Yikes! susanna Reid on the bbc this morning.

That's a pretty short skirt for the time of year...

Dammit, I was too busy watching repeats of American sitcoms.

Frasier?

Listening to Jeremy Vine on radio 2. They're discussing peodophilia. If a man lusts after a 12/13 year old girl it's considered a bad thing but it's legal marrying age in some countries so does that make them a country of peodophiles?

Its all down to perspectives and acceptable standards in a given community.

Falling under the same category IMHO are

1) Arranged marriages.
2) Forced Female circumcision
3) The right to have an abortion and the guidelines there of.
4) Enforced religion / religious law.

et al

There isn't one right or wrong across the globe and depending on your point of view you shouldn't try to enforce your or your countries beliefs / laws on others.


Sorry but its a regular hobby horse of mine.

No, I've left for work when that starts now, they keep changing the order of them, it's quite annoying.

I've long since thought about this. We vilify people like Savile, but what happens if the law changes next year and reduces the age of consent to, say, 10 years? Would we continue to vilify him? Would he be pardoned? Or would we leave things alone and say he was vilified because it was illegal at the time? What about those on the sex offenders register or in prison? Would the latter just be released?

What if a couple are married somewhere where they are legally recognised as a wedded couple but both are under 16 years, and they move to this country? Would they still be recognised as in a marriage? What if one of the couple was above 18 years of age? Let's say a 25 year old man married a 12 year old girl in a country where it was legal, and they moved here? Could they continue the relationship under current law or would they be banned?

I completely agree we have our laws but surely they're meant to be a reflection of society's beliefs? If everyone thought it was okay to use cocaine, would it suddenly became legalised? Or just decriminalised?

I'm glad its not just me then

Wasn't that long ago cocaine was in coca cola and Queen Victoria was reported to have used it.

No, because law changes aren't applied retrospectively. If something was a crime when you did it then a crime was committed which incurs a sentence which you still have to serve. That doesn't change if the law is later changed, although I suspect it would mean a parole hearing afterwards would be likely to succeed. But you are still only eligible for parole after half your sentence has been served.

It works both ways - if you did something a year ago which is made illegal today, they can't prosecute you for it. They can only prosecute you if you do it again tomorrow.


No, because such a marriage would not be considered legal in the UK, since neither party would be considered legally able to have given consent. They would both be considered minors and their marital status would be irrelevant. As to whether they could have sex, well, it's technically illegal for them to do so but we all know there's plenty of sex going on when both parties are underage which is pretty much never prosecuted.


I suspect such a couple would really struggle to get a visa. The authorities would much rather tell them both to sod off than have to deal with that particular legal puzzle.
In my opinion however, the precedent is that marital state of whatever form does not allow for things which are otherwise illegal to happen. Someone can be charged with the rape of their spouse, so I see no reason why someone who had sex with a minor, even on they were in some jurisdictions married to, couldn't be charged with child abuse. Whether they would be or not... I think you'd need some significant evidence to get the CPS to go near that one.


What should happen is eventually a political party would realise that legalising cocaine was an issue the public wanted dealt with and put it in their general election manifesto. They would then see if they got a majority and if they did they could then implement a change in the law, or at least in what class of drug cocaine was considered to be. In reality there would probably be so much noise from the conservative press that this kind of thing would never happen.

Compare also slavery. It's fairly recent that it went from a "good and proper" thing, to being outlawed across the planet.

It's a big world, but it's getting smaller every day.

Cocaine was freely available in victorian times. Chemists used to keep it for sale.

Yup and its a huge problem that somebody is going to have to resolve some how.

No just wait a while and it will be a little problem. Shrinking worlds have that effect.