Thursday 27/05/2004You can rely on The Inquirer to dig up the stories that the rest of the online media miss. Or perhaps pass over, in a fit of editorial dignity. But with the news that a Danish company has decided not only to allow its workers to access porn on its office computers, but to pay for some of the better sites, I feel Inq proprietor Mike Magee's mission to inform, inflame and engorge has reached new levels of turgidity.

OK, so the price the worker bees have to pay for this generosity is not to look during office hours -- right-click, save as, chaps -- but it seems a sterling step forward for worker's rights. However, the intrepid reporter could have dug deeper. Do people get to vote for which sites should be selected for managerial funding, or is it just a general selection? What do the women in the office think of it -- is there a groundswell of discontent at this implicit acceptance of the commoditisation of the female form, or a loud demand for some decent clit-lit to balance the diet?

The Danes are noted social innovators, perhaps living up to the Scandinavian ideals of non-conformity the best out of all of the northern tribes. Where they lead, others may follow. Perhaps we'll see the idea of mandatory workplace pornography appear in the next revision of the European employment laws: what that would do to the thrust of secessionist activists such as the UK Independence Party might be interesting. What could Joan Collins, to pick one name at random, say against compulsory sauce?

[Perhaps it was just a novel way of getting columnists to turn up at the office more regularly - Ed.]