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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13818
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Now that is interesting. They say that tilting the earth's axis of rotation has a greater effect on the cimate than any amount of greenhouse gas.
We may now blame the Scots for global warming
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Haggis for England all year round (20 March 2006)
Supermarket giant Sainsbury's is stocking shelves in some of its English stores with haggis all year round.
The trial in 300 stores was launched after customers said they wanted to be able to buy Scotland's national dish 52 weeks of the year.
The supermarket chain said it wanted to make haggis south of the border more available than just on special occasions such as Burns Night.
The product is being provided by Perthshire butcher Simon Howie.
Mr Howie put the success of the once seasonal Scottish delicacy down to a combination of high-quality meat and the innovative approach taken by his young chefs.
"We've seen a tenfold growth in haggis sales in four years," he said.
"That's a tribute to the flair and imagination of our team which has turned a once traditional, seasonal product into the basis of a whole range of tasty, adaptable meals.
"New style packaging and consumer-friendly detail have all contributed to the impressive achievements of our excellent products."
Guy Hooper, from Sainsbury's, added "Customers have told us that they want to be given the opportunity to buy haggis 52 weeks a year - and responding to their requests we are now trialling its sales in 300 stores across the UK."
BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4826236.stm
And for comic relief:
Tourists dream of hunting haggis (26 November 2003)
A third of US tourists who were quizzed about their trip to Scotland said they believed the haggis was a creature.
The survey also revealed that almost a quarter of those questioned thought that they could hunt and catch the country's most famous dish.
A thousand people considering a trip to Scotland were questioned about why they wanted to visit and what they expected to see.
One in three of those polled said they believed haggis was a creature and one tourist believed it came out at night and looked like grouse.
Another said the apparently fox-like animal preferred cities.
Haggis maker Hall's, of Broxburn, in West Lothian, teamed up with a US tourism website to question 1,000 Americans about their holidays.
Anna Finlay, of Hall's, said: "It's amazing in this day and age that the myth of the haggis roaming the glens continues to resonate with overseas visitors.
"In a way it is a fantastic compliment for Scotland's most famous dish that it has achieved this level of notoriety.
"However, instead of hunting haggis we'd encourage tourists to attend haggis tastings or order the dish in one of the country's fine restaurants."
The recipe for haggis varies but it can be made using a sheep's stomach bag which holds a mix of sheep's liver, heart and lung, oatmeal, suet, stock, onions and spices.
It has not been known to make a dash for freedom when coming under the knife.
BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3240190.stm
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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As regards the dangers of publicising BDSM, I don't want to re-open the discussion, but I would just like to make clear that my objections were not based upon aversion to the concept (though I AM averse to it!) but upon concern that it might lead young people to experiment. The teenage years, in which most people discover sex, are very much a period of experimentation, but BDSM is, in my view, an experiment too far and should be avoided by all except those who already have a fascination for the concept.
Anyway, enough of that! The Spanner case is actually quite interesting. The defendants were obviously well advised to plead guilty in the High Court, since the 1882 bare-knuckle prizefighting case of Regina V. Coney was itself a High Court case, and thus set a precedent which the trial judge was obliged to follow.
The appeals could have been upheld in either the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords, but in order to do so it would have been necessary to distinguish the Spanner case from Regina v. Coney, or to hold that the earlier case had been wrongly decided. Neither option was easy, and on the evidence the final decision was not too surprising.
What WAS surprising was Lord Templeman's 'outburst' as quoted in the Wikipedia extract. Lord Templeman, throughout his judicial career, was renowned for his lucid (and often humorous) judgements in complex cases, and was on the liberal and modernising wing of the judiciary. It wasn't necessary to offer a moral justification in support of his verdict, which could be (and was) justified on a basis of pure legal argument. He obviously felt particularly strongly about BDSM, but the 'outburst' was out of character.
The real villains of the piece were the police, who could have exercised discretion bus chose not to do so. Once they launched a criminal prosecution the eventual result, though not inevitable, was to say the least highly probable. One can only assume that having spent so much effort and money on Operation Spanner, they were determined to have their pound of flesh.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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We were going to secure Scottish domination and save the world - all in one fell swoop!
