Two nights ago I watched with keen interest as a couple of typical middle England Hampshire ladies went on a world tour of legal brothels.Their mission? To find the perfect brothel to bring back to the UK. Then once having created that, with Channel 4 reporter Nicky Taylor’s help, inside a caravan, - may I add - legal loopholes and all - push for the legalisation of brothels in the UK.
Prostitution is legal. Brothels aren’t. Police have prostitution liaison officers that visit brothels and have cups of tea while on a visit. The Inland Revenue take brothel owners’ money but with the caveat that on your tax return you write ‘massage parlours’ as your source of income and not brothel keeping – although the two are the same.
But remember you can go to prison for running a brothel.
Confused? I am. As are most of England. These Hampshire ladies, Jean Johnson, 62, and Shirley Landells, 73, are part of the Women’s Institute – the most wonderfully English female institution. After those five prostitutes were murdered in Ipswich (see my blog entry dated: 15/12/06) they made it a resolution to help make prostitutes’ lives safer and secured the backing of the Hampshire WI.
They are now on a mission to convince the members of the national WI to back their resolution and have already delivered a petition to 10 Downing St.
I will watch their progress with keen interest and have already started thinking about joining the WI, even though I am in my twenties, don’t have two black Labradors or a baking tin.
If anyone can change this befuddled part of the law and help make prostitutes lives safer, it will be the WI. It makes so much sense – I can’t believe it hasn’t been attempted sooner by its membership. Watching the programme I was taken back to my school days, when I loved learning about the Pankhursts and their mission to emancipate women in a whole other way. I hope the WI will achieve what no other group has been able to, finally sorting out this grey area of UK legislation while keeping working for the improved conditions in a profession that will never go away.
The suffragettes have cometh again – accept this time they’re tackling sex not votes – but still a shed load of hypocrisy all over again.
So women let’s unite and join our nearest WI’s today.
http://www.thewi.org.uk/section.aspx?id=7
1 comments:
Most people are a bit in the dark about an incredibly important facet of our history -- how women won the vote.
Now finding out is as easy as opening your e-mail.
"The Privilege of Voting" tells the sexy, shocking truth of HOW the suffragettes won the vote.
It is a new historical e-mail series that goes behind the scenes in the lives of eight well-known women from 1912 to 1920 to reveal the many exciting and surprising twists and turns that played into women finally winning the vote in England and America,
The women depicted include two of the most beautiful and outspoken suffragettes -- Alice Paul and Emmeline Pankhurst, along with Edith Wharton, Isadora Duncan, Alice Roosevelt, and two stunning presidential mistresses.
But this is no boring history report! There are weddings and funerals, babies in peril, damsels in distress, war, peace, prohibition, broken hearts and lots of hot affairs on the rocky road to the ballot box.
The best part is it's ALL true!
Presented via e-mail in a unique, sequential, interwoven short-story format called Coffeebreak Readers that makes discovering the delightful heroines of women's suffrage fast and fun!
Each action-packed e-mail episode takes about 10 minutes to read, so they are perfect to enjoy on coffeebreaks, or anytime.
You can subscribe to receive free twice-weekly e-mails at:
http://www.CoffeebreakReaders.com/tpovpage.html
I would be interested to hear your opinion on the series should you choose to subscribe.
Best to you,
Virginia Harris
Series Author
Publisher
www.CoffeebreakReaders.com
Post a Comment