This must be the biggest double standard ever its the WGs offering the service in the first place its like charging a drug addict but letting the dealer off
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The view held by the anti prostitution brigade including Harriet Harridan is WGs are ALL poor abused victims whether they consider themselves to be or not, and ALL punters are abusing them by paying them for sex. That is the underlying thinking of these people and why they want to see the punter criminalised. Radical feminists hate the idea of punters being able to access sex quickly by a phone call/email and pay a WG for it, it offends them, and they want to impose their views on the rest of us.
The all party group who is pressing for this includes Fiona McTaggart a well known anti. IMO this is unlikely though not impossible to get anywhere near being passed into law before the next election. However, Harridan got her very cobbled together coercion law through in the dying days of the Brown government.
IF such a law was passed no doubt there just being such a law would scare some punters off punting as the risk as they see it would be too high. To actually enforce a law would be costly and manpower intensive when we are talking about catching punters punting off/street with Indies. The police prostitution lead Armitt has recently stated he doesnt see a problem with what consenting adults do off/street, so whether such a law would be enforced we would have to wait and see.
Clearly brothels would be very easy to raid and nick punters in, but brothels are wholly illegal at present but still allowed to operate dependent on the attitude of the top cops in any given area. The street scene is wholly illegal but still goes on all over the country. So its one thing passing a law, it can be quite another getting the police to enforce it.
This is someting to keep a close eye on but no need to panic, i did that in 2009 when Harridan was using made up figures of 4000 trafficked for sex women to help get her law through. Hopefully this time unproven figures will be challenged and subject to scrutiny. Facts wise we have Operations Pentameters 1 and 2 to go on which didnt find trafficking for sex was a major problem despite the police specifically looking for victims. The problem is who will challenge made up and/or incorrect/unproven figures. Its not an election winning issue, many non punters/WGs read the crap some of the media spout and are too lazy or not interested in delving deeper to discover the truth, that some to many WGs choose to become WGs of their own free will, some others choose to work for pimps. Some, no one knows how many are forced to be WGs.
So the antis always have an advantage as many WGs and punters dont wish to put their heads above the paraphet whereas the antis are only too happy to be seen publicly saying how disgusting prostitution is.
What i do believe is if Harridan gets back in and in a top job so will do all she can to criminalise punters, for her its a crusade. Watch this space.