Censor Watch

A brewery called Little Mesters Brewing produced a beer with a pump handle celebrating a master knife maker included a knife in the image.

A complaint read:

The idea of Stan is a homage to one of the last little Mesters in Sheffield. As much as I appreciate the respect to the history of the city of Sheffield in feel using a knife handle as a tap handle is perhaps a step too far and could encourage alcohol related violence. Complainant:

The Portman Group drink censor decided that the pump handle image transgressed against its rule:

A drink, its packaging and any promotional material or activity should not in any direct or indirect way suggest any association with bravado, or with violent, aggressive, dangerous, anti-social or illegal behaviour

The company explained that the Stan IPA tap was a single tap handle in situ at a bar in Sheffield and there were no plans to roll it out further. The tap was a specially made ornamental knife handle to commemorate the craftsmanship of Stan Shaw, a master craftsman who made various knives ranging from ceremonial swords to pocket knives which included intricate designs known for their high quality. The company explained that Stan Shaw was widely regarded as the last Little Mester in Sheffield and he had made knives for numerous notable people including Queen Elizabeth II.

The company explained that the beer was over four years old and it had received no other complaints about it during this time. The company stated that it had recently taken over a new outlet where the tap was included as part of a wall with various branded taps. The company explained that the handle had no blade, nor any suggestion of a blade and without background understanding of Stan Shaw, the tap would be interpreted as unrelated to a knife. The company did not believe therefore, that the Stan beer tap created any association with adverse behaviour as the blade was in no way harmful.

Finally, the company stated that it would remove the tap handle if it was required to but that this would be disappointing for the friends, family and supporters of Stan Shaw together with the charitable trust it worked in conjunction with to keep the memory of the Little Mesters alive.

The Panel's assessment:

The Panel considered the image on the pump clip which included a stylised cartoon depiction of Stan Shaw posing with a knife. The knife was held in an upright position with Mr Shaw's body turned towards it. The Panel considered that this image drew attention to the knife and made it the central focus of the design. This image of Stan Shaw was surrounded by numerous other blades in a circular fashion alongside the word Stan.

The Panel discussed the wider societal context that knife crime within Sheffield and the wider UK was prevalent and noted that careful consideration needed to be given to alcohol marketing which included the depiction and any potential glamourisation of knives. The Panel expressed concern about the number of blades included in the imagery, particularly as they formed a prominent part of the design and appeared to be more akin to sharp weapons than utensils. The Panel noted that there were no handles attached to any of the blades which also made them appear more like dangerous weaponry than ceremonial or cutlery knives.

The Panel then discussed the image of Stan and noted that the knife was being held in an upright vertical fashion. The blade was curved into a tip at the end which gave the appearance that the blade was akin to a sharp dagger, rather than a blunted ceremonial knife. The Panel considered the combination of these elements meant that the imagery could potentially glamourise the depiction of sharp knives which were often used as weapons in violent crime.

The Panel then considered the tap handle in the context of the pump clip imagery. The Panel noted the company's response that the handle did not include a blade and that without context the tap handle would not be recognised as a knife handle. However, the Panel noted that as the tap handle appeared alongside the pump clip, it contributed to the overall impression conveyed by the marketing as a whole and increased the likelihood that a consumer would recognise it as a knife handle. The Panel considered the design was intended to mimic a knife handle and this was reinforced by the action required of pulling the tap, where a person's hand would be required to grip it in a similar fashion as one might brandish a knife.

While the Panel acknowledged that the producer had simply sought to celebrate an important local craftsman, it was of the view that any depiction of knives on alcoholic packaging had to be approached with great caution. Rates of knife crime in Sheffield and the rest of the UK had risen over recent years and generate a high level of public concern. In this instance, the Panel concluded that, when considering the overall impression conveyed by the tap handle and the pump clip, the combination of the image of a male presenting a sharp dagger-like knife, the multiple sharp knife blades and the tap handle which was designed to mimic a knife handle all resulted in a cumulative effect which glamourised knives that were not ceremonial or cutlery-like but instead sharp blades which could potentially be associated with knife-related violence. Accordingly, the Panel upheld the pump clip and tap handle under Code rule 3.2(b) for creating an indirect association with violent behaviour.

Action by Company:

The company discontinued the product.

Children will be prevented from encountering online pornography and protected from other types of harmful content under Ofcom's new industry guidance which sets out how we expect sites and apps to introduce highly effective age assurance.

Today's decisions are the next step in Ofcom implementing the Online Safety Act and creating a safer life online for people in the UK, particularly children. It follows tough industry standards, announced last month, to tackle illegal content online, and comes ahead of broader protection of children measures which will launch in the Spring.

