Skip to main content

Mark Oaten

Mark Oaten, the Lib Dem leardership candidate and then Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, who was outed on 21 January this year by (yet again) the News of the World for having been involved with a male escort, had some interesting advice for the government just a few days before the revelations were made:
Prostitution strategy a missed opportunity - 17th January 2006.

Responding to the Government's new strategy on prostitution, Mark Oaten MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, said: "While the Government is right to highlight the abuse involved in on-street prostitution, this new strategy is a missed opportunity. It will do very little to reduce the number of prostitutes on the street, to improve the appalling conditions they work in, or to tackle health problems. "We need smart solutions not the same old failed approach. We support the piloting of 'managed zones' in designated areas of cities, subject to a code of conduct and regular contact with police and health workers. "The object of these zones is not to 'tolerate' prostitution but to move it to a specified area where professionals can work with prostitutes to help them reach a point where they can choose other employment. The example of Liverpool shows that the idea is effective, and that plans for a zone can be drawn up without alienating businesses or local people." Mr Oaten also highlighted the need to tackle people trafficking: "We need a dedicated border force to boost detection and help with the gathering of intelligence. The women themselves should be allowed a 'period of reflection' when discovered, to recover from their ordeal and decide if they want to assist with the prosecution of gang members."

I guess, they should listen to him. The man knows what he is talking about,after all.

Thanks to Ravi.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave your comment here. Note that comments are moderated and only those in French or in English will be published. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and to leave a thought.

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at...
19 comments
Read more

For the Living Left Behind - Frieda Hughes

No one dead who loved you  Would wish your future years dismembered  Against the rocks of their departure.  They would not sentence you to the guilt of betrayal  For any moment they weren’t uppermost in your mind  Nor would they wish you whittled down like a stick  To pick the stony teeth in the open mouth of abject misery,  Daily, until you are nothing left.  No one dead who loved you  Would want your still-breathing carcass  To be lost in the wilderness  That spans the two worlds of the living and the dead,  Where you are neither dead nor living.  They would not applaud your misery,  But would weep to watch their loss  Made pointless by the waste of you.  The dead become a part of us; our skin, our bones, our thinking;  Their existence is continuous in us  And the best we do in everything  As we move on from the moment of their passing.  Step back from the graveside where nothing flower...
Post a Comment
Read more

pink sauce | life, with a pink seasoning

As of tonight, my blog Aimless Ramblings of Zefrog , that "place where I can vent my frustration, express ideas and generally open my big gob without bothering too many people" which will be 6 in a couple of months, becomes Pink Sauce . While the URLs zefrog.blogspot.com and www.zefrog.eu are still valid to access this page, the main URL now becomes www.pinksauce.co.uk. There is a vague plan to create a proper website for www.zefrog.eu to which the blog would be linked. Why Pink Sauce , you may ask. It is both simple and complicated. For several years, I have grown out of love for the name of the blog. It felt a bit cumbersome and clumsy. That said, I never really looked into changing it, seriously. Tonight, for dinner, I had pasta with a special pink sauce of my concoction ; single cream and ketchup. I know most people while feel nauseous at the very though of the mixture but trust me, it's gorgeous. Don't knock it till you've tried it. After having had my platte...
4 comments
Read more