I just read an article from Melbourne’s premier daily broadsheet which reports that Melbourne City Council has opted to cease hiring private investigators to patronise illegal brothels (and not in the sense of talking down to them inappropriately) for the purpose of busting said establishments.
It opened with the unforgettable line: “Melbourne City Council has decided to stop paying for sex.”
Curiously enough, the story now seems to have been taken down. But I swear I saw it.
UPDATE – Thinking about it, surely such a practice would be completely illegal. Patronising illegal brothels.. is illegal. I wonder if the whole piece was some kind of prank.
No hoax, local Councils in Sydney do the same…
The one liner reminds me though of an advertising campaign in Sydney when Virgin Mobile was launching. They had a large bill board placed just behind a local upmarket bordello which said
“Text messaging should be like sex, you shouldn’t have to pay for it”
That cheeky Richard Branson. How I hate him.
No hoax, local Councils in Sydney do the same…
Serious?? And here was me thinking government bodies were obliged to pretend they don’t wilfully break the law.
So precisely how illegal does a place have to be before they’ll baulk at doing this? One imagines ratepayers’ associations might have something to say about sending PIs to bang kidnapped seven-year-old Thai sex slaves on their dollar.
No hallucination, I read that as well.
Do I have to do all your work for you?
“That cheeky Richard Branson. How I hate him.”
How can you hate Richard Branson? Cheeky god damnit.
If I was going to do a billionaire, it’d almost certainly be him. 😛
Semi: Ta. That wasn’t it, though. The piece I saw was a followup to that one, and it’s definitely been canned.
Jo:
How can you hate Richard Branson?
Very easily. But don’t take it too personally (you know, on his behalf). Apparently I hate everyone and everything at the moment.
Except Nada & Adam, they’re my girls. And LJ, she’s okay I guess. And you of course, I don’t hate you. Or Semi. Or Robert Crumb; he’s cool.
If I was going to do a billionaire, it’d almost certainly be him. 😛
I’ve always thought of him as just another greedy business tycoon, if an exceptionally smug and narcissistic one. It was flying on his transatlantic airline that really soured me on him. You should try it sometime. Or not.
For all his smuggery I would have to concede that he’s probably one of the more charismatic living billionaires I can easily think of, though… so I guess I’d have to say the same.
This reminds me of the bit in True Romance when Christian Slater says to Patricia Arquette: “If I had to fuck a guy… you know, if you were holding a gun to my head and my life depended on it… I’d fuck Elvis.”
This analogy starred me as Christian Slater, you as Patricia Arquette, and Richard Branson as Elvis. No animals were harmed etc.