What is happening to our once great nation?

From Sky News:

People in the UK are drinking less alcohol, despite an increase in worldwide consumption.

Using World Health Organisation data researchers found UK consumption fell from 12.6 litres of pure alcohol a year per adult in 1990 to 11.4 litres in 2017.

The study, published in the Lancet, predicted the downward trend would continue, falling to 11 litres by 2030.

From the BBC:

British people are having less sex now than in recent years, according to a large national survey.

The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, suggest nearly a third of men and women have not had sex in the past month. That's up from around a quarter in 2001, according to the data from 34,000 people.

Less than half of men and women aged 16 to 44 have sex at least once a week, responses show. Over-25s and couples who are married or living together account for the biggest falls in sexual activity across the 21-year period.

From the ONS:

Main points
* There were 696,271 live births in England and Wales in 2016, a decrease of 0.2% from 2015.
* In 2016, the total fertility rate (TFR) decreased to 1.81 children per woman, from 1.82 in 2015.
* The average age of mothers in 2016 increased to 30.4 years, compared with 30.3 years in 2015.
* Women aged 40 and over had a higher fertility rate than women aged under 20 for the second time since 1947.
* Over a quarter (28.2%) of live births in 2016 were to mothers born outside the UK, the highest level on record.

(My mother was born abroad, as was my wife, and we have two children, so that last figure does not particularly bother me, here for the record only)

From The Guardian:

Nearly a million more young adults are living with their parents than was the case two decades ago, a study has found.

The figures, in a report by the right-leaning thinktank Civitas, will fuel concerns that too little is being done to protect young people from Britain’s housing crisis.

The proportion of people aged 20 to 34 who live with their parents has risen from 19.48% in 1997, equating to 2.4 million people, to 25.91% in 2017, equating to 3.4 million.

From Public Health England:

The adult smoking rate in England is continuing to decline year on year and is now at a record low. In 2017, 14.9% of people in England aged 18 years and above smoked, accounting for 6.1 million people.

If this trend continues it will reduce to between 8.5% and 11.7% by 2023. PHE is calling for the NHS long-term plan to commit to achieving a smokefree society by 2030 with an adult prevalence of 5% or less.

I'm sure that shifting taxes from production/consumption in the real economy to taxes on land values will help reverse these worrying trends, quite by how much remains to be seen...

Cattle! Sex! Cars!

Spotted by James Higham in The Daily Mail:

A car on the opposite side of the road slows for one of the meandering animals but the driver on the right believes his path is clear.

He steams down the road confidently but two bovine lovebirds pay no attention to the approaching vehicle. The brown cow gallops forth as a black bull mounts her from behind.

But the driver has minimal warning of the erotic encounter and only slams on the brakes at the last minute. He smashes straight into the cow with such force that she smacks straight into his windscreen with a loud bang, cracking the glass in several places.

She bounces back into the road, her body flung several feet away but she clambers up almost immediately. Amazingly she seems uninjured and trots off to the other side of the road.

The male too follows her, somewhat sheepishly one imagines, before the man gets out of the car to inspect the damage. Whether the duo's coitus resumed following the accident is not known.

Trying for a baby

In the context of nothing in particular, it struck me recently that 'trying for a baby' is actually quite weird when you are doing it.

At the risk of generalising, when you first start off, it is purely a pleasure/recreational thing and you both go to a lot of trouble to make sure that it doesn't result in a pregnancy. Males and females do this for a decade or so until they 'settle down and decide to start a family'.

Then for the first few years after you get married, the gloves are off, and all the habits and instincts that you have developed are overturned but initially it seems quite unnatural not to use contraception. You both know deep down that you are playing with powerful forces of nature - for good or bad - far beyond your control.

Then you have all the nerve wracking pregnancy stuff to go through*, two or three cute little babies** arrive until you both decide you've had enough of sleepless nights, dramatic loss of earnings etc, you struggle through the rushing around taking them to different child minders, nurseries - all at huge expense - and schools until it all settles down again.

Five or ten years into the marriage, that's enough kids thank you very much, and you go back to doing it purely for pleasure/recreational reasons, you start 'taking precautions' again, dreading the very thought of the thin blue line, the ingrained instincts kick in again and this seems perfectly natural and normal for the rest of your life.

