Small P and Large P Politics and the F Word

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It has been a while, but I'm back. This is the first half of a post I promised for a friend and it is a long one. The plan is to discuss various legal approaches to sex work/prostitution that are practiced in different countries. This first half focuses on models that attempt to eradicate prostitution through prohibition or abolition. In the coming week the second half will look at models of decriminalization and legalization. That states consistently address the complex social situations that underlie the sex trade through the legal system is particularly problematic, but it is to legal models that governments turn when they attempt to control sex work and address any associated harms. This is significant because the consequences of the laws required by each model and their interpretation and implementation impact on how the trade is plied and the well-being of those who participate in the trade. In the first day of the committee hearings, July 7, 2014, Francoise Boivin (ND...

As elections go Monday night was rather exciting not because of some very tight races, but because of the growing hysteria fueled by the on-air media coverage about the tabulation. “Glitches” with the tabulation machinery, “missing” data chips/cards (actually in transit to the central returning office), no one at Elections New Brunswick returning calls, and having to wing-it when you run out of relevant things to say, increased to an on-air panic rife with throw-back comments (“we won’t say this, but oh we are saying it”) about the 2000 U.S. election and Florida. This all peaked between midnight and one in the morning when an on-air personality grilling the head of Elections New Brunswick suggested this was all because some local returning officers had gone home for the night with the data chips and was also part of a conspiracy foisted on New Brunswick by a Toronto computer company that were suspiciously not answering their phones. It seemed lost on this personality that maybe...