Apparently, more than a third of Britons support draconian government censorship a plan to block porn.
Wow! More than a third, eh? Sound like a lot of folk really are happy to have hmg decide what an adult may view on his or her laptop. Well, not necessarily, cobber:
The survey, which polled 2,000 UK adults…
Okay, read no further; it’s statistically insignificant bollocks on stilts. More than a third of 2,000 people surveyed does not, by any stretch of the imagination (and by god are they stretching it), equal more than a third of adults. Not even close. Makes a good headline, though.
This is the eternal dilemma facing libertarians. On the one hand, no one supports repression, oppression, banning and I’m in that camp.
On the other hand, there is Bruce Charlton:
That was no religious fanatic speaking but a medical man with a long and distinguished career.
In the light of that, combined with the substance of the next post after this, there is an argument about minimum standards of public decency, without which, generally agreed by the people, we descend to the bestial.
It’s a total fantasy to think that a society with no mores whatever can survive. Read the book Lord of the Flies and you see clearly how things descended there and have, in history, always descended to the bestial when a society loses its moral compass.
A perfect example is the cult on Vanuatu of the elders raping the children and it was a system. Who – even among libertarians – would support that done to children? The libertarian has sometimes to step back and think of the word “consequences”.
Blasphemy is one of those things that we could well do with getting rid of in its entirety. Blasphemy applies only to those who believe. Those who do not, should not be bound by it – unless we should all be prosecuted for eating bacon sarnies or drawing cartoons of a medieval warlord? If you belong to the club, you agree to be bound by its rules – including its version of morality. If not, then those rules do not and should not apply. I do not, for example, accept religious morality and refuse to be bound by it. Nor am I disgusted by deliberate blasphemy as I am indifferent to the belief system itself (at best, regarding it as faintly absurd), equally I am indifferent to sexual tastes that are different from mine. I take a live and let live approach, regarding it as none of mine and society’s business to either get involved or to regulate.
As for porn, what adults look at is their business and no one else’s. It does not mean a decline into moral degradation. Bruce’s is not a view of the world I particularly want to be a part of as it is anti-liberty. He is clearly a conservative, whereas I am a liberal.
More than a third of 2,000 people surveyed does not, by any stretch of the imagination (and by god are they stretching it), equal more than a third of adults.
but, even if they were able to extrapolate that out to the general population, its still means that two thirds do NOT support it.
Quite.
Indeed. Odd how they didn’t use that as the headline isn’t it? Because that’s a pretty large majority against.
‘Pornography’: that which person 2 doesn’t like person 1 looking at.
If ‘pornography’ is defined as that ‘which tends to deprave & corrupt’, then by definition, the judge who’s seen it is not capable of passing an uncorrupted judgement.
Let’s hear it for heresy!
As an atheist who started out protestant.
After all, if we were properly intolerant of heresy we’d still be burning Lollards, wouldn’t we?
Oh, I’m all for heresy. The heretics are the free thinkers.
If done correctly, a sample of 2,000 people is appropriate to extrapolate to the general population. The problem is always the sampling process.
It might be appropriate. It is not necessarily accurate, though. As you say, what about the sampling process?
Government by survey? We who enjoy tobacco have been persecuted mercilessly (at our level) by the likes of ASH ET AL who claim that survey results ‘prove’ that ‘something must be done’. How many times have we heard “70% of adults agree……”? 500,000 people are against plain packaging against ASH’s 230,000 (if that), therefore “Nothing should be done” – according to their own logic.
But have we noticed that the demand for ‘something to be done’ has now moved to the position that even a minority is considered to be sufficient support?
What we see is the uselessness of surveys for any other purpose that having a guess at the first impressions of people. They are totally useless as an instrument of Government. Of course, if it is just a propaganda instrument that Government is looking for…………
I despise surveys and refuse to cooperate with those who conduct them. I have a policy – I never, ever respond to surveys.
If you’vd got time, it can be REAL FUN to respond.
I once wasted 25 minutes of some idiot’s time, because at thend of the (commercial) survey, it became apparent that I din’t have TV!
Great fun.
Mind you, if you think this is bad, try this total insanity:
link to publicsectorexecutive.com
I wonder which senior civil servant was BRIBED by either the road or airline lobbys to propose this assault on our limited freedoms?
Point of detail – the piece actually says:
“Thirty-seven per cent of UK adults would lend their support to the controversial plan for ISPs to actively block adult websites, forcing people to opt-in to access such sites”.
i.e. it says nothing about whether porn should be blocked, just that 37% think it should be ‘opt in’. And presumably 73% think it shouldn’t, or offered no opinion.