sadoldgit

For all of our American Saints supporting friends on here I apologise for the hard time given here. People do generalise and I am sure you are not all psychotic gun toting maniacs. It is hard to understand the obsession with guns that many of your countymen have. Growing up Charlton Heston was a hero of mine as he was in all of the epic movies at the time. That all ended when he delivered that speech about removing his gun from his cold dead hand (or something similar). Indians are no longer a threat and although someone mentioned bears, I have not seen any of those wandering down 5th Avenue or Rodeo Drive in my visits. You need to give up your own weapons of mass destruction before there is another massacre in a school or Mall.

Was taken to "supper" at the Savoy many moons ago and he was sitting on the next table. Creepy looking guy.

Yep, you are dead right. Many of their readers do continue to buy the paper despite rather than because of the boobs and that is why Page 3 has lasted so long. If Page 3 ever threatened to hit Murdoch's bottom line you can bet that it would have been ditched years ago. I am sure those that like the paper but don't agree with Page 3 just turn the page and ignore it which is a shame. Thing is if you want boobs there are far better products to look at whereas Heat is all about gossip. It is like, me like to look at a fit bird so we will chuck one in every day to keep them happy when they have finished reading about last night's match. It is just such an odd thing to add to a daily newspaper. The Sun likes to be known as a newspaper not a jazz mag so fine, stick to news, gossip, TV and sport and leave the sexual images to those who do it so much better than you and who sell on the back of sex.

Banning plays into the hands of those who the word wimmin and slag off political correctness. The issue is also wider then just Page 3. As has been mentioned, there is a far greater threat with the widespread access to porn on the internet. Despite the rights/wrongs of Page 3 it is dreadfully out of date now and you would like to think that those people forming policy at NI would take the view that they should be treating all of their readers with more respect in this day and age.

Hasn't Bruno got some ridiculous buy out clause?

foreskin

I don't think that there will be a shortage of work for attractive young woman who are prepared to take their clothes off.

They are all funny and engaging but I did hear one make a comment about her size (she is an and her lack of boobs. She is only 18. Her mother (my ex wife) has had quite a lot of plastic surgery (not that she needed it) and I just hope that hasn't sent the wrong message.

You are quite right. Clothes horses (models) are much thinner. "Glamour" models tend to have more meat on their bones round the boobs and hips and are all of a body type that you wouldn't call typical. Many "normal" women are pear shaped but you don't see that on Page 3. My wife was a size 8 when we met and is distraught that she is now a 12. She is not what you could call fat. Sophie Dahl broke the mould briefly as a larger sized model but from what I have seen of her more recently she seems to have lost weight and is more the size you would expect. The model shape and the Page 3 shape are not usual shapes for women but sadly many feel they need to look like that to be socially acceptable because that is what we are feed daily through some media.

Again I think banning is too strong. It should be an editorial decision based on the fact that Page 3 is outmoded in 2015. Whie Van Man and teenage boys can get their fill of boobs for nothing on the internet and TV. There are reasons that you don't get half naked women in The Guardian, Times, Telegraph, Independent, Mirror, Mail, Express etc. It is because they are sexual images and those images used to just appear in lads mags. It doesn't affect our freedom of speech (which in this case I assume goes along the lines as cor look at the baps on that). It just means that images appear where they are most appropriate. I believe a survey was carried out a while back amongst female readers of The Sun and the majority felt that Page 3 was inappropriate in a daily newspaper but most also didn't complain because they didn't want to be seen as killjoys as their menfolk told them it was all harmless fun (just as it is when women get hands up their skirts and their boobs grabbed every weekend in clubs up and down the country). If The Sun had a Page 5 with a ripped guy with his todger out each day then maybe there would be less of an issue - but just one gender and more than that only one type of that gender that is sexually attractive to most males in a family newspaper - hmmm - not sure how that works nowdays.

What I was trying to say in a hamfisted way was that by making girls different and special (by deliberetaly excluding them from our school) we saw them as something different. The guys in the mixed school may have fancied some of them, but they saw them as pupils at the same school rather than some alien species. By putting a certain type and age of woman each day in a newspaper makes them ( or the fact that they are displaying areas of sexual interest to men - and some women I suppose) different and special. They are rolled off a conveyor belt. All pretty much the same in body shape. They don't even bother with diversity by showing different ages and body types. Cards on the table. I have three teenage daughters. All smart. All pretty (no Bearsy - no rule 1 here!). They are also all flat chested and I don't want them thinking that they are not good enough to attract men unless they have a breast enlargement procedure (as their mother did).

So by making a big thing out of them (like going out of our way to put them in a newspaper every day) we are making them something special when 50% of the people have them ( well more if you include moobs). If they are not giving people a cheap thrill, why publish them in the first place?

I suppose Murdoch would argue it keeps his circulation up (oo-er).

