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Tim Fenton is worth followingDaily Mail[/i – bringing you the best pedo-lite coverage on the web.

Weren't the Nazi's, amongst others, very good at applying guilt by association ?

If that is the case then are we all guilty because since the first signs of life started we are descended from that.

What an absolute ridiculous typical right wing smear story.

I'm just amazed that there was a group of people who were brazen enough to openly campaign as paedophiles ....

I'm in my mid 40's and while I acknowledge that we have moved on with regard to political correctness and the like, I can't honestly believe that things were so backward during the time in which these allegations against Harman supposedly took place??

There was indeed such a group but the "softening up" of the pedophile legislation accusation that the Mail has pinned directly to Harmon relates to the ill thought out initial bill that would have meant that parents who took photographs of their own naked babies and young children (bath time scenes for instance) could in theory have been arrested, tried, convicted and put on the sex offenders list - thats the bit that Harmon and others were arguing against.

Given that The Mail have sexualised a photo of an eight year old in a bikini in the past I would have thought they'd be very much in favour of the lowering of the age of consent to ten years and so by implication would their slavering readership for without them the photos would not be purchased and included on their sidebar of shame.

And FFS – rightly so.



The Mail is a disgrace on this. It quite clearly trades on and profits from a pedo-lite approach to underage girls.

And to clarifyMail[/i online addresses and contact points. They ignore it – because they know they're bang to rights on it. But presumably, they also know that they make money from it and don;t want to change that.

There is a very good article behind the paywall in The Times today rlhttp://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/article4016187.ecerl about attitudes to sex and the legal battles against a loosening of "morals" by a very vocal minority, many of whom held positions of authority - it all culminated in the Oz trial of course, a copy of which was once brought into our all-boys Grammar School and passed around in great secrecy lest the Head spot it and burn both it and the lad caught with it in his possession, our head being a 1930s throw-back who still despised the fact that three years earlier he'd been banned from using his impressive collection of canes on miscreants.

It also mentions one of the most famous album covers of my generation, another publication that was carried around school in a brown paper bag lest the Head spot that too - the famous Blind Faith album of a topless young girl, to a 12 year old it was the sort of album that you wanted in your record collection but knew that your mother would never allow it across the threshold, never mind the fact that this was Blind Faith, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood etc, it had a naked young girl on the cover who had tits and everything, never has an album been more admired for its cover than its contents since.

The naked girl with breasts on show on the quite freely available album cover (in almost every record shop window in 1969) was 11 years old, no censorship ever applied.

No-one under the age of 40 years actually understands those times at all.

There were actually cases of people who had taken photographs of their children, naked, being taken to court, IIRC.

I do remember stories of staff in Boots calling the fuzz in in occasion,when they developed films containing pictures of people's children

And not far removed, I remember a case of a woman who had taken photographs at Pompeii and Boots refused to produce prints for her on the grounds that they were 'pornographic'.

The Blind Faith album cover is one that raises a myriad issues and questions, though, isn't it?

Can you imagine, in 2104, an 11 year old girl with pubescent breasts being allowed to be on an album cover?

If not, why not? Exploitation? What if she were paid half a million pounds into a trust fund to set her up for life?

Is it just wrong? I very much doubt that that one flies; but it is intriguing to examine it. Let's say you have never seen the cover. Should you be banned from doing so? This is a central question. You're not, of course; quite apart from it being on thousands of websites you can still buy the album, which is a classic.

My take on child nudity is that we all see nude children at times throughout our lives both in life and in images, and the emotional reaction could be anything. Obviously in those who are sexually attracted to children the reaction may be to lech but that seems no reason why non-perverts people should not look.

Personally I have the same opinion now as I had then, and that was a general feeling of unease about the image, based on the issue of child exploitation. Yes I know her parents would have agreed to it, but should they have, and was that relevant? I would say not. It is either exploitative or it isn't, and parental consent can't change that. Yes i have read what the album designer said about his work but I would bet the record company didn't share his artistic enlightenment, more likely they realised how much more prominent the inevitable controversy would make the album and thus increase sales (it went to US no.1 on the back of the cover cover-up).

I think from memory (sadly) it is incorrect the cover didn't cause a fuss, on the contrary there was a huge fuss, including as I recall Mary Whitehouse, and it was covered up in the US. I also seem to remember some big retailers refusing to stock it.

Just to clarify the story behind the cover, I read yesterday that the photographer was looking for a young girl to use as a subject and approached the girls 14 year old sister on a tube train to ask her first, later he changed his mind when he met the family and asked if the 11 year old would pose instead.

Its a remarkable story because you can imagine what a parent would say today if an adult photographer knocked on their door and asked if he could photograph their 14 year old daughter topless for an album cover that would be seen by, and sell millions of copies, only to then say "oh hang on, you didn't say you had a younger daughter..."

And yet it illustrates perfectly the naivety (was it naive, did they get paid a fee or a percentage, or did they get paid at all) of the times, no instant condemnation and report to the police on pedophile charges, but possibly a desire to be shown to be "progressive" parents and a kick in the teeth of the establishment who's attitudes were still stuck firmly in the 1950s.

And as for major retailers - I never used them Kennedys at the back of Leeds Markets were my record shop of choice and they had it in the front window

I could easily imagine a Lady Gaga rehash of the Blind Faith cover. All the media outcry would be worth tens of millions to her.

I think the Blind Faith cover is an absolutely terrible album cover. Don't have a clue what the photographer was trying to do with it, and I have no interest in whatever artistic BS he comes out with. It's a bad photograph, a terrible album cover and I can only think that it was used because of the controversy it would bring.

I don't think it's pornographic, but I do think the girls parents were either completely irresponsible or high on drugs when they gave permission. The cover doesn't offend me, but it does offend me if the cover was chosen just because of the controversy.

Anyone who bought the album because of the cover needs a very hard slap. I can imagine ever schoolkid going into record shops to look at it, but buying it? WTF?

The photographer in 2014 would be very lucky to get to meet the 14 year old's parents. If he dared do the same thing today, ask a 14 yo stranger on the tube would she mind posing in the nude, (assuming he did) the chances are he'd be spending a night in the cells and end up on the SOR. He must have had some patter not to get a smack in the mouth from the lass's dad!

The consensus is the fee paid was £40 (maybe £600 at today's rates)

She wanted a horse as payment, she got 40 quid.

Naivety of the parents??? I'm just not buying this crap at all. Unless you are so high on drugs that you don't even know you have a kid, a request to photograph your 11 year old daughter topless should always result in a punch in the face.

And the notion that the times were naive don't tally with the fact that the rumour about the girl was that she was a groupie kept by the band as a slave.