Robust age checks are a cornerstone of the Online Safety Act. It requires services which allow pornography or certain other types of harmful content to introduce 'age assurance' to ensure that children are not normally able to encounter it.[1] Age assurance methods -- which include age verification, age estimation or a combination of both -- must be 'highly effective' at correctly determining whether a particular user is a child.

We have today published industry guidance on how we expect age assurance to be implemented in practice for it to be considered highly effective. Our approach is designed to be flexible, tech-neutral and future-proof. It also allows space for innovation in age assurance, which represents an important part of a wider safety tech sector where the UK is a global leader[2]. We expect the approach to be applied consistently across all parts of the online safety regime over time.

While providing strong protections to children, our approach also takes care to ensure that privacy rights are protected and that adults can still access legal pornography. As platforms take action to introduce age assurance over the next six months, adults will start to notice changes in how they access certain online services. Our evidence suggests that the vast majority of adults (80%) are broadly supportive of age assurance measures to prevent children from encountering online pornography.[3]

What are online services required to do, and by when?

The Online Safety Act divides online services into different categories with distinct routes to implement age checks. However, the action we expect all of them to take starts from today:

• Requirement to carry out a children's access assessment. All user-to-user and search services -- defined as 'Part 3' services[4] -- in scope of the Act, must carry out a children's access assessment to establish if their service -- or part of their service - is likely to be accessed by children. From today , these services have three months to complete their children's access assessments, in line with our guidance, with a final deadline of 16 April . Unless they are already using highly effective age assurance and can evidence this, we anticipate that most of these services will need to conclude that they are likely to be accessed by children within the meaning of the Act. Services that fall into this category must comply with the children's risk assessment duties and the children's safety duties.[5]
• Measures to protect children on social media and other user-to-user services. We will publish our Protection of Children Codes and children's risk assessment guidance in April 2025. This means that services that are likely to be accessed by children will need to conduct a children's risk assessment by July 2025 -- that is, within three months. Following this, they will need to implement measures to protect children on their services, in line with our Protection of Children Codes to address the risks of harm identified. These measures may include introducing age checks to determine which of their users are under-18 and protect them from harmful content.
• Services that allow pornography must introduce processes to check the age of users: all services which allow pornography must have highly effective age assurance processes in place by July 2025 at the latest to protect children from encountering it. The Act imposes different deadlines on different types of providers. Services that publish their own pornographic content (defined as 'Part 5 Services[6]) including certain Generative AI tools, must begin taking steps immediately to introduce robust age checks, in line with our published guidance. Services that allow user-generated pornographic content -- which fall under 'Part 3' services -- must have fully implemented age checks by July.

What does highly effective age assurance mean?

Our approach to highly effective age assurance and how we expect it to be implemented in practice applies consistently across three pieces of industry guidance, published today[5]. Our final position, in summary:

• confirms that any age-checking methods deployed by services must be technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair in order to be considered highly effective;
• sets out a non-exhaustive list of methods that we consider are capable of being highly effective. They include: open banking, photo ID matching, facial age estimation, mobile network operator age checks, credit card checks, digital identity services and email-based age estimation;
• confirms that methods including self-declaration of age and online payments which don't require a person to be 18 are not highly effective;
• stipulates that pornographic content must not be visible to users before, or during, the process of completing an age check. Nor should services host or permit content that directs or encourages users to attempt to circumvent an age assurance process; and
• sets expectations that sites and apps consider the interests of all users when implementing age assurance -- affording strong protection to children, while taking care that privacy rights are respected and adults can still access legal pornography.

We consider this approach will secure the best outcomes for the protection of children online in the early years of the Act being in force. While we have decided not to introduce numerical thresholds for highly effective age assurance at this stage (e.g. 99% accuracy), we acknowledge that numerical thresholds may complement our four criteria in the future, pending further developments in testing methodologies, industry standards, and independent research.

Opening a new enforcement programme

We expect all services to take a proactive approach to compliance and meet their respective implementation deadlines. Today Ofcom is opening an age assurance enforcement programme , focusing our attention first on Part 5 services that display or publish their own pornographic content.

We will contact a range of adult services -- large and small -- to advise them of their new obligations. We will not hesitate to take action and launch investigations against services that do not engage or ultimately comply.

For too long, many online services which allow porn and other harmful material have ignored the fact that children are accessing their services. Either they don't ask or, when they do, the checks are minimal and easy to avoid. That means companies have effectively been treating all users as if they're adults, leaving children potentially exposed to porn and other types of harmful content. Today, this starts to change.

As age checks start to roll out in the coming months, adults will start to notice a difference in how they access certain online services. Services which host their own pornography must start to introduce age checks immediately, while other user-to-user services -- including social media - which allow pornography and certain other types of content harmful to children will have to follow suit by July at the latest.

We'll be monitoring the response from industry closely. Those companies that fail to meet these new requirements can expect to face enforcement action from Ofcom.

