Age Of Consent: Let's Not Talk About Sex

BRITAIN’s leading expert on public health has proposed that the age of consent for sex could be lowered to 15.

Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, wants a national debate because he claims society is sending confused signals about when sex is permitted.

Up to a third of teenagers have sex before they reach 16, the legal age of consent, according to official figures.

Ashton said that if the legal age for sex was lowered to 15 it would “draw a line in the sand” against sex at 14 or even younger.

It would also make it easier for 15-year-olds in a sexual relationship to seek contraception and sexual health advice from the NHS...

The Sunday Times' big story soon went huge.

David Cameron entered the debate later this morning...

End of!

Edwina Currie: How You - The Gays - Were Saved By Me Me ME!

In what can only be described as a last-minute ultimatum, gay news websites run by gay Tories were yesterday given an ultimatum to run endless stories about how wonderful the Tories are, and how they started everything gay since the birth of buggery, basically.

Writing exclusively for Gay Tory News, Edwina Currie, an openly gay icon who is openly a gay icon cause we say she is - writes about How I Changed The World For The Better For The Gays Once And For All.

By 'eck, loves, pull up an Eccles cake and grab a pew.
Eeee! I'm ever so brassy me, and I'm not just putting this on.
Now I'm just an ordinary plain-speaking Scouse Liverbird, but let me tell you all about how I single-handedly changed the world.
That's right, love, between salmonella and Strictly Come Dancing, I had another career - saving the gays!
You're probably too young to remember, but there was no attempt at gay law reform before yours truly came along* - that's right, old modesty Muggins 'ere.

It was different, then, in many ways... my parliamentary colleagues seemed determined to prove their manliness by sporting a host of illicit lady friends and hidden offspring; this was the first winter of “Back to Basics”, when the Tory government began its messy slide into the sleaze which would sink it..."

Luckily, unlike me and John Major, no-one knew this about us, til I wrote about how we were secretly fucking in the first volume of my racy best-selling memoirs (still available in paperback).
Then one day it all came to me, like a splash across the face.
Dammit! I will change the world forever for the gays! 
"But we've been tirelessly working and campaigning towards this for decades?!" some silly old loony lefty said to me.
And getting nowhere fast!
If you want something doing - and want to take all the credit like Tories always do - I say, pop your head over the parapet at the last moment and do it your Eddie Currie self!

"Nobody could point the finger at me, hinting that I wanted the change because I hankered after pubescent boys."

I hope none of you lovely gay boys - who I made legal over 18 by the billy-oh way - think that last line's offensive, what with me inferring you're all a bit Jimmy Savile and that - but I speak as I find.
Like someone from a bad sketch who's trying to sound Northern, pet. 

Anyway, once I'd got behind this gay buggery business, it was made law.
Quick as "I thank you" and all was right as the bloody northern rain. 
Sure, some old fuddy-duddy fogeys in the Conservative Party said it couldn't be done - but that's what they said just before I freed Nelson Mandela.
So next... how to honour me?
I know, little old modest me!

Stonewall called a rally in Trafalgar Square. That was a new one on me, rubbing shoulders with Vanessa Redgrave and Dawn French. The sun shone, the rainbow-coloured balloons soared up over London. “What do I do?” I hissed to Labour MP Tony Banks. “You get up there and make a short speech,” he answered, surprised. “Never done this before -” I explained, as he helped me onto the plinth of Nelson’s column. “ 

By 'eck, I thought.
What happened to you, Edwina Currie?
A humble Lancashire lass - who liked nothing better than shouting at people about how great I am - now they've only gone and dedicated the last plinth on Trafalgar bloomin' Square after me!

• Quotes in bold from yesterday's article in Pink News, How I changed the age of consent a world away from equal marriage, by Edwina Currie. An "exclusive" piece ripped off one of her memoirs.

* Edwina writes; "Nigel Lord-Fauntleroy from LGBTory tells me someone on Twitter tried to pull me up on this "fact" late last Saturday night.
"Okay, maybe "technically" some other politicians who weren't mad self-aggrandising Tories did a bit of stuff first. 
"But "Fagburn", Nigel thought no-one would pull him up on boring parliamentary detail so he could just tweet any old nonsense and get "liked".
"And in your angry drunken hastily-sent twittering, you got Lord Arran's shoe-size wrong, so more fool you!
"Apologise!"

Editor's note: Right after you apologise for all the ways the Tories have endlessly fucked gay people and everyone else in this country over in the last century or so. 
So: In conclusion, in fine detail, and in the grand sweep of history you've always found yourself on the wrong side of - Fuck off.

Update: This tweet just in...

Michael Gove: Friend As Foe

The Observer profiles education secretary, Michael Gove today.
Of course what profiler could resist mentioning that Gove once shacked up with two notorious homosexuals?
"He attacked homophobia long before that became mainstream Tory thinking and flat-shared for a while with [Nicholas] Boles, whom Gove met while playing a priest in a film directed by a mutual friend, an early glimpse of the unexpected cultural hinterland he still cultivates, and the financier Ivan Massow, both openly gay."
And yes, Mr Gove has been very good on the gay stuff - here is an item on Gay Pride and gay rights for Newsnight back in 1993, back when we were still battling Section 28 and an unequal age of consent - policies his party doggedly adhered to.
Here he rails against homophobia in The Times in 2003.
I could have chosen many other examples.
And, since you're wondering, although Michael Gove is not the world's most masculine man, I get the feeling he's not gay (and he is married) and would have come out if he was.
This week Michael Gove's government released a white paper, The Importance Of Teaching.
It has been criticised as "a hotch potch" combining plans to create an elite of independent schools with populist nonsense like bringing in soldiers to teach.
But it did stress the importance of tackling anti-gay bullying.
Michael Gove said;
"Homophobic bullying is on the rise in our schools, and homophobic terms are increasingly used towards gay students and straight students in a way that seeks to undermine the tolerance that we have built up over the past 15 years. We therefore need to work with organisations such as Stonewall and the Anti-Bullying Alliance, and to shine the light on schools such as St George’s Church of England school, which has done a fantastic job in tackling homophobic bullying. This requires work not only by school leaders but by political leaders and all of society to tackle a growing prejudice that is scarring our tolerant society.”
This is a new paradox for progressives; that someone like Mr Gove can be so supportive of lesbians and gay men, and yet otherwise be such a right-wing shitbag.
Truly, we live in strange and mysterious times.