Lord Sainsbury (real name Hamish Angus Campbell McTavish Sainsbury) was going to distribute haggis spiked with addictive ingredients, and we already had plans for a similar roll-out in North America, India and Australasia. Then, once the majority of the world's population were hooked, supplies would be withdrawn and would be available only from Scottish supermarkets. The consequent influx of addicts would be sufficient to skew the Earth's axis of rotation, and we calculated that this would lead to a reduction in global warming sufficient to counterbalance the increase in greenhouse gases. The immense carbon dioxide emissions from our enormous haggis factories would no longer be environmentally damaging, and by careful control of the haggis supply we could achieve world domination and make whisky drinking compulsory for all. Damn! Damn! Damn! Back to the drawing board again!
As if that wasn't bad enough, your revelations about haggis-hunting could seriously damage our economy. In the years since our scientists created the perfect robot haggis (a creature similar to a sheep, but wearing a tartan bonnet and having its left legs shorter than its right legs, so that it constantly runs around mountains in an anti-clockwise direction) we have earned £50bn a year from US tourists wishing to enjoy a haggis hunt. Indeed, in 2005 no less than 24,000 haggis-hunters booked visits through our Rednecksville, Tennessee office alone.
Any further revelations will be treated as a declaration of war between our respective nations. So there!
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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Cossie,
>my objections were not based upon aversion to the concept (though I AM averse to it!) but upon concern that it might lead young people to experiment.
On Friday for an assessment I had to write an essay summarising the problems with Elizabeth Newson's report "Video Violence and the Protection of Children" which was a highly controversial article that came out shortly after the Bulger murders -- essentially calling for the complete censorship of violent videos as they obviously had caused Jamie Bulger's killers to kill him.
If you're interested in that sort of thing, then I'd recommend you read Martin Barker's response to it -- "The Newson Report: A Case Study in 'Common Sense'" (1997) -- which is pretty damning of that sort of hysteria ("Won't anyone think of the children?!"). I know it's got absolutely nothing to do with sado-masochism, but among others, it does make a couple of useful points:
i. There's very little evidence that anyone will respond in a violent way to onscreen violence except where they already have a psychological predisposition to do so (in fact, most people react highly negatively to it)
ii. that most studies that test subjects' reaction to violence are biased to find a particular hypothesis, or they test completely different subjects or variables, so they can't by any means be "added together" to reach any sort of conclusion whatsoever
There were plenty of other conclusions, but those are the ones most pertinent to this subject.
I know that murderous violence and sado-masochistic violence are completely different things -- and Cossie, like you, dislike the latter almost as much as I dislike the former -- but I mention it because it's on my mind, and it makes some interesting points, and if you're interested in the subject you could look it up.
David
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I said,
>that most studies that test subjects' reaction to violence are biased to find a particular hypothesis
For "find" read "test".
Just to clarify, I don't mean that they are deliberately biasing their research (though they may be), but that people who cite their work try and retrospectively tailor them to give an answer to a hypothesis that was not being tested in the first place.
The word "find" in that context is a bit misleading -- I'm not sure how it crept in there.
Bravo to anyone who has any idea what I am talking about!
Deeej
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... but my point of view does focus precisely on the difference between violence and sexual gratification. The inherent danger, as I see it, is that someone with a predisposed attraction to inflicting pain (which may or may not involve sexual elements) may entrap someone who is merely exploring the sexual possibilities of Masochism. The combination could be fatal. Hence my aversion to 'advertising' BDSM. I realise that the internet will supply information about anything, but - in our own little niche - I think that we should set out our stall to discourage suffering or infliction of pain.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13818
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cossie wrote:
> ... Hence my aversion to 'advertising' BDSM. I realise that the internet will supply information about anything, but - in our own little niche - I think that we should set out our stall to discourage suffering or infliction of pain.
One needs to remember that BDSM is not, in the main, about the infliction of pain. It is instead about the ability to appear to relinquish control to another person. And the appearance is taken, with role playing "engaged" to be as genuine as the person who relinquishes control desires. Except in highly specialised activities, in which I include anything beyond a light spanking, pain per se is avoided.