Notes

• Research shows that children are being exposed to online pornography from an early age. Of those who have seen online pornography, the average age they first encounter it is 13 -- although more than a quarter come across it by age 11 (27%), and one in ten as young as 9 (10%). Source: 'A lot of it is actually just abuse'- Young people and pornography Children's Commissioner for England
• Research from the UK Government indicates that UK firms account for an estimated one-in-four (23%) of the global safety tech workforce. 28% of safety tech companies are based in the UK according to recent research by Paladin Capital and PUBLIC .
• Source: Yonder Consulting - Adult Users' Attitudes to Age Verification on Adult Sites
• 'Part 3' services include those that host user-generated content, such as social media, tube sites, cam sites, and fan platforms.
• Services that conclude they are not likely to be accessed by children -- including where this is because they are using highly effective age assurance -- must record the outcome of their assessment and must repeat the children's access assessment at least annually.
• 'Part 5' services are those that publish their own pornographic content, such as studios or pay sites, where operators control the material available.

The BBFC have, surprisingly, begun using the "very strong" tag for violence again, after seemingly retiring it in the mid 2010s - an indie horror called A Desert has been classified 18 for "brief very strong violence".

If I remember correctly the tag was previously last used in 2016 for an episode of Game Of Thrones.

No idea why it was retired, given screen violence has reached exceedingly graphic levels over the past few years, what with the Terrifier franchise and the likes of Possessor and Infinity Pool .

The Cannibal Man is a 1972 Spanish thriller by Eloy de la Iglesia.
With Vicente Parra, Emma Cohen and Eusebio Poncela.      

Banned as a video nasty in 1983. Cut by the BBFC for 18 rated VHS in 1993. Later passed 15 uncut for 2025 Blu-ray. There is also an extended integral version assembled from unique footage from several other versions, such as the German Cinema Version.

Summary Review: Pseudo-sleazy

Real slaughterhouse footage and scenes of dirty urban slums set the tone for this stark and obsessive Spanish thriller.

A slaughterhouse employee named Marcos gets attacked by a cabdriver who takes objection when he and his girlfriend are making out in the back seat, and Marcos kills him. This sets in motion a week of killing, first to cover up the cabdriver's death, and afterward to keep the bodies piling up in his bedroom a s ecret.

Weird, pseudo-sleazy film that works even though it doesn't even attempt to live up to its title - there's *no cannibalism*.

The dubbing is pretty bad and there's not much gore (most of the nastiness happens off-screen), but there's plenty of atmosphere and a sense of desperation builds in Marco's apartment. 

International Version

International Version run: 98:33s pal: 94:36s		UK: The International Version is uncut and BBFC 15 rated for strong violence, bloody images, threat, sex: 2025 88 Films Blu-ray (rated 06/01/2025) titled La Semana Del Asesino US: The International Version is uncut and MPAA  R rated for: 2021 Severin [International + Extended Integral Version] R0 Blu-ray at US Amazon #ad 2021 Severin [International + Extended Integral Version] R0 DVD at US Amazon #ad 2012 Blue Underground Midnight Movies [Cannibal Man + Cannibals] R1 DVD at US Amazon 2012 Real 3D DVD-R at US Amazon [check compatibility details] 2007 Blue Underground R0 DVD via UK Amazon and at US Amazon
cut cut: 3s run: 98:02s pal: 94:07s		UK: The International Version was passed 18 after 3s of BBFC cuts for: 1993 Redemption VHS See pictorial cuts details from movie-censorship.com . The BBFC cuts were: 3s removed from a shot where Marcos cuts Carmen's throat
uncut run: 98:09s pal: 94:13s		UK: The International Version was released uncut on pre-cert video for: 1981 Intervision VHS It was released in November 1981 and banned as a video nasty in July 1983. It stayed on the list throughout the panic and became one of the collectable DPP39s. The cover was a flimsy slip case that didn't last long so adding to the rarity of a mint condition cover.

The BBC has published a trailer for a new six-part comedy horror drama filmed in Northen Ireland and Ireland earlier this year. It tells the story of three teenagers who go on an epic quest to complete a cult horror VHS collection.

A description of the series reads:

Set in 1985, when the home video revolution is in full analogue swing, Video Nasty tells the story of three mostly-normal-but-kind-of-weird teenagers who go on an epic quest to complete a cult VHS collection.

Instead, they get mixed up in a murder investigation, becoming chief suspects and public enemies. The series is a deadly, deadpan comedy with a raucous, racy, retro flavour. Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer set to film latest blockbuster in Northern Ireland Who are Marian and Dolours Price?

Written and created by Hugh Travers and directed by Christopher Smith and Megan K. Fox the series promises to be a, raucous, racy, retro 80's throwback that blends laugh-out loud comedy with compelling horror-themed drama.

The series will be available on iPlayer on 8th January 2025.