Melanie P

ed as ‘sex workers’, with a ‘human right’ to ply their trade no less than if they chose to be a bank clerk or a nurse.

Across the board of irregular behaviour — drugs, gambling, drinking — the government’s attitude has been to abandon attempts to reduce it and instead to make it easier to indulge, on the basis that it is not the behaviour itself but the attempt to stop it which is harmful. […]

Our culture is now a thoroughly utilitarian one, in which the only concern is not that any behaviour is inherently wrong and should be stopped but merely to minimise demonstrably harmful effects such as disease.

You wouldn’t think from reading this that part of the proposed government package is in fact to imprison those caught paying for sex:

Britain’s prostitution laws are to undergo their biggest overhaul for 50 years in a government review that could lead to tough jail terms for men who pay for sex.

Ministers are also looking to offer women an escape route out of street prostitution by creating toleration zones where prostitutes can be offered careers counselling and financial advice.

The proposals, to be unveiled by the Home Office later this summer, are expected to offer a “carrot and stick “approach to the regulation of the industry.

Under the current law, paying for sex is not illegal. Instead, prostitution is controlled by strict offences that prohibit associated acts such as kerb-crawling, soliciting, pimping and brothel-keeping.

One of the proposals is to follow the lead of Sweden where men can be imprisoned for up to six months if they are caught paying for sex.

But the focus of the Government’s review will be on helping women to escape prostitution by creating managed zones in Britain’s cities where they would be offered access to clinics for the treatment of sexual diseases and drug addiction.

Toleration zones, which have been unofficially tried in a number of British cities, including Manchester and Bolton, allow street sex workers to operate in strictly defined areas away from residential streets.

The Home Office review team has heard evidence in support of managed zones from senior police officers, magistrates, drugs advisers and groups representing sex workers in this country.

There are reasonable grounds for criticising this, mainly from those who dislike this kind of social engineering on the part of government, but I’m struggling to see it as part of the decline of Western civilisation as Phillips seems to. “Selling the body for sex no longer shocks…” It’s arguable, on the contrary, that prostitution is considered less acceptable now than it ever was in the past, and that this provides the motivation behind the government’s latest proposals. And that old hobby-horse of hers about drugs and drink: remember Prohibition? Organised crime has never looked back; and the War on Drugs is an equivalent disaster.

It’s not that I always disagree with her, but the relentless tone of going-to-the-dogs and moral decline is just unpleasant. This, from her previous Mail effort “D-Day for Defeatism”:

For what above all won the war for the allies was self-discipline, a willingness to sacrifice oneself for the common good. Today’s Britain, by contrast, is characterised by self-centredness and a breakdown of self-discipline. Sated by unprecedented material prosperity, this society has all but lost the concept of overcoming setbacks or hardship. It has lost its capacity for endurance.

Well, yes…there’s something I might agree with struggling to get out of that paragraph, but it’s phrased in such a shrill tone that it’s not worth bothering with.

Oh well, I’ll keep reading the Diary.