The High Price Of Sex In The UK And Ireland

Two million British pounds for sex.

That's an expensive bit of snogging.

It's the price that Thomas J. Carroll has to pay to avoid having an additional ten years added to his sentence for keeping brothels in Ireland and the UK.

Mr. Carroll was a sexual entrepreneur, in a manner of speaking. He opened up brothels in Ireland and Northern Ireland, shuffled girls around the various houses, and then sat back to count the cash. His business was highly successful.

When an entrepreneur chooses to enter a business that is entirely illegal, however, there are costs to be paid, which tend to eat into the profits---and up-end one's entire business strategy.

After a lengthy investigation, Mr. Carroll was arrested in Wales and found himself in a London courtroom, facing a lengthy list of charges. Once convicted, he was ordered to turn over the proceeds of his multinational corporation. You can't keep the money if you didn't come by it honestly, a point which Mr. Carroll chose to dispute.

He tried a not-so-clever manuever in which he changed legal teams, representing himself in the interim, and then had the new clutch of solicitors cry foul. His human rights was being denied, they was, and they cried long and hard. The poor lad had no legal representation when the Court tried to confiscate his money that he pretended he didn't have.

The judges didn't buy into the excuse, which was flimsy at best.

Mr. Carroll is already serving seven years on the brothel-keeping charges. If he doesn't meet the confiscation order, he'll see another ten years.

His employees will be rather old for the sex business after that much time has passed. And it isn't easy to start up a new business in a very old industry, especially when suspicious gardai are keeping an eye on a pimp.

Too much regulation.

That's why the economy is in the state it's in.