The Spectator - October 20, 2018

Vir t uous vice

The rise of ethical decadence

COSMO LANDESMAN

I

t hasn’t always been easy being a pro-

gressive-minded man who prides himself

on his sensitivity to issues of race, gen-

der, feminism and sexual exploitation — and

still gets to walk on the wild side. Political

principles tend to get in the way of politi-

cally incorrect passions. You like to watch

porn, but as a good feminist man you know

that porn exploits women. You like to take

cocaine, but it exploits poor Latin American

farmers and enriches corrupt drug cartels.

And maybe you have a secret passion for

prostitutes, but you hate the idea that you’re

paying for sex with some underage Albanian

who’s been trafficked for your gratification.

No porn. No drugs. No sex. What’s a poor

would-be decadent to do? Take up golf?

Knitting? Stamp collecting?

Nowadays, though, you can indulge your

more dissolute pleasures and still occupy the

moral high ground. Welcome to the era of

ethical decadence, where yesterday’s shame-

ful vices are repackaged and promoted as

today’s politically correct virtues. A good

example of ethical decadence is the grow-

ing market for what is called vegan bondage.

Vegan devotees of S&M can now purchase a

wide range of ‘cruelty free’ and ‘ecological-

ly aware’ equipment: whips, handcuffs, neck

chokers, gags and harnesses — and they’re

all made without leather. After all, there’s

nothing worse than having to stop mid-flog-

ging to ask, ‘Is this whip suitable for vegans?’

The British sex industry is also getting

a moral makeover, to allow it to cater to a

new type of politically aware consumer who

wants sex to be not only erotic but also ethi-

cal. Belinda Brooks-Gordon of Birkbeck,

University of London, and the author of The

Price of Sex: Prostitution, Policy and Society

argues that there is a big demand for this.

Consumers, she believes, would prefer to

know that the people appearing in porn films,

engaged in live sex acts or hired through an

escort agency are there by consent, earn

decent money and have access to health and

welfare services. I’m sure she’s right, because

that way you can totally exploit women and

do it with a clear conscience.

These ethical concerns help to explain

why the number of lap-dancing clubs, sex

shops and sex cinemas in the UK has fall-

en by a third over the past five years. Who

needs the embarrassment of going into an

old-fashioned sex shop full of sleazy, sweaty

No porn. No sex. No drugs.

What’s a poor would-be decadent

to d o – t ak e up knitt ing?

Twists and turns

Jeremy Hunt, taking a group of EU foreign
ministers around the maze at Chevening
House in Kent, likened it to Brexit.
It is not surprising if he finds the maze
at Chevening difficult, because it was
deliberately designed by the 2nd Earl
of Stanhope, a mathematician, to be a
greater challenge than garden mazes which
preceded it. Most at the time had a simple
rule: if you kept your hand on one hedge
you would eventually reach the centre. This
was known as a ‘simply connected’ maze.
Chevening, however, was one of the first
‘multiply connected’ mazes, which don’t
have a simple rule to find the centre.

Procreating royals

The Duchess of Sussex is expecting a baby
‘next spring’. How long does it take a royal
couple to produce a child after the wedding?
Prince Charles and Diana,
Princess of Wales 11 months
Prince Harry and the
Duchess of Sussex 10-12 months?
Prince Andrew and
Sarah Ferguson 2 years 1 month
Prince William and the
Duchess of Cambridge 2 years 3 months
Princess Royal and
Captain Mark Phillips 4 years 0 months
Prince Edward and the
Countess of Wessex 4 years 5 months

Carbon data

How is the UK getting on with reducing
its carbon emissions? There are two ways
to measure a country’s CO 2 emissions
— ‘territorial’ basis, which includes only
those emissions within the country itself,
and ‘consumption’ basis, which includes
emissions spewed out around the globe
in the cause of manufacturing goods and
providing services for that country’s people.
measurements in metric tons co 2
Territorial Consumption
Basis basis
1995 560 654
2005 564 727
2015 416 596
So territorial emissions have fallen by 25%
in 25 years but consumption emissions by
only 9%. Source: globalatlas.com

Falling FTSE

The FTSE100 fell by more than 10%, which
is generally regarded as a ‘correction’. How
does that compare with other ones recently?
Dec 1999–March 2003 -49.6%
Oct 2007–March 2009 -47.5%
April 2010–June 2010 -16.1%
Feb 2011–Sept 2011 -16.7%
March 2012–May 2012 -11.8%
April 2015-Feb 2016 -21.9%

BAROMETER