AT THE end of one very long and sick-making report into the horrific Becky Watts killing, the hack who wrote it popped the inevitable question to a professor of sociology: was it possible that the killers’ obsession with porn had lead to Becky’s murder?

The inevitable answer was that: “It is not possible to say categorically if an obsession with sexual images had lead to Becky’s murder.”

So that’s all right then, everyone back on the porn bus. Because, like cannabis, the evidence of what this toxin does to society is all around us.

But we ignore it because we are either watching it ourselves, terrified of being thought a prude or - heaven forefend - invoking ‘censorship’. Censoring stuff is, for too many people in society, seen as an evil on par with racism.

And they appear to regard it as far worse than considering how much better the lives of millions of women and children would be, if people didn’t keep either making, downloading and viewing this filth and then trying to forcibly re-enact it.

Because that’s what happens. True, as the liberalists love to point out, there is not a lot of scientific evidence.

But the reason for that is very valid - if you conducted experiments with this kind of thing and just one person went out and committed a sexual crime for which they were arrested, they’d be able to sue the researchers.

So, conveniently for the apologists and all the scum who make their money this way, scientific proof will never materialise.

Nathan Matthews - who was Becky’s step-brother - watched porn every day. He developed a penchant for ‘petite young women’ and fantasised about kidnapping them and was joined in this fantasy by his evil partner, Shauna Hoare.

Evidence showed the couple were already thinking about abducting another young woman. If that idea had succeeded would she have been beaten, stabbed, suffocated, chopped up with a disc-saw and packed into suitcases, as Becky was?

Thank God we won’t have to know.

But what we should know is that watching porn everyday isn’t normal. It’s corrosive and dangerous and leads the watchers down a path where the best outcome is lowering of respect for women. And where the worst outcome is what we’ve heard in court these past three weeks.

Telling people that porn is OK - telling them there’s nothing to be ashamed of in watching women who are either being raped or pretending to be raped on screen, or being dressed up like schoolgirls is just a ‘harmless fantasy’ - and I’ve seen plenty of articles where this is implied - enables this kind of crime to be committed.

And if anyone really thinks this stuff had absolutely no effect on Matthews and Hoare deciding to act out their fantasies then they are definitely part of the problem.

AFTER being reduced to a quivering wreck most yuletides since they started broadcasting them, let me say that this year is different - the new John Lewis ad gets right on my nerves.

Never mind the logistics of the thing; when was it ever a good idea to show strange old men peering into little girls’ bedrooms with a telescope? It’s rubbish. Just bring back that toy penguin, OK?

  • IT WASN’T against the law to go on holiday to Sharm el Sheikh, last time I looked. And yes, some of the holidaymakers stranded there don’t seem to have quite grasped just why they have been grounded. But, given the carping on social media about their being huffed off with the airport and the wait, which must be horrible, I wonder if quite so much vitriol would have been heaped on them if they were waylaid in more-fashionable-with-the-liberal-elite Cuba or, say, the Guardian readers’ paradise of Tuscany?
     
  • AFTER being accused of trying to flog yet more letters written to him by Princes Diana, her former boyfriend, James Hewitt, says he will keep them ‘until I die’. Who knows what the truth is? I wouldn’t believe James Hewitt if he said his name was James Hewitt. But what I really want to know is who are the creepsome folk who want to buy this intimate, personal stuff; the private letters of a deeply troubled woman who had no privacy in life and precious little in death? More to the point, wouldn’t you like to know if you’re living next door to them?
     
  • The BBC is said to have ‘lost’ The Voice to ITV because they couldn’t afford to keep it. Good. Perhaps they can spend the money saved on more comedies involving Peter Kay and a few extra episodes of Poldark. Especially ones where he looks out of the window and sees that his pasture could do with a damn good scything! (Poldark, not Peter, obvs)
     
  • AFTER seeing her beam at son Brooklyn, as he not-at-all-cheesily presented her with an award, I’ve concluded that Posh really must smile more. For starters she looks younger and prettier. And it would hide the fact that her top lip now sticks out so far that you can see it coming round the corner before she does.