* My heart goes out to couples who want to have babies but physically can't, that's not the issue here.

** For some reason, your own babies are much cuter than the average baby, everybody says that. Some sort of bias going on, I suspect.

Disclaimer: I've been married twice and my kids are aged between 12 and 26. I'm not doing that again and wouldn't want to. But I'm glad I did/glad to have it over with.

Fun Online Polls: Dead pigs & The Land Value Taxation Campaign

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Have you ever f***ed a dead pig?

Yes - 6%
No - 49%
I'm David Cameron and I couldn't possibly comment - 46%

I'm surprised that our Prime Minister has nothing better to do than vote 33 times, or 32 times if you exclude James Higham. But hey.
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This week's deadly serious poll:

Can you attend the LVT Campaign AGM in central London at 12 noon, Friday 2 October, sign up for £12 and vote in a new committee? Please?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Politicians, credit and dead pigs.

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How many politicians call for more bank lending while simultaneously wailing about the increase in debts?

Refreshingly few - 0%
Depressingly many 98%
Other, please specify - 2%

Correct.

By the way, people don't seem to have got the hang of this "Other, please specify" option; if you choose that, you have to leave a comment as well.
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This week, the one question on everybody's lips, or at least every dead pig's:

"Have you ever f***ed a dead pig?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Steamy Movie

From the Telegraph

A vintage railway operator has been branded "disgusting" after allowing a hardcore porn film to be shot on its historic train track. Parents have slammed the decision to allow American adult film company, Brazzers, to shoot a 28-minute film on the Epping Ongar Railway - a heritage railway in Essex.
...
Amanda Mendel, a mother-of-two from Ongar, Essex, said: "They advertise it as a family-based business but one minute it's Peppa Pig and Father Christmas and the next it's an orgy train. You can't stop businesses doing what they want but it doesn't seem right."

"It makes you wonder what went on in the train."

You're a mother of two and you wonder what went on?

"Soccer" Mardi Gras Thongs Pulled

From the BBC:

Lingerie giant Victoria Secrets is suspending the sale of Mardi Gras thongs after Brazil's authorities complained they soccerised the country's image.

One read "Shooting in the box?" next to a Brazillian striker; another printed a heart shaped like a soccer ball with the phrase "I love Footer".


Brazil's tourism board, Embratur, says it is vehemently against any products that link Brazil's image to football appeal. Victorias Secrets is one of Mardi Gras's main sponsors and its bikini provider.

Following the controversy, the company said it was withdrawing the thongs - a limited edition meant for sale in Austria.

"Victorias Secrets always pays close attention to the opinion of its consumers and partners," its statement read.

'Nobby Stiles'

"Therefore, it is announcing that these products will not be sold anymore."

Earlier on Tuesday, the country's tourism ministry had already criticised the products saying "any links between national festivals and images with soccer appeal" were against the country's official marketing policies.

"Such an attitude indirectly contributes to tourists thinking that we're a bunch of people with a nerdy obsession with football rather than a place with lots of beautiful women who are gagging for it".

Germany to ban "flat-rate" brothels

From The Telegraph:

Germany's biggest political parties have agreed to ban so-called flat-rate sex offered by some brothels in the country.

The move is part of a clampdown on Germany's booming prostitution industry that critics say has got out of hand since a 2002 law legalised sex work. They view as exploitative the special offers in some brothels where men can have unlimited sex for 100 euros ($136).

There's an old quote by George Carlin about prostitution: "Selling is Legal, Fucking is Legal, so why is it illegal to sell fucking?" I think the German variation here is: "Selling unlimited services is OK. Selling sex is OK. So, why is selling unlimited sex not OK?"

The thing with unlimited services is that they generally they play on how much people value people think they can get. People have an idea that they're getting one over on the business, but in reality, it's generally the other way around.

There's a restaurant near me that sells unlimited deserts as part of their 4 course menu. You can just keep on asking for deserts. So, people think "bargain". Reality is that most people get through desert one quite easily, get desert two, and half way through, they hit the wall. So, the restaurant attracts customers thinking they'll get lots of deserts, but actually, they get one more. A few might scoff down half a dozen, and the restaurant probably loses money on them, but they're so rare that overall profitability is hardly dented.

