Author Archive
It’s Time To Put The Daily Mail Out Of Business.
Paul Dacre, Editor of The Daily Mail, Butcher of Truth.
Freedom of the press is a crucial ingredient of any free society but so is freedom from the press that habitually lies, misleads and distorts. This is the very essence of The Daily Mail. It is the way it does business. It is its editorial policy and its business strategy. If a story can be twisted, evidence misrepresented or opinion disguised as fact then that is the route that The Daily Mail will always choose.
I am no supporter of Red Ed but now I have a reason other than his delusional policies to feel sorry for him. The disgusting and shameful abuse of his father is beneath contempt but it is exactly what one would expect from the most vile and offensive man in the media, Paul ‘The Butcher’ Dacre.
Dacre is the butcher of truth, the master of distortion and the cause of great misery and misinformation throughout Britain. No other individual has been responsible for more ‘inaccurate, misleading and distorted’ reporting. Those are the words at the heart of the Editors’ Code which is supposed to determine the standards by which newspapers operate. The Daily Mail’s editorial is defined by its direct contradiction to the requirements of the code. It is not just in breach of it. It is the antithesis of it.
The tragic irony is that Dacre chairs the Editors’ Code committee. His perverse influence means he rules the Press Complaints Commission with an iron fist and it, despite the good intentions of its staff, is a laughing stock and a rubber stamp for whatever lies monsters like Dacre want to print.
There may be a silver lining in this latest despicable episode. It just might give Cameron the backbone he needs to implement Leveson in full, to kick out the ‘capo di tutti capi’ of the Fleet Street mafia and restore some decency and truth to British journalism.
Magnificent Words On Drugs Policy From Chief Constable Barton.
Chief Constable of Durham, Mike Barton
These brave and intelligent words were published today in The Observer by Chief Constable Mike Barton of Durham Constabulary.
Other senior police officers have spoken out before. Internationally, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition represents those who, at the sharp end, know that current drugs policy is nonsense. Mike Barton has a fresh insight and realistic approach.
These practical men shame our cowardly, self-serving politicians. Aside from individual MPs working for their constituents, ministers cower in fear at even discussing reform.
Chief Constable Barton is the sort of leader we need.
A Cannabis Experiment.
Day 5
So I’ve stuck with it. A shot every day for five days so far and I do feel better for it. Of course it could be any one of a hundred other unconnected reasons but as best as I can determine, my appetite is slightly reduced and I generally feel better this week than I did last.
Day 2
I thought I felt a surge of energy after yesterday’s dose but I have felt pretty bad and bilious all day. My second dose definitely rejuvenated me this evening. I have bowed to the inevitable that my cocktail shall be called a Virgin Mary Jane.
Day 1
Today I juiced a bucketful of shade leaves, trimmed from a very large white widow cannabis plant.
My excellent Breville juicer produced exactly a pint of thick, green cannabis juice which tastes vile.
I shall consume one shot of this each day and report any observable results. My measure is an espresso cup which I have measured at 80 ml (my pint of juice is, near as damn it, 600 ml).
Today’s medicine was taken in a large glass of ice cold V8 vegetable juice with a generous slug of Worcestershire sauce, an extended shake of Tabasco and a little salt.
How To Damage The Cannabis Campaign.
1. Demand ‘rights’ that are neither reasonable nor necessary:
“We want to prove that cannabis can be consumed safely, peacefully and responsibly in public without causing any harm to society”
2. Choose a venue that:
a. enables police to claim that it :
“is used by children and families”
b. enables the local newspaper to use this photograph:
Eastrop Park
3. Fail to apply for permission to hold the event:
“…we have not received an application in regards to this proposed event.”
See this article in ‘This Is Hampshire’: Pro-cannabis campaigners to hold protest in Eastrop Park
I support the overall aims of the people behind this. The intention is good but the means are naive, irresponsible and exactly the way NOT to campaign for cannabis law reform.
The ‘Arthur Scargill’ Approach To Cannabis Law Reform Doesn’t Work.
“Anything less than 100% capitulation on the part of the authorities is unacceptable!
Stand together in solidarity brothers. We’ll fight them in the parks, in the streets, we will never surrender!
We’ll smoke cannabis where we want, when we want and we don’t give a damn who it upsets – ‘cos it’s our rights brothers, it’s our rights!
We’ll show ’em, If we keep defying them, keep showing we don’t care what they think, keep on smoking – WE WILL PREVAIL!”
It’s the hopeless, hapless politics of the school playground. It doesn’t work. It’s about defiance, civil disobedience, selfishness and bull-headed obstinacy, always with a simmering undercurrent of aggression and violence. The ‘angry stoner’ is becoming a cliche that is causing immense damage to our campaign.
Progress will be made and is actually being made in small steps by patient negotiation, compromise and hard work. That’s real work that’s often boring, tedious and has none of the appeal of marching in the streets or sitting round in the park with your mates getting stoned. This is what has created reform, firstly for medical marijuana in California, now 19 other US states and most recently a genuine revolution in in Colorado, Washington and Uruguay. These developments have been achieved despite the demos, not because of them. Exactly the same is happening in Britain.
