Closed. The boat sank, the sharks won.

Well, not here anyway.

A man who downloaded child pornography to his computer has avoided jail after the home secretary asked judges to limit prison terms due to overcrowding.

What is happening here? The sentencing guidelines issued to courts say a custodial sentence should be the STARTING point for possession of images like this. But the polititians are worried about prison overcrowding. So he walks.

But the council says the ages of the children, the seriousness of the images and whether the pictures are for "personal" use can mitigate the sentence.

You know what? I don’t care! A child has been abused to create those images and this is the start of more abuse.

 

Maybe if the prisons had better rehabilitation programs, maybe if they had the right people in them in the first place then there’d be space. Maybe if we dealt with people breaking the law in a better way then there wouldn’t be overcrowding.  

*sigh* I’m just sitting here getting angry. Do feel free to start a comments discussion. 

I have an online business. I also have a Spreadshirt shop and an Amazon shop. Most of you will already know about these, as I neverr shut up about them.

I am currently trying to word the business ethics and policies for publishing on my site. It’s not up yet but effectively I want to take a stand here. I want to draw a line for my own little corner of the online trading world. I trade transparently, if you want to know what I’m doing and why you can find out or ask and I will happily tell you. I’ll tell you all about what I sell, where it comes from all the good stuff and the bad. I want my little business to cause as little harm as possible. Hence my new website host is one who takes a similar stand.

You agree not to use our servers or services to propagate content that contravenes any laws. Content must not be offensive, libelous, obscene, threatening, abusive, racist, likely to cause unrest, likely to incur civil liability or capable of being interpreted as any of the above. Ihelm Enterprises reserves the right to suspend any account that in its sole discretion contravenes any of the above and to terminate such account if the client fails within seven days to justify its content.

When I asked they said this would include any sites containing "Adult" material. They will also terminate the account of anyone found to be spamming.

So, Ethics Trading is stating clearly where the line is for me. No child labour, no sweatshops involved in our products as far as we know. I can’t go out and visit every facility, I have to take my suppliers at their word. Beyond that I try and source products that are easier on the environment and do not pollute or add to global warming and climate change. Further still, I want to be able to say that I don’t link with sites, suppliers or business partners who in turn have links with p0rn and the sex industry.

But I have an Amazon shop. Go to the Amazon UK home page, 2 clicks in - DVD>Adult. This is what you get.  I abandoned Cafe Press for similar content. Spreadshirt don’t seem to have that sort of product or brand as easily available. Anyway, Amazon. My gut is telling me to dump the shop on principle and draw the line in the sand.

Actually, having typed all that, it’s not a dilemma at all is it.  

Bye Bye Amazon shop……