What I'd imagine is that a lot of men turn up, pay for the unlimited option, then after they've had sex once, are well, done. A lot of guys probably get dressed and leave. Some will hang around, but most won't.

Fun with numbers

From yesterday's Metro:

So, women have only had 7.7 sexual partners on average but men 11.7?

Surely in a population split roughly 50/50 for men and women, the average should be the same. Somebody's telling porkies, ladies.(1)

Junk, London.

From today's Metro:

Junk, have you not considered that men are overestimating their sexual conquests rather than ladies telling fibs?(2)

Roxanne, London

and…

Junk, I agree, women are just as promiscuous as men. I had friends at university with double digits of sexual partners.

However, I'm 32 and have only had two sexual partners.(3) The laws of average don't apply to the whole nation.(4)

Jo, Leicester.

1) I think that the mathematical average (mean) must be the same for both, but it is quite possible that the median values are 7.7 and 11.7.

2) Apparently women count it differently. If they have/had a partner (boyf or husband) with whom they have/had sex, that ticks both boxes "sexual" and "partner" so that counts. But a one-night stand is not a "partnership" so it doesn't count. Men miss this subtle distinction and count everybody.

3) Also, men boast and women are more modest/judgmental. As illustrated by this letter.

4) But the women is clearly an idiot anyway.

People say the funniest things!

... in response to surveys. The BBC is on schizophrenic top form today.

First the bad news:

"Shocking" sexual violence is being carried out by children against other children as young as 11, according to an official report...

Ms Berelowitz suggested that the music and pornographic industries have a great deal to answer for in creating such attitudes, with young girls being treated as commodities within gangs, passed around as sexual toys or used to ensnare rival gang members...

The inquiry found that 2,409 youngsters were known to be victims of child sexual exploitation by gangs and groups, while a further 16,500 were at risk.

It warned that the problem was prevalent in every area of England, and was not restricted just to low-income, inner-city neighbourhoods but "in every type of neighbourhood, rural, urban, deprived, not deprived".

And then the bad news:

Money worries and the distractions of social media mean people are having sex less frequently, researchers say.

A once-a-decade poll of 15,000 Britons found those aged 16-44 were having sex fewer than five times a month.

The figure compared with more than six times a month on the last two occasions when the official National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles was carried out, in 1990-91 and 1999-2001...

But the poll - the full details of which have been reported in the Lancet - also revealed the extent to which people are forced to have sex against their will. One in 10 women and one in 70 men said they had experienced it.

Fun Online Polls: Age of consent & JFK assassination cover-up

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

If it were up to you, what would the age of consent be?

None of the government's business - 24 votes
14 or younger - 4 votes
15 - 5 votes
16 - as at present - 40 votes
17 - 3 votes
18 or older - 11 votes
Depends on the age of the older partner and the age difference - 34 votes
Other, please specify - 2 votes

I perhaps didn't make it clear enough that you could choose more than one option, i.e. you could choose an age but then caveat it with "Depends on the age of the older partner and the age difference". Only about 8 people chose this a well (including me).

So there we have it. Broadly speaking people are happy with 16 and the fact that the law turns a blind eye when both partners are under-age. I suppose it's impossible for a government to get everything wrong.
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The whole JFK assassination thing and what happened afterwards, how it was explained always struck a lot of people, including me, as a little bit fishy. There was something not quite right about it.

Personally, I would dismiss all the rumours about the Russians/Communists organising it (they wouldn't dare; the backlash if they'd been found out would be unthinkable); about the military-industrial bloc doing it (JFK was firmly in their pockets and a massive warmonger); the FBO/CIA (ditto);the Mafia (ditto); the Teamsters, Freemasons etcetera etcetera.

But they showed a TV programme on Channel 5 this week which seemed perfectly plausible to me, they reckoned that a trigger happy secret service agent in the following vehicle shot him by mistake while swinging his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle into position. So there certainly wasn't a conspiracy in advance, just a massive cover-up afterwards by the secret service, because admitting that one of their men had shot the President by mistake would have been career suicide for his superiors and made the USA a worldwide laughing stock.

