Ah yes, the age-old debate about censorship. This one has been running and running for years now and will never be settled overnight. However if you look back over the years, the censorship levels have gradually changed.

If I could wave a magic wand and change things overnight I'd relax the censorship laws a lot. As a grown adult (although some might disagree!) I think I should be able to decide what I can and cannot watch, be it sexual, violent or bad language. I'm not from the school of thought that says that watching violence makes us act violent or watching porn films will make us want to go out and rape someone. If people are going to do these sorts of things it's not because of watching something on TV or reading something in a book. People do these things because they've got violent tendencies or because they have sexual urges which they cannot control.

The other main reason for relaxing the censorship laws is because of the Internet. These days it's very simple to go onto the net and download hardcore porn or find movie files of really violent real stuff, never mind film violence. So if I can watch some really hardcore porn on the net without needing any sort of age verification why can't I go into a shop with proof of how old I am and purchase the same sort of material.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not completely against censorship. We do need censorship to protect children from things which they are not ready for. The PG, 12, 15 and 18 ratings are needed but I don't agree with cutting material to get it a lower rating. For example if a film is released in the cinema as an 18 uncut then please don't cut it to receive a 15 rating for the video release. A great example of this was in season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In one episode there was a headbutt and someone was shown hotwiring a car. Both the scenes were cut when the episode was shown on TV and released on video. Now, let's look
at the show. Most episodes, everyone's favourite slayer is stabbing someone in the heart with a wooden stake and yet when someone headbutts someone the BBFC deem fit to cut it out. Why? Do they think it'll encourage kids to go around headbutting people? That argument doesn't hold water as I'm sure kids will be just as likely to copy the staking as headbutting. Also last week Zinedine Zidane was sent off in a Champions League match for headbutting someone. Millions of people would have seen this before the watershed, including children who try to emulate their footballing heroes.

Come on BBFC and any other organisations involved in censorship in this country. Start to use a bit of common sense when implementing the censorship laws.