Looking for Sex Shops in the UK?
If you are looking for sex shops online in the UK, then why not visit the sex shops department of the The UK Shopping Centre. First launched in 1995, this online shopping portal remains on of the most popular and established online shopping malls in the UK offering a very comprehensive range of online shopping across the UK.
Free condoms for 12-year-olds urged
Free condoms should be handed to children — possibly as young as 12 — in sports halls, shops and swimming baths, Government advisers suggested yesterday. They also called for five-year-olds to have compulsory "relationship lessons" to drive down the number of pregnant youngsters.
The Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy, which provides advice to ministers and monitors Government strategy, does not specify the age group that should receive the condoms.
But condoms should be "easily accessible to young people" and "new and creative approaches of getting condoms into the community would be the next logical step", it says.
Robert Whelan, of the Civitas think-tank, was scathing in his criticism.
"Up until now we have always taken a dim view about people who go to swimming baths to talk to little boys about sex. Now it seems to be Government policy. This is not progress."
Other critics said that the Government's teenage pregnancy strategy — based on education and the availability of contraceptives — had clearly failed, with rates of sexually transmitted infections among teenagers remaining high.
Gill Frances, of the National Children's Bureau, who leads the independent advisory group, said: "No sensible person would give a small child a condom." However, she added: "We are not specifying an age."
Asked whether the plan could include 12- or 13-year-olds, she said: "If a young person is having sex, he or she needs advice or support."
She envisaged a youth advisory service within a sports facility, town hall or a school issuing the condoms. The panel's report says that longer-lasting contraceptives, such as injections and implants, should also be widely available.
The youngest primary school children should be taught about "relationships and friendships". By 10, pupils should know about menstruation, physical changes in puberty, and correct names for reproductive organs. Detailed discussion of sex would be compulsory for children of 11 and over and there should be lessons on abortion.
Sit down. Boot up. Smash fellow pupil with baseball bat
The new computer game from the makers of Grand Theft Auto has provoked calls for a ban even before its release. But is it really all that bad?
Schoolboy Jimmy Hopkins survives on his wits and with his fists. He lives in fear of the tough, relentless bullies who set on him in the gym and chase him round the town wielding baseball bats and dustbin lids. He spends his chemistry lessons learning how to make firecrackers to use as weapons to defend himself. And the teachers are a vindictive, corrupt bunch of creeps who hang about in sex shops and force him to steal girls' underwear from their dorms.
Welcome to another ordinary day at Bullworth Academy in New England - the latest boarding school Jimmy has been moved to by his five-times-married mother after being kicked out of all his others. It may sound like just another hard-knock teenage story - except that neither Jimmy nor Bullworth Academy exist as anything other than a collection of ones and zeroes. Jimmy is the central character in a videogame called Bully, due to be released in the US on October 16. In one of the strangest innovations yet in home entertainment, it offers the prospect of teenagers trying to unwind after their day at school by following a virtual character's traumatic progress through academia on their PlayStation 2s.
Predictably, not everyone is amused by the game. Anti-bullying campaigners are demanding that it be banned in the UK. Rockstar Vancouver, the developer behind it, has tried to soften the blow, announcing last Friday that it would rename it for the European market as Canis Canem Edit, after the fictional school's motto: dog eat dog. But otherwise, it is unrepentant. On the game's website, the mock prospectus welcomes new pupils with the promise that it will instil a "strong moral fibre". "Boys or girls, we will make men of them," it reads. "The world is an ugly place and we must prepare our youngsters, by any means necessary, by enabling them to rise to the top of the steaming cesspool of human endeavour." It appears particularly proud of its sporting achievements: "Your child will attain an aggressive zeal for crushing opponents without mercy."
It is not the first time Rockstar, which was set up by three New York-based Londoners in 1998, has found itself at the centre of a storm. Indeed, it thrives on notoriety and prides itself on its tradition of "tongue-in-cheek storytelling". Its relentlessly violent Grand Theft Auto series (the next instalment is due out late next year on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) is one of the biggest-selling franchises ever, with a total of around 35m units sold at £30-£40. Its content and style have caused widespread outrage: driving around a fictional city, the player is able to pick up prostitutes for sex and then murder them. Last year, Rockstar endured the so-called "hot coffee scandal", when a crudely executed sex mini-game was discovered in San Andreas, the most recent version of GTA. Campaigners including Hillary Clinton waded in with objections. San Andreas was recalled, altered and reclassified with a "mature" rating, and Rockstar downgraded its 2005 earnings by $40m.
So, it was no great surprise when Rockstar's May 2005 announcement that it was making Bully was met with immediate demands for it to be banned, based on little more evidence than the game's name. These came mainly, and understandably, from anti-bullying organisations alarmed at the scale of the problem. Childline announced this month that there had been a 12% rise in calls about bullying over the last year. It counsels over 3,000 young people a month on the problem, which accounts for 23% of all its calls. Last year, 1.3 million people turned to bullying.co.uk for help. The website received 8,400 emails asking for advice. Labour MP Keith Vaz has joined the calls for Bully to be blocked. He has form as an opponent of Rockstar. One of his Leicester East constituents, Stefan Pakeerah, 14, was murdered in 2004 by a 17-year-old friend who - according to the victim's parents - had become hooked on Rockstar's 18-rated Manhunt, in which players take on the role of a released convict under orders to carry out assassinations. Although the police did not link Manhunt to the killing in their evidence, Vaz has since repeatedly demanded a tightening of regulations on violent games.
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