Capt. Cook, Tahiti and porn on the web

I'm reading a book called "Fatal Impact" which is about Capt. Cooks "discovery" of Tahiti and the South sea Isles way back in the late 1700s. The author tells us a lot about the attitudes the Tahitians have to pro- creation, to love making, or to what we in the west call sex. It appears that they were completely shameless in this area of humanity, at least that's the way it is reported in the journals that they brought back. Their huts had no walls to hide behind, and sometimes making love would take place in full view of the village, perhaps with the elders even instructing the younger boys and girls how to please their partner of the moment.

Then the other morning I heard a report on radio 4 about how the government want to clamp down on porn on the internet. The laudable reason being, to protect children from accessing these sites, either by design or accident.

Now porn is one thing and procreation is another but it just got me thinking.

Was it Adam and Eve with the fig leaves that got us all hung up about sex. When we invented god we also started down this slippery slope of repression that has ended up with depraved images being beamed down the wires to our browsers. The stuff that we're not supposed to want to see, but millions do, and others make millions from making the images and videos.

What was going on in those South sea islands that made them so innocent and shameless about sex. They didn't know about god, or Adam and Eve, so they just took sex as a normal thing that human beings did for pleasure, and for making babies.

So it just made me question the effect that inventing god, this imaginary friend, has had on the world. Perhaps if Capt. Cook had come back and proclaimed that he had discovered a race of people who had a much more realistic notion of how the world works then things might be different. Instead he came back talking of a race of savages, a race of people more like animals than human beings.

I think that perhaps he was wrong, well him and his shipmates, although I think some of his shipmates, who jumped ship, sussed it straight away and wanted to stay in paradise.

Had we grasped that truth back then, ditched god and original sin and had a Tahitian revolution, at least where sex was concerned we may not be now having a government trying to crack down on the ISPs and the porn industry cause there wouldn't be an industry to crack down on.

Maybe,  just saying.

The curious mystery of Union lane

A curious item appeared on the information only attached sheet with the council agenda this week. It is the sheet which lists the planning applications permissions and refusals. One of the items listed is entitled SL/11/0027  refers to land at Union Lane. Demolition of wall as part of a residential development. This list is of planning applications that have been granted.

The curious bit here, as pointed out by Cllr J. Jenkinson, was that this application was never brought before Ulverston town council, but has seemingly been granted by SLDC.

This would have been a very controversial  application had it come before UTC as it would affect the residents of Union lane who to a man oppose the development of a piece of land owned by the builders, Persimmion at the top of Union lane.

So it would seem that they have acquired a strip of land from the health centre which will enable them to widen Union lane to allow better access to the land they want to develop.

When they applied to develop this land some time back it was rejected because Union lane was too narrow to have such a large housing project in that area.

It would seem that they have quietly got hold of a strip of land and then managed to get SLDC planning dept to accept their application to move the wall, therefore widening Union lane. I suppose they will do this work, widen the lane and then re-apply to develop their plot of land.

The question is, how did they manage to get hold of this strip of land without anyone knowing about it, and how come this plan to demolish the wall and build a new one did not come before Ulverston town council.

An explanation from SLDC will make interesting reading.