest appraisal of our individual circumstances. Let's work out a budget, cutting back on all the frivolous shit we spend all day working to obtain. Forget the X-boxes and WII consoles, cancel your satellite TV and glossy celebrity magazine subscriptions. Trade the gas-guzzling 4x4 in for a more economic model and use any cash rebate to pay off a chunk of your next credit card bill. Start buying more of the no-frills brands in your shopping, install long-life bulbs in your home and turn down your gas (cold? put a bloody jumper on). Collect those discount coupons and store those loyalty points. Start living within your means - it's folly to earn a quid and spend 2 quid.

Most importantly, remember who the rich bastards at the top are and which of your elected officials help them out with tax breaks and deregulation. Demand action against those responsible, but also demand the reinstitution of proper regulation, overseen by independent auditors so the bastards can't get away with it so easily in the future. Oh - and when the next election rolls around, get off your arse and vote!

Let's start taking back the world we have been conned into giving away...

When the skies suddenly cleared and the sun burst forth in an unusually enthusiastic style this weekend, Su and I knew it was too good to miss and headed out for the day on Sunday. We had decided to visit the Hawk Conservancy Trust, located near Weyhill, just outside Andover. Neither Su or I had visited the Trust before, but Su had heard glowing reports from friends within the Sealed Knot.

Just before 1:30pm, we strolled through the visitor's centre and into the main grounds, armed with a complimentary copy of the trust's highly informative booklet and map. We immediately headed up to watch the "Valley of the Eagles Flying Display".

Once settled on comfortable benches overlooking a wild flower meadow, we were all introduced to our commentator, Mr Ashley Smith (son of founders Reg and Hilary) who kicked off by explaining a little of the history of the trust; founded as the Weyhill Zoo by smallholders Reg and Hilary Smith in 1966, the trust evolved to specialise purely in birds of prey towards the end of the 1970's.

Since that time, the Trust's facilities have been greatly expanded, as have their reputation and stature. They have also been acknowledged with a number of awards, including a silver award in their category in the "England for Excellence Awards" and a commendation from the Federation of Zoos of Great Britain and Ireland for their new hospital facility (both in spring 2002).

Ashley is an excellent presenter and the audience quickly warmed to annecdotes about his father's earthy and frank approach to the occasional hapless visitor who, ignoring the "do not enter" signs, wandered into the field during a demonstration (thus disrupting the presentation). He then moved into the first of the demonstrations, with a Peregrine falcon, which swooped over the heads of the audience, between handlers stationed on both sides of the display area. Ashley explained that the flight of the Peregrine falcon reputedly inspired R.J. Mitchell in his designs for the Spitfire aircraft.

Next was an aerial display of a team of six vultures which Ashley explained were highly intelligent and social birds, who often got a bad press rep. This particular squad had learned that instead of flying just over the heads of the audience, they could fly right at their heads, knowing that the spectators would duck and we were all advised to do just that, in order to avoid getting a face full of surprised vulture. Needless to say, we took his advice!

Other spectacular participants in the display included Harris Hawks and Black kites and the display culminated with the arrival of a majestic pair of American Bald Eagles (accompanied by the musical score: Conquest of Paradise by Vangellis). After this first-rate display was complete, there were opportunities to talk to Ashley and the staff, take photos and get up close to the Bald Eagles.

A quick snack followed in the well-equipped and spotlessly maintained picnic grounds opposite the entrance / coffee shop and then it was time to head off to the second display of the day; the woodland owls and hawks display. Nestled under a canopy of native trees and flora, we were treated to a second excellent performance, featuring a Great Grey Owl, Little Owl, Barn and Tawny Owls among others. The handlers skillfully positioned themselves to allow the stars of the show to again fly low over the heads of the audience, criss-crossing the seated area so that everyone got an equal chance to see all the birds. As with the Valley of the Eagles display, visitors had the opportunity to take photos or ask questions after the performance. They could also hold a Tawny or Barn owl.

The staff were all friendly, enthusiastic and very knowledgable. It is clear that they all have an equal committment to education and conservation, as well as entertainment and we certainly left both displays better informed about these amazing creatures. I was interested to learn that the eyes of many owls are fixed within their sockets and they are unable to move their eyes in the way that many animals can. To compensate, they are able to rotate their heads through an axis of approximately 270 degrees. Additionally, their large eyes and proportionally small heads generally means they have a small brain-mass to body-mass ratio (so much for the "wise old owl" stuff!).

The origins of the predominantly western idea that owls are wise apparently has it's connection to the Greek temples of Athena: the Godess of wisdom. Temples were of course not just places of worship, but were also centres of scholarly study and owls would sometimes roost in the temple eaves. The local people noticed this and concluded that the owl must be a wise bird. This was also immortalised in the name of the Owl genus: Athene. I am reliably informed that in other parts of the world, calling someone an "owl" is something of an insult, the inference being that the subject is not too bright!

We spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around the different aviaries. One simple and interesting idea that the Hawk Conservancy Trust has hit upon, is a kind of collection scheme for kids; When kids arrive, they are given a booklet and as they walk around the aviaries, they can place a stamp in their booklet for each bird they see.

The Trust also operates a number of regular day events, including "a day with birds of prey", "conservation days" and "photographic days", to name but a few. They also run a number of special events such as "Owls by Moonlight" on Friday and Saturday evenings during the spring and autumn months (I'm certainly going to be checking this out). They also do a number of corporate and special occasion events, ideally suited as birthday, anniversary or christmas gifts for that hard-to-please recipient. There's a whole lot more information on their website, which I suggest you check out for yourself.

All in all, an excellent day out, thoroughly enjoyable and well worth the admission price. We are both keen to revisit soon.

See you there.

Check out our Photo Gallery of the Hawk Conservancy Trust

Very sad news today about the death of Rick Wright, talented keyboard player with the legendary Pink Floyd and often under-appreciated musical craftsman.

Wright was part of the core talent of the Pink Floyd sound, having first formed the band together with Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and Nick Mason, back in 1967. He was a key part of the sound, recording and performing with the Floyd from their debut album "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" onwards. His musical contributions to the band included moments of sheer genius, when he wrote "The Great Gig In The Sky" and "Us And Them" for the classic 1973 album "Dark side of the Moon".

Following an acrimonious falling-out with Waters during the recording of "The Wall" in 1981, Wright was fired from the band by Waters but later toured with the Floyd on their Wall tour. Ironically, as a salaried musician, Wright was the only band member to make any money from the tour.

Between times, Wright produced some excellent solo work, including the commercially unsuccessful but interesting "Wet Dream" album in 1978 and "Broken China" in 1996, which he was inspiried to create after rejoining Pink Floyd in 1984.

Rick Wright was an exceptional musician and an integral part of the Pink Floyd sound. David Gilmour said: "In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick's enormous input was frequently forgotten. He was gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognised Pink Floyd sound."

He died after a short struggle with an unspecified form of cancer.

Another diamond fades to black...

He will be missed...