In fact much of the BDSM "scene" is role play with surprisingly little "action". It is far more B and D and less S or M
However, if you read Grasshopper's "Dreamchasers" you will see clearly and yet by implication what can befall the unwary. Reading the other tale shows you what may well befall the wary and willing. There are other tales, not here, that show the more unpleasant side of life.
I understand your aversion. Equally we have people who come here who may need an open discussion about it. To close a subject before it starts is unwise.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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Yes, I agree that the majority of devotees of Bondage and Domination are indulging in role-play for their mutual satisfaction, and that in such cases the activity is pretty well harmless, at least in the physical sense. I was, however, focussing on the 'S&M' wing, and by definition Sadism involves infliction of pain (Concise Oxford: 'Form of sexual perversion marked by love of cruelty; deriving of pleasure from inflicting or watching cruelty'), and Masochism involves the desire to experience pain or humiliation (C.O.: 'Form of (esp. sexual) perversion in which a person derives pleasure from his own pain or humiliation').
The 'Spanner' case which prompted this sub-thread was of course concerned with fairly heavy S&M activity. My only justification for arguing against advertisement of the whole BDSM spectrum is that in general people come to S&M by way of B&D. Despite my personal aversion, I am not suggesting for a moment that those who are so inclined should be prohibited from following their inclinations. Whilst I accept the legal validity (and almost inevitability) of the House of Lords decision in the 'Spanner' case, I do not think the case should have been brought; all of the participants were consenting adults and none had suffered any lasting harm.
Deeej observed that research suggests that watching violence on film or television is unlikely to provoke violence by the watcher unless he or she is already violent by nature, but he rightly pointed out that these findings were not necessarily valid in relation to BDSM. I would suggest that they are quite definitely invalid. There is a pretty profound difference between the two concepts, but even taking a simplistic view the social mores of the population at large clearly indicate that violence is wrong. I accept that the same is probably true for BDSM, but the topic does not surface with sufficient frequency to ram the message home. As I have already said, my concern is with young people at the age of sexual experimentation. So far as they are concerned, sexual activity itself is probably frowned upon, and BDSM seems little different - if indeed it seems different at all. However, there are some very nasty spiders out there, and I believe that we have an obligation to protect potential flies.
You'll appreciate that I am not arguing against experimentation by those who feel driven to that field of activity; what I do argue against is 'advertising' BDSM in any way which implies that it's an OK thing to do. Advertising DOES influence people to try what they might not otherwise try, whether it be BDSM or a new kind of soap-powder. I suppose that my view can be summed up by likening BDSM to hard-core pornography in pre-internet days - I have no wish to suppress it, but it should be kept on the top shelf or under the counter.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13818
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The dictionary definition of sadism, to me, does not refer to what one might call "recreational sadism". Now I know this is an awkward distinction, but the true sadists are, generally, those whose unpleasant appetotes know no moral or intellectual bounds.
Oddly in R v Brown the participants, while indulging in things that would make most people recoil and run away, were recreational sadists. Their unusual practices were part of a game and role play. Compare that with the allegations agains Family Hussein in Iraq and you start to define the difference.
It is OK to indulge in recreational aspects of body sensation exploration, wholly OK. But equally it must be with informed consent. There is no difference in a very real sense between "needing pain" and "Being gay or heterosexual". One could easily argue that needing to give or inflict pain is a sexual orientation. I am sure as many will agree as disagree with this after thought, since hat is not, at first, apparent.
What is not OK in any sense is the forcing of any practice upon a person who is unwilling to receive it. This is true in any part of life, from diet through exercise to sexual habits and practices.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... that, as in many other fields, the dictionary definition is the logical starting point. 'Sadism', as a noun, derives from the Marquis de Sade, and, as in his case, it necessarily involves a sexual element. If the enjoyment in inflicting pain is not sexual, it is not really sadism, but deviant, cruel or evil behaviour.
That apart, I don't disagree with you at all, except on the point of 'advertising' BDSM - but I realise that we are unlikely to agree and I think it would be sensible to regard the discussion as closed.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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