From British weekly The Observer:
Home secretary Jacqui Smith embarrassed by new expenses row …
The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, apologised today for an expenses claim which included adult films watched by her husband.
Smith said she mistakenly submitted an expenses claim which included five pay-per-view films, including two adult movies which were viewed at her family home in her Redditch constituency. …
News of the claim is a new embarrassment to Smith who last month faced criticism for claiming taxpayer-funded allowances for her family home while living with her sister in London.
See also here.
The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, was criticised last night following the collapse of a five-month police investigation into a series of embarrassing leaks from her department: here. So, this time about her department, not about her appartment.
It reminds me somewhat of the times when the British Conservative government loudly proclaimed “back to basics” “decent” “pro family” anti single mother policies; while behind the scenes, there was one Conservative Party sex scandal after another, landing in the media one by one. It also reminds me of the prude anti-gay etc. policies of Blairite Ruth Kelly and her ilk.
Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers: here.
Related articles
- Should the BBC ‘Trust’ Jacqui Smith? (themediablog.typepad.com)
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Sex workers rally against new Crime Bill
Tuesday 31 March 2009
by Paul Haste in central London
SEX workers smothered London’s Piccadilly Circus in red umbrellas on Tuesday to protest against the criminalisation of their profession.
Scores of workers from the nearby Soho district gathered at the Eros statue in the heart of the capital, stopping traffic to highlight their opposition to the government’s Policing and Crime Bill.
Carrying the red umbrellas as a symbol of their resistance to the new law, sex workers’ rights activists declared that it would “push prostitution further underground and push us into more danger.”
English Collective of Prostitutes organiser Karen Mitchell explained that the Bill, championed by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, would “make it easier to for the police to arrest sex workers on the street and give them powers to seize our earnings and property regardless of whether there is a conviction.”
Referring to reports that Ms Smith’s ministerial expenses included pornographic DVDs, Ms Mitchell said: “It is ironic that the minister makes expense claims for products from the sex industry while waging this fundamentalist moral crusade against us.”
Ms Mitchell pointed out that “many sex workers are single mothers and prostitution is a survival strategy to deal with debt, low wages and unemployment.
“As the recession hits harder, more women are likely to resort to prostitution and the government should be providing resources and support for them, rather than stigmatising and criminalising them.”
Sex worker activist Ava Caradonna, who organises English classes for migrant workers in Soho, insisted that the women and men who sell sexual services “don’t need and don’t want other people making choices for us.
“Ministers want to criminalise our work, but we want to do what we do – and we want to organise and take charge of our own lives to make conditions better,” she added.
International Union of Sex Workers and GMB union organiser Catherine Stephens stressed that unionising the industry would empower those who choose to be sex workers.
“This is not a job for everyone, but we ask those who criticise our choices to at least respect that choice and respect my right to do what I want with my body,” she declared.
Danish activist Zanne agreed, pointing out that “sex workers all over the world are organising,” while Italian Andrea added that the government should “legalise the industry instead of attacking us.”
Ms Caradonna added that “those who want more oppressive laws need to listen to the workers and their union.”
“Abolition is not the answer because prostitution will never end. Instead we need some respect,” she stated.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/britain/sex_workers_rally_against_new_crime_bill
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British government website links to Japanese porn
23 hours ago
LONDON (AFP) — Britain’s interior ministry homepage mistakenly linked to a Japanese pornography website, a government spokesman said Monday.
The Home Office, which has since removed the link, was alerted to the issue by the BBC on Monday after a private Internet user informed the broadcaster.
“It was a link from the Home Office website to the Technical Advisory Board, which is an external website,” a ministry spokesman told AFP. “It is their website that was hacked and re-directed to a porn site.”
“We were alerted today, we took immediate action, we removed the link and we are now investigating.”
According to the BBC, the Home Office said the site it had initially linked to had since become defunct, and a new company had taken it over, without giving details.
The revelation is the second pornography-related embarrassment for the ministry in as many weeks.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was last week forced to refund expense claims filed on her behalf which showed her husband had watched two pay-per-view pornographic films.
Smith has said she was “mortified” to discover the pay-per-view movies had been submitted inadvertently as part of her expense claim for running her family home.
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Apr 11, 1:09 PM EDT
Cable glitch switches religious program to racy ad
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Philadelphia cable network’s early morning broadcast of a Good Friday service at the Vatican abruptly changed to something wildly different – a 30-second “Girls Gone Wild” ad.
Comcast spokesman Jeff Alexander says the 2 a.m. Friday programming glitch was due to a required test of the Emergency Alert System. He says such tests are usually done in the overnight hours.
The test automatically tunes viewers to a preselected channel that would provide information in the event of an emergency. But during tests, the channel airs regular programming, which in this case included a paid advertisement for the racy videos.
Alexander says the problem affected the network’s entire local area, but only one person called to complain.
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Information from: Philadelphia Daily News, http://www.philly.com
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