Brown’s Britain: In Chains (but not in a kinky sense of course)

As best I can tell the newspapers have largely ignored the characteristically appalling Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that’s currently making its way through parliament. This BBC article is the only mainstream piece I – or rather Google News – can find that talks about its pornography clauses.

Thanks god for Steven Poole then, who explains the terrible thinking (to dignify the coherence and intelligence of the government’s position) behind the creation of yet more victimless “crimes” here:

The British government, net exporter of liberty, is going to make it a criminal offence, punishable by a prison term of five years, to have in one’s possession an image or video of adults consensually engaging in a non-criminal act.

The whole thing is depressing, even it it does bolster one’s conviction that we are governed by nitwits.