Here you go again Jeff. You think that because you dealt with this okay then why cant others? Because they cant that is why. As I told you about my daughter. She had few friends at school and it was only when she lost weight (she was never overweight) to the point she was skin and bone did she start to get positive messages from some of her peers and became popular. Some kids have such a hard time of it at school they take their own lives. They are plenty of well adjusted people out there, there are also lots who find life unbearable because they cant deal with what they perceive is to be their wrong body image. It is much easier for blokes. When someone like Hugh Hefner can get the type of women he does even at 108 (or whatever age he is) it just goes to show how skewed and f**Ked up the world is. Bloke, if you are ugly and fat but super rich, no worries, sorted. Bernie Ecclestone. WTF? Look at his wife. But you don't see these rich powerful men with overweight munters on their arms do you?

I don't think we are saying that you cant show naked pictures of people. It is just is it appropriate to put these picture, every day, in a family newspaper. If it is so innocent why are people getting wound up about breast feeding in public. The pictures are there for sexual reasons and as we know, there is plenty of free access to nude pics without them being shoved in your face over breakfast.

Society. How decides if it is ok to be rascist or not? There are a lot of people that think that the objectification of women as sexual playthings is wrong. Not just "wimmin." As I said, I have no objection to women getting their kit off for the cameras. Some want to do it and there is clearly a market for it. My problem is where does that sit with a daily family newspaper. You may think it harmless but you need to listen to the victims of sexual assault of eating disorders. I am not saying these are all down to Page 3 but there is something about the way that woman are portrayed by the tabloids that doesn't make sense in 2015.

You are right that no one has called for the banning of Miley etc but as you also say she has come in for heavy criticism. Annie Lennox has been leading an argument about how pop videos are overly sexed up. No one is calling for a banning - just a use of common sense. There is a place for porn and it isn't on TV over the dinner table (ooer missus). Just as a pair of nice pert boobs isn't really appropriate over the cornflakes (ooer missus). Unfortunately not everyone is as well adjusted as you and there are people who use porn and then go out and act out what they have seen. Not just peados. There are people who feel that they are not sexually attractive because they don't look like one of the girls on Page 3 (and most women don't). We do not live in a well adjusted society and there are the Ched Evans of this world sadly who do believe that women are there for their self gratification. This has come through their upbrining and the messages they pick up growing up. I went to an all boys secondary school. If a girl walked past the school kids would be hanging out of the windows wolf whistling and cat calling. When we played the local mixed school at football again we would be showing off to the girls. The boys at that school didn't bat an eyelid because they were used to be around the girls all the time so they were nothing special. We saw them a sex objects because we were kept apart from them and anything in a skirt was something to be lusted after rather than treated as a normal human being. Probably not making my point well here but in a well adjusted society people should not be objectified and treated differently just because they have boobs and a vagina.

Ok I concede. If it helps people get a better understanding of world affairs lets keep the baps!

Not arguing with the readership figures but as you know, there is more to that when deciding where to place your advertising. Just because The Sun has more ABC1 readers does not mean that they would get an account that would only suit the readership profile of The Guardian or Independent. when I joined the Guardian the sales were around 230,000. After a few years and before The Indy came along we hit over 400k which for The Guardian was huge. One of our ad girls realised that the average age of the Telegraph readers was over the target age of their job ads and we cleaned up as we had a much younger readership profile. We had a number of really successful years on the back of that and the young lady concerned eventually became MD. As you say, The Guardian/Observer are owned by The Scott Trust and as such are the only truly independent newspaper in the UK. Whilst this means that it cant compete financially with the likes of News International it does mean that the editorial team don't have to worry about proprietorial interference. It was been over 15 years since I worked in the print and I appreciate much has changed in that time. I also worked in the Circulation Dept rather tah Advertsining so will have a different view to you. I was made redundant from The Guardian at a time when advertising started to go online. I don't know how they can afford to print a paper version any more as I think the sales have dropped back to around 200k. You will know better than I how much they make from their online edition but I know that over the last few years many of my ex colleagues have lost their jobs. I know you are a News International man ( I was in The Times pre Murdoch so I am not) but The Guardian and Observer have had a much tougher ride and have had to survive on their wits rather than being a part of a multi national corporation. For those here that sneer at The Guardian and The Observer, given that that are truly independent they should be valued for the service they provide, even if you don't like the content.

I don't think it should be banned. I just think, in 2015, it is high time that we move on from "Page 3", leave the boobs for the girlie mags and internet sites and treat newspapers as newspapers and not somewhere where you get a cheap thrill. We wouldn't tolerate Love Thy Neighbour on TV anymore as we are now a more enlightened culture apparently. Page 3 comes out of the same era and is just as dated. Rather than it being banned it would be nice in tabloid editors decided that topless girls no longer have a place in a daily newspaper.

It is worrying that so many people are being raped each year.

What have a pair of breasts got to do with the news anyway? We all know a half of the population have them, hardly a daily news story is it?

Missing the point mate.

No one is saying that woman cannot do what they want. No one is saying ban jazz mags. It is about what is appropriate and what is not. No one complains about topless woman on a beach - would it be appropriate in the local High Street though? It is not just The Sun either but Page 3 has became the name of boobs in tabloid newspapers.

My anoxeric daughter, when she was at her most skeletal looking, was told by girls in her school that she looked "really good."