This is not a conspiracy theory, it is just a theory, and of course there are plenty of articles saying it is piffle, which it might well be, but usually on the basis of a lot less evidence than was presented in the programme itself.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

"Who shot the shot which blew JFK's brains out?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

The Age of Consent

I've pondered this question a bit. Here's Prof John Ashton's take on it:-

Leading public health expert Prof John Ashton has called for a national debate on lowering the age of consent, claiming society is sending out "confused" signals about when sex is permitted.

Prof Ashton said: "Countries that have a more open attitude towards teenage sexuality and in fact some of the countries that have lower ages of consent - the young people get involved in sex later and they also have much lower teenage pregnancy rates."

Before I get into what is a bit grey and about opinions, let's deal with some facts: The Netherlands has the same age of consent as the UK and much lower teenage pregnancies. Switzerland has the same age of consent as the UK and much lower teenage pregnancies.

And regarding having sex later, Austrians lose their virginity slightly earlier despite having a lower age of consent.

On the age thing, here's my take:

The age of consent isn't about telling young people when sex is permitted. You aren't going to stop a 15 year old from shagging his 15 year old girlfriend if she wants it. Something like 1/3rd of people lose their virginity before they're 16, so as a deterrent it clearly doesn't work.

What the age of consent is really about is stopping girls (and let's be honest, it's generally this way around) from being taken advantage of by older men who can easily impress them and are also far more experienced at seduction. You let them get to an age of emotional maturity, they're going to make a reasonable decision.

I'm not even sure that 16 is right or whether it should be 17. I remember going out with 16 year olds when I was that age, and that when I went out with 17 year olds they seemed to be considerably more mature, more likely to have cast off the age of listening to Duran Duran and Wham and listening to something more grown up.

We probably should also have something codified about the 17 year old who shags his 15 year old girlfriend that we really don't want to prosecute (and we don't now, but the law should be clearly stated).

Thoughts?

Attractive Adult Woman accuses Dead Adult Man of Trying it On, Breaking No Law

From the Daily Mail:

Amanda Holden has revealed how Jimmy Savile made lewd comments suggesting he wanted to 'give her one' when she was a teenager being treated in hospital.

The TV personality, 42, was just 19 when she met Savile at Leeds General Infirmary while she was being treated for a cut finger.

She told how the shamed Top Of The Pops presenter made a string of 'lame' jokes before offering to give her a gynaecological problem.

Ian B on Tim Worstall's blog comments is convinced that there's a campaign to raise the age of consent to 18, and it's journalists saying "just 19" that's part of that. You push the idea that 19 is a vulnerable age, and well, of course 17 is ridiculous.

But I have to wonder... when did we start infantilising young adults, and why?

When I was a lad, I had a shop job at 15. You now have to have staff CRB checked if you have such a staff member. I was learning to drive at 17, which various groups seem to want to change. We're going to have even more kids at school until they're 18, even though it's a waste of time. No-one took the drinking age too seriously - we certainly didn't have ID card schemes in pubs, which meant that 16 year olds got served.

Kinky Bureaucrats Joke

They're all really into S&M and bondage, aren't they?

They love tying each other up in red tape.

Picture from here.

T-shirt Fail

Things you didn't know you didn't know

From the BBC:

Germany's ruling coalition is calling for a ban on bestiality - or the practice of having sex with animals. The German parliament's agriculture committee is considering making it an offence not only to hurt an animal but also to force it into unnatural sex. Offenders could face a hefty fine.

A final vote will be held in the Bundestag (lower house) on 14 December. Germany legalised bestiality (zoophilia) in 1969, except when the animal suffered "significant harm"...

But Michael Kiok, the chairman of the pressure group Zoophile Engagement for Tolerance and Information (Zeta), said he was going to take legal action to fight the proposed changes.

"It is unthinkable that any sexual act with an animal is punished without proof that the animal has come to any harm," he said, adding that animals are capable of showing what they do, or do not, want to do. "We see animals as partners and not as a means of gratification. We don't force them to do anything. Animals are much easier to understand than women," Mr Kiok claimed.

Bestiality is banned in many European countries, including the Netherlands, France and Switzerland. The law was changed in the UK in 2003, which reduced the maximum sentence from life imprisonment to two years. The act however, is permissible in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, though Stockholm is considering a change in the legislation.

Woo hoo! "Animals are much easier to understand than women", how on earth can you prove or disprove a statement like that?