Brothels.

The City Sauna in Sheffield is a brothel - which I had rather thought to be an illegal setup. 'Keeping a disorderly house', if memory serves.

It is run by a mother and daughter who happily permitted the TV cameras into their run down, former pub which is only a few hundred yards from the dealership where I bought my present car.

It is unusual for me to bend to pragmatism ahead of morality but I can at least speak with a little knowledge here.

In ten years on the Sheffield Bench, I have a vague recollection of fining a  streetwalker in my first year and then I never again sentenced another prostitute. They are simply not brought into court - they are tolerated on the streets.

There is a general belief amongst 'the powers that be' that prostitutes must not be hauled into court.

Instead, the kerb-crawlers are targeted. (Drug dealers not users are seen as 'the bad guys' as they supply the drugs. The same logic does not apply where commercial transactions for sex are the case. In such, the suppliers are deemed to be innocent parties. The logic defies me.)

Certainly, any brothel which opens its doors to TV cameras is not fearing prosecution.

Time, I fear, to embrace pragmatism as the only solution in a situation where the law is treated with contempt by those who should be enforcing it.

The time has now come to arrest every girl 'working the streets' until streets are cleared and to move to the German system of licensed brothels.

Advantages: spread of disease minimised; pimps and organised crime removed from the equation; fewer intrusions of drugs into 'this market'; after initial and determined cleaning up of the streets - residents will not be outraged where prostitutes operate near their homes.

Needles and used condoms should be found on many fewer occasions where children play!

The safety of those who ply this sad trade would also be greatly enhanced. (We still have the murder of a street girl, one Bonfire Night a few years ago, unsolved here in Sheffield.)

Incidentally, prostitution per se is not illegal in the UK.

Dear Reader. I do hope that you do not see my article as a sellout by this Blogger, it is just that, under the current non-system, we are getting the worst of all worlds.