Politics   Dateline: 18th December, 2000

Blair Condemns Gratuitous Sexual Imagery



  Tony Blair
Tony Blair speaking to some old people yesterday

UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, yesterday launched a blistering attack on the gratuitous use of sexual imagery in the media.

"It's getting so that you can't even cross the street without having enormous women's breasts forced into your face, and semi-naked men thrust down your throat," he complained to an audience of old people in Brighton.

Woman in bikini  
Blair condemned gratuitous sexual images, such as this
   
Woman in bikini  
and this  

Mr Blair was particularly scathing of the Internet, where, he said, gratuitous sexual images, ranging from the titillating to the down-right pornographic, have become the norm.

"What on earth has gone wrong with the world?" he asked, clearly upset. "When I was an adolescent, the best you could hope to see in a newspaper or magazine was a bit of leg or a hint of cleavage. Nowadays, young lads have got nipples and bare buttocks coming out of their ears. It's not right, I tell you."

Mr Andrew Jenkins of the Campaign for Unrestricted Nudity on Television claimed that the Prime Minister was losing touch:

  Woman on beach
and this

"The Prime Minister is losing touch," he said. "What the public wants is more nudity in the media, not less. My advice to Mr Blair is to leave it to market forces: supply and demand, and all that. His time would be far better spent worrying about what the bloody French will be up to next, rather than trying to pander to the so-called moral majority."