Keira Knightley 'ad' is banned

Bit of a debate going on over whether an 'ad' (if you can call it that) about domestic violence, featuring Keira Knightley, should be shown on TV. The censors said it was too violent, but what's the point of showing a sanitised version? It's meant to be shocking. And that's what I told the Independent. You can see the whole, uncut version, on YouTube.

Someone needs to explain what went wrong and why

Seeing as I have been taken to task on here for supposedly not taking rape seriously enough (which was wrong, but...), let's talk about the cab driver just convicted of a series of assaults and almost certainly responsible for many more (100 say the serious papers, as many as 500 say the tabloids). In my opinion there should be as much of a public outcry over this as there was over the Baby P case. His victims have been let done by the authorities - in this case, the police - clearly not doing their job properly. The guy had a very distinctive modus operandi, which should have made it easy to link the cases and, indeed, to track him down. I suspect if he'd concentrated on picking up women from railway stations on their way home from work, the police would have been onto it a lot quicker, but when it's drunken women making their way home from a night out, that old 'contributory negligence' rears its ugly head again.

And on this, I stand by the point I was making in my 'what is a women's issue?' post, about how we can't just deal with 'women's issues' within a women-only silo. The debate about rape should be taken to the men, discussed amongst young lads at school (after all, the majority of rapes are not 'stranger rapes' by deranged serial rapists), along with other issues such as domestic violence, unplanned pregnancies, and generally, treating women with respect. This message needs to be reinforced by male role models. And taken up by male politicians. Men are, it's a fact, more likely to listen when it's men doing the talking. I'd like to see Gordon intervening on this, not just leaving it to Jacqui and Harriet and Vera. And how about Cameron asking him about it at PMQs this week?