ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

Dear Newsnight

The great virtue of liberalism is its independent spirit which I think is a great selling point for the Party,

re the Conservative move to highlight the treatment of wounded servicemen and women, I believe strongly they should receive PREFERENTIAL not equal health care to the rest of us,

perhaps you might be able to include a question along these lines for the various Party spokespeople?

best wishes
Bob

Story idea
Does Labour really fear a Boris win?

what would that mean
to London
to the next election

sorry having fun tonight

While knowing your enemy and learning from history while obsessing with the quirks of a criminal pychopath is very unhealthy,

I guess if you know what paper someone(s) read you can influence them by nobbling the News Editor?

best wishes
Bob

Dear Newsnight,

I notice the article about some gay porn being taken out of sale because of their depiction of unsafe sex - i quite support safe sex issues.

However i would like to ask why no hetrosexual films were taken off shelf - is it not commonly known that unprotected sex whether gay or straight is dangerous and can of course spread diseases like HIV and lots of others.

So surely the aims should be to remove all films of such a nature and to concentrate on the hetrosexual film market first as it is obvious condoms don't exist in the hetrosexual porn market.

However once again the gay community is tarred with the HIV brush, percentage wise i can easily assume more gays wear condoms during sex then straights do.

Most gay bars and clubs all give out free condoms where as straight bars and clubs charge a lot for them - lets address the real issue - Straights still see it as a gay disease and not a non-sexuality disease.

As Straight porn is more than 60% bareback lets get that off the shelf first - then go for the minor percentage films.

I would echo the comments made by Paul Newbury (6). Clearly those who produce gay porn must take the greatest duty of care possible to those who perform in them - but I hope Newsnight reflects dangers which straight porn actors are exposed to. This, far larger, part of the industry is too easy to overlook, with an assumption of HIV being a "gay disease".

A good Newsnight, thanks to Ian Paisley, who would have thunderously admonished Peter Barron for threatening the gay porn story. Quite what the significance or news value of this story is, I cannot fathom. The EU constitution referendum, lib dems flip flop and precision questioning by Jeremy Paxman, the US elections, Big Ian's contribution to political life are all good pieces. The only news story about porn that would be relevant to Newsnight would be a debate on whether this material should be sold at all in the UK, or at least restricted to known adult addicts.

I am beginning to worry about the priorities and indeed the integrity of Newsnight. The big news from around the world in the past few days has been in South America and Israel/Palestine. Rather than focus on this, we yet again see half the programme devoted to the US primaries and when the results roll in, we'll be treated to some more tomorrow I don't doubt. This once cutting edge programme is turning into News 24 avec Paxman, such is the weak editorial line which has been adopted.

It's a shame that Madeleine Holt's piece on bareback gay porn did not make it into tonight's programme.

In response to posts 6 and 7, I think the two issues over the films that were withdrawn were that one almost certainly portrays the moment at which individuals became HIV infected, which may be a breach of the actors' human rights; and the other shows gay sex involving an under-18 male, which it is against the law to distribute.

So it's not simply a question of unprotected sex being filmed, though unsafe anal sex does have a statistically higher risk of HIV trasmission than unsafe vaginal sex. What's more, many young gay men only learn about anal sex from porn, because even now gay sex is not well covered in school sex education.

I am very anti-censorship but would support any proposal to withhold distribution licences for bareback gay porn.

How on earth has Nick Clegg the cheek to turn on Labour reneging on an EU referendum when he is instructing his own Social Liberal Democrats to abstain, when they had made the same election pledge for a referendum on the new Constitution?

It is true the new Treaty is not exactly the same as the Constitution, it has 16 more competences, or should we call them powers to control moved from our elected Parliament to the unelected EU

How on earth has Nick Clegg the cheek to turn on Labour reneging on an EU referendum when he is instructing his own Social Liberal Democrats to abstain, when they had made the same election pledge for a referendum on the new Constitution?

It is true the new Treaty is not exactly the same as the Constitution, it has 16 more competences, or should we call them powers to control moved from our elected Parliament to the unelected EU

That rather lofty message 8 by Liam suggests that he'd like to return to the bad old days of censorship when there would be no danger of porn assailing his delicate nostrils. What is certainly needed in the current climate of HIV ignorance or heedlessness is an open and sensible debate about the issue of barebacking, now widespread in the porn industry – a perfectly legitimate subject for Newsnight treatment.

Hi,

I have been involved with Steve Brewer in drawing up the suggested code of practice for the Gay Porn Industry in the UK, which I'm sure will feature in tonight's report.

I just wanted to say that while this initiative seeks to work with all parts of the industry (Including those producing bareback), there are many producers (Myself included) who use condoms (and will always do so) not just to protect the health of our models but also to send out the right signal to the wider gay community.

Currently the gay community seems to have an increasing problem with recreational drug use and the relaxation in attitudes to safe sex, which comes from the drop in mortality rates from HIV, since the great advances in combination therapy.

This is especially true amongst you adults. ICRA (Family Online Safety Institute) which helps to label and filter website quotes a stat that a large percentage of hits on porn sites come from young adults (Or in fact alarmingly people in their teens)

Although producers of porn are generally derided, within the gay community, porn between 1990 and the early 2000's was almost completely with condom, and played arguably quite a large part in promoting safe sexual practices, in a community that liked to party hard. Before the rise of "Queer Cinema" and the now more common portrayals of gay characters in soap opera's etc, it was one of the first mediums to show gay men in a non derogatory light.

I am not in this post arguing for censorship...so much as a wish that the industry itself could turn back the clock three years. to a time when using condoms was an unwritten rule for 90% of it.

The change has happened largely (With the exception of Boyz Magazine) without comment or discussion within the wider gay community (or indeed within the gay porn industry itself). Surely such a discussion must be a good thing

Spelling glitch...for "you adults" read "young adults"

It is strange to watch the LibDems commit political suicide in this way. They are right about two things: there should not be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty - and this should have warranted a 'no' vote today, not some bizarre intellectual game resulting in a 3-line-whip abstention at the very last moment - but there should, however, be one on whether the UK is to remain a member of the EU - and yes, even the Conservatives are too scared of its out-come to call one.. (and no, I'm not a member of the Libs....)

Rejecting the Lisbon Treaty because one doesn't understand it is nonsensical - particularly as the vast majority of people in this fine land of ours haven't bothered, in 35 years of membership, to even attempt to understand how 'The EU' works or indeed what its decision-making procedures are - and whether they are as detrimental to its people as some want to make us believe.

Without the reforms of the Lisbon Treaty, 'The EU' is just going to be another expensive talking shop; it'll even make UN decision-making look efficient (and that's only got 5 members with veto powers!). Yet there are crucial issues that can only be resolved on a European level: from regulating financial markets, to policing and intelligence, to competition and trade, to coordinated development policies, to regional grants for Europe's poorest areas... It is not so much "our powers being signed away", as our powers being insufficient to deal with these issues: there is no point in regulating financial markets on a national basis, there is no point in complaining about immigration from poorer areas if one doesn't put in the efforts to develop those, there is very little point in individual trade agreements with the US, China &co as, on our own, we are irrelevant to such economic giants....

These are pressing issues, which if subject to individual national vetoes of 27 states will take far to long, if ever, to be decided upon. The two EU institutions responsible for approving these directives both consist of elected representatives: members of the European Parliament, directly elected by citizens of EU countries, and the European Council, consisting of representatives of national governments, which, last I looked, are also elected. Both can and should be held to account for their decisions - but this should be done on a case-by-case basis (like the Euro or enlargement) and NOT on an a priori refusal of a decision-making system simply because 'foreign powers' play a role.