h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Living in Manchester and knowing that road well, I can say there aren't many lorries on it.

However it is one of the busiest bus routes in Europe.

Three women have been "rescued" from a south London house as police investigate claims they were held as slaves for about 30 years.

Last month officers were contacted by Freedom Charity after it received a call from a woman saying she had been held against her will for decades.

A Malaysian woman, 69, an Irish woman, 57, and a British woman, 30, were rescued from the house on 25 October.

A 67-year-old man and woman were held in Lambeth and bailed until January.

... The 30-year-old had spent her whole life in captivity. Officers are trying to establish whether she was born in the house

Det Insp Kevin Hyland, from the Metropolitan Police's Human Trafficking Unit, said: "We have seen some cases when people have been held for 10 years, but we have never seen anything of this magnitude before."

He added that the women had controlled lives and spent most of it indoors, but they had some freedom.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-25040741

According to last night's Panorama http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24987465 the British Army, sent as a peacekeeping force to Northern Ireland, sent out a group of soldiers in plain clothes whose mission was apparently to aggravate the conflict, by committing crimes in the guise of partisans.

They were not only sanctioned but protected, with damning evidence withheld from the courts when the police caught them.

The vistas continue to become increasingly appalling. This is unbelievably sickening.

Well it would be if it were true. All of the allegations made in the programme have been on public record for over twenty years, have been investigated and found to be without substance. One of the "soldiers" claiming to be a part of this group is about to release a book - not that I'm suggesting he would welcome the extra publicity prior to his book launch, oh no.

Another story - http://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/news/local/dundee-man-admits-sex-in-public-charge-1.156899

A Dundee couple were caught having sex in public. Nothing unusual about that but I do wonder why only one half of the couple appears to have been prosecuted and put on the sex offender's register.

>> Well it would be if it were true. <<

Many a conspiracy theory is built on foundations that on closer inspection don't exist.

#15446. I don't understand why he would be put on "a / the" sex offenders list if he was having sex with a consenting adult. I would have thought he would be put on the list only if either a) he had sex with a minor or b) it was rape. As far as I can tell from the reporting it was neither a) or b).

I assume he could be charged with a public nuisance / disorder offence but then they should both be charged.

Can anyone explain - cheers

i think indecent exposure is classified a sexual crime

"If it were true" ... The court reporting seems well-founded. We'll see what more comes of this.

>> i think indecent exposure is classified a sexual crime <<

So that's the crime of purposely exposing ones genitalia to men (?), women and children in public - the so-called man in raincoat flashing his credentials to women. So "flashers" are also put on the "Sex" offenders register?

"Many a conspiracy theory is built on foundations that on closer inspection don't exist."

That's true, but when it comes to Northern Ireland, it's too easy to dismiss things as conspiracy theories. For example, it was a conspiracy theory that the security forces colluded with terrorists to murder a solicitor - until it was accepted that there were "shocking levels of State collusion" in the murder. That quote isn't from a Gerry Adams press statement, or an IRA propaganda sheet, it's from the Prime Minister's statement to the House of Commons. ( https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-minister-david-cameron-statement-on-patrick-finucane--2 )

Similarly it was a "conspiracy theory" to say that soldiers "put forward false accounts to seek to justify" opening fire on unarmed people on a protest march. But again, even the Prime Minister accepts the truth of that, now. ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10322295 )

In short, it was a dark time, and people often have trouble accepting that "our boys" are less than perfect. But saying "it's just made up to sell a book" is on a credibility level with Gerry Adams saying "I was never in the IRA".

>>So that's the crime of purposely exposing ones genitalia to men (?), women and children in public - the so-called man in raincoat flashing his credentials to women. So "flashers" are also put on the "Sex" offenders register?

that depends on the judge that prosecutes them but often yes

The report is a bit thin on detail and leaves a question or two. The wording of the report goes 'admitted engaging in sexual intercourse with a female in a public place', so I wonder if there is a specific charge that has no opposite charge - i.e, it is NOT illegal for a woman to have sexual intercourse with a man in public?. Law can be odd.

And this is Scottish law too - different to England and Wales. Here they would probably be charged with outraging public decency.

And it doesn't say that she is NOT facing charges. She may be being prosecuted separately and later.

I note that of passers by, “They both appeared to be shocked and one of them stopped to take a photo". Evidence?

PP.

I wondered if she was being prosecuted later but the problem is she can't now get a fair trial as she has been named in this trial where her would-be co-accused has been found guilty.

"I can't bear to look, get out of my way you're blocking my view."

Ed Milliband chose H2G2 as his book to take to the fictional island on radio 4's Desert Island Discs, but he said he thought it was a trilogy in "4 or 5 parts", which seems to suggest he is not a real fan, who of course would know the exact number.

I'd lay money that he was told to say that to jump on the current nerd/geek bandwagon from last night's Dr Who.

He wouldn't have been able to say Dr Who itself, because that would have been too obvious. So he's gone for a book by one of the Dr Who writers who just also happens to have a large following of normal* fans.



*Normal compared to politicians.

DNA wrote some episodes in the Tom Baker years. But knowing that is not at all nerdy.

PP.

DNA's best book remains 'h2g2, the radio scripts' (I contend).