Ellee Seymour

Cambridgeshire police smashed a “vice ring” in its university city which raked in £5 million a year. They successfully prosecuted 11 men and women who managed, or assisted, in the management of prostitution.

Only it seems nobody worked there against their will, what took place behind those closed doors was between consenting adults who agreed their own terms and conditions.

Yet trained officers from the police’s serious and organised crime squad would have spent hundreds of hours on this case, valuable time that would have been better spent on tracking down paedophiles or sex traffickers, making sure their sex register was up to date and liaising with other forces on this.

Police even admit that they turn a blind eye to small brothels run by one person operating on their own, this is plainly not being consistent. But when it’s big business, they feel forced to act.

It seems the Government has plans to legalise brothels, there are plenty of cases for them to check out, including Nevada. It is a business that needs regulating to offer protection all round, as well as a cut for the Inland Revenue.

And prostitutes are naturally keen for this too, their motto is: “No Bad Women, Just Bad Laws”. About 80,000 women in Britain work as prostitutes, and half of those are under 25.

As I said, my main concern is that police should spend their time on serious vice cases, the only apparent vice here was making huge amounts of money.

Update: 22 December, 2006, brothel keepers walk free.

You really couldn’t make it up. You go away for a late autumn break to a Spanish island when you suddenly become ill and have emergency surgery. Your insurance company tries to make arrangements to fly you back to the UK - only to be told there is no available hospital bed.

Canon David Wall, 67, has been waiting almost two weeks to return, but is stranded in Palma, Mallorca after having a five hour operation following an infected cyst which began to impact on his spinal chord. He is on a respirator and has not spoken or moved since surgery.

His family are at their wits end - and very angry with the NHS’s postcode radius system which restricts finding a bed to near his home in Suffolk. They are happy for him to be transferred to London or other hospitals in the region, but the NHS bureaucracy does not work that way.

The retired vicar desperately needs an intensive care neurological bed, but his family have been told all the suitable beds in East Anglia are full and he will have to wait until space becomes available.

But have they been told the truth? Bizarrely, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, about 40 mins drive away, says it has beds available, but it’s a clinical decision about where it would be best for him to be treated and discussions were ongoing. That sounds like flannel to me.

Someone’s not telling the truth here, if there are beds at Addenbrooke’s excellent neurological centre, then why has his family been told there are no beds in the area? How many other Brits are stranded in hospitals overseas and being treated in the same shocking way?

As local MP Richard Spring points out, the Government boasts about having increased flexibility by introducing “choice”, but is obviously not delivering it.

I’m pretty sure that publicity about this will soon put the wheels in motion and a bed will suddenly be offered.