The Liberal Democrats have selected a porn director to stand for a Parliamentary seat and party leader Nick Clegg has defended the decision saying she would be a passionate campaigner for her local area.
“She’s not done anything illegal”, said Mr Clegg when asked his view on somebody involved in pornography representing his party.
“I think all the indications are that she’s going to be a really, really strong voice for that local area”, he added.
Explicit
Anna Arrowsmith, a 38-year-old managing director of Easy on the Eye Productions has made more than 300 explicit films under the pseudonym Anna Span.
Mr Clegg, speaking on GMTV today, said Mrs Arrowsmith’s previous profession was “not exactly my cup of tea”, but she was certainly no “cardboard cut-out Westminster politician”.
Mr Clegg was speaking ahead of the Lib Dems’ spring conference, which begins in Birmingham tonight.
Pleasant
Mrs Arrowsmith, who lives near Tunbridge Wells with her husband Tim, is the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Gravesham in Kent. She was the only Lib Dem candidate presented to the constituency for selection.
A member of the Gravesham Liberal Democrat constituency office told The Times newspaper “we are all very pleased with her. She is a very pleasant person. What she does for a living is not an obstacle as far as we are concerned”.
Ann Widdecombe, the Tory MP for Maidstone and the Weald, who is standing down at the next election, blasted the decision.
Inappropriate
She said: “It is entirely inappropriate that someone involved in that sort of business should be a candidate, but it is up to the Liberal Democrats. Ultimately, it is up to the electorate to pass judgment.”
Mrs Arrowsmith, commenting on her Twitter webpage, wrote: “From porn to Parliament, here I come!”
Mrs Arrowsmith claims to have entered the pornography industry twelve years ago with the aim of making it more “female friendly”.
A spokesman for the Liberal Democrats said: “We are proud to have candidates throughout the country with a great diversity of backgrounds and life experiences.”
Sexualisation
There have been a spate of recent stories regretting the ‘pornification’ of boys and the sexualisation of girls.
Research has revealed that boys who watch porn are more likely to be violent towards girls and treat girls like sex objects.
A recent Home Office commissioned report stated: “The evidence gathered in the review suggests a clear link between consumption of sexualised images, a tendency to view women as objects and the acceptance of aggressive attitudes and behaviour as the norm.
“Both the images we consume and the way we consume them are lending credence to the idea that women are there to be used and that men are there to use them.”
The author of the report, Dr Papadopoulos, warned that exposure to porn was having an adverse effect on the lives of today’s teenagers.
She said: “My research has left me extremely concerned. A recent survey showed that 54 per cent of boys found porn ‘really inspiring’ in terms of sexual performance. This worries me, because of the nature of the material they are now watching.”