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Not for police to choose

Criminalising sex workers is something Wiltshire Police will not do, so says the police officer (who might be better described as social worker) who is charged with tackling sex exploitation in Swindon (SA 3 Jan). The problem for PC Kuklinski is that it is not in the gift of the police to determine what is a criminal offence, their job is to ‘uphold the law’ – something they promise to do “with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality... and faithfully according to law”.

Sex workers or prostitutes will be breaking the law if they attempt to solicit or wait for custom in a public place, including on streets, in alleyways or within discreet public areas. It is not in the gift of Wiltshire police to de-criminalise what the law states is a criminal act, and it might be said that in turning a blind eye to the criminal behaviour of the sex worker, particularly if such a decision is influenced by the paucity of the sanction of £100, the police are failing to act impartially or in accordance with the law.

PC Kuklinski also displays her less than impartial stance when she advises that officers “actively seek punters”, a pejorative term which reveals her personal prejudices, as I doubt she would ever refer to a sex worker as a ‘prostitute’ and certainly not as a ‘common prostitute’

Paying for sex is most certainly not a crime. The crime is kerb crawling as defined under Section 19 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 which introduced section 51A into the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and created a new offence for a person in a street or public place to solicit another for the purpose of obtaining a sexual service as a prostitute.

For those offences which are summary only (loitering and soliciting, kerb crawling, paying for sexual services and advertising prostitution) the police retain the discretion not to arrest or report to the CPS those suspected of committing an offence, or they can charge the offence without reference to a prosecutor, regardless of whether the suspect intends to plead guilty or not guilty.

Des Morgan, Caraway Drive, Swindon

Claims are untrue

IT is somewhat worrying to note that Milo Davison, a schoolboy at St John’s in Marlborough, has become concerned about global warming; worrying because I wonder what the school is teaching in regard to the world’s climate, which is one of the most complex, non-linear, chaotic systems known to man.

If it is relying on the kind of information pumped out by the likes of the BBC, then he stands no chance of learning the real truths. If he is worried about all the wildfires, storms, floods and droughts which have been prominently, and deliberately so, reported on this last year, then he really should have no fear as they are perfectly natural events that have occurred throughout history. They have neither got worse, nor have they become more frequent as we have been led to believe by the irresponsible media.

He has become a victim of politically driven propaganda. All claims that extreme weather events are due to man’s emissions of carbon dioxide are blatant fraud. Has the school taught him the role of this benign gas in nature - that it is a trace gas (at 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere) essential for all life on Earth?

My main reaction is that the school is delinquent on the subject of climate and is guilty of misrepresentation of the facts since it has probably affected the mental stability of at least one of its pupils who may now have trouble sleeping at night.

The very idea that “climate change” is a problem that is being caused by man and therefore can be solved by man is arrant nonsense.

It really is a perfectly natural process which we just have to live with.

On the other hand, I have no problem with reducing real pollution and dealing properly with waste.

Rowland Pantling, Broomcroft Road, Pewsey

Mistletoe magic

ON the Saturday morning before Christmas, we sold the mistletoe from the apple tree in our garden in the Market Cross in Malmesbury. Through the generosity of the good folk of Malmesbury, we have raised just short of £200 for Help for Heroes.

We would like to thank all those who kindly supported this excellent charity.

David & Jane Hide, Malmesbury