Legally prescribed, legally dispensed, legally imported medicinal cannabis is now in Britain. The greatest progress in the cannabis campaign since the Dangerous Drugs Act 1925 was enacted.
Cut Off His Head.
I am relieved that Britain pulled back from the brink yesterday and Cameron was curbed in his self-serving, warmongering ambition.
Assad is a monster but he’s also a puppet. He is simply a figurehead in a Saville Row suit. The Syrian regime is a paranoid, myopic, self-serving bunch of gangsters, nothing more. It doesn’t have anything to do with Islam, it’s about tribalism and grudges and greed.
Assad is not that different from Cameron. The oligarchy that runs Britain is also composed of gangsters. They oppress but in more subtle ways. They cause huge harm and exploit individuals for their own ends. They do it with the deception that we live in a fair and just democracy. There is death and deprivation and injustice in Britain as well. It is the scale that is different.
I can see no benefit to anyone in the sort of limited military intervention that is proposed. The Syrian army is hugely powerful and well equipped. Russia has a financial interest in continuing to supply it with weapons just as America has with Israel. The US momentum for action is insincere and driven by the arms industry and its massive financial and employment interests
There is a better argument for outright invasion and regime change but that is a huge step which I don’t believe we should take – yet.
A better solution would be special forces-led assassination squads targeting the ruling elite. It may be costly in casualties but better a few dozen volunteer soldiers should die doing their job than the collateral damage inevitable in air and missile strikes. I don’t want our soldiers to die for politicians’ weakness. Let them be given a clear objective for death or glory, not sent to the modern version of the trenches as in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The moral question is easy in my view. Any justification for launching a cruise missile is better justification for targeted assassination. Use drones, even use cruise missiles as assassination weapons but we have to be much, much smarter than the dumb George Bush ‘shock and awe’ tactic that is as much about grandstanding as doing anything effective.
Take out the leadership, one by one. Decapitate the beast.
Yet More Madness In UK Drugs Policy
The Right Dishonourable Theresa May MP
Theresa May really does take the biscuit for ignoring evidence and basing her policies on prejudice and vested interests. She defines its arrogance and exemplifies how out of touch our government is, particularly on drugs policy.
Khat, according to the experts, the ACMD, a pretty harmless, gentle stimulant, is to be banned. See the BBC report here.
The ACMD recommended exactly the opposite so it really should have expected Ms May to be contrary. That’s what home secretaries do when they receive expert advice – they don’t just ignore it, they head in exactly the opposite direction.
Presently, 90,000 people in the UK are said to use khat, so Ms May has decided to turn them all into criminals overnight. Does she expect they will all stop using it? Don’t be ridiculous. All she has done is created a new criminal market. Now we can expect violence, human trafficking and organised crime to get involved. As if our police and the Border Agency don’t have enough on their hands.
Her pretext is terrorism. That’s the same excuse she offers for wanting to snoop on all our emails and internet activity. It’s the same excuse this tawdry gang of thieves in Westminster offers us for anything they don’t want to explain.
Every day that passes our government proves itself to be more corrupt and more unfit for purpose. This stupid, stupid woman is a terrible liability to our country. Build more prisons, I say. Let’s install a special wing of padded cells and move the whole cabinet in.
I will not be ruled by these fools anymore.
I Gladly Accept The Title Of Cannabis Zealot
Last August, I complained about the conduct of Yvonne Davies, a Manchester magistrate. This week, remarkably, the regulatory process worked. She was reprimanded and, as a result, chose to resign. This was the correct decision. It is impossible for someone with such an extremist opinion to judge anyone else. She is an anti-cannabis crusader and no magistrate can properly take that position.
The Manchester Evening News led the reporting which was quickly picked up by the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph. I telephoned the Manchester newspaper to protest that they had merely used the opportunity to re-publish all Ms Davies’ hysterical scaremongering. I’ll be honest. I was concerned the whole thing was starting to backfire, just giving more publicity to Ms Davies’ false and misleading claims.
Some cocky junior Mancunian journalist sneered so hard down the phone at me that I could feel it. When I explained about the endocannabinoid system and the neuroprotective qualities of cannabis he turned into a particularly ignorant and stroppy Gallagher brother and I realised there was no point. I wrote a letter to the editor for publication instead.
I also wrote a letter for publication to the Daily Telegraph.
Then, Tuesday afternoon, I was enjoying a brief glimpse of sunshine outside my friends pub, The Falcon, in Queen’s Park, west London. My phone rang. It was the Daily Mail and I chatted away with Nazia Parveen, the journalist, for a good fifteen minutes. The result you see below in print and the online version is here.
The Daily Mail 26th June 2013. CLICK TO ENLARGE.
Trust the Mail to try and twist the story into something it isn’t. I wish I had the power to force a few people to quit. I’d start with Theresa May, move on to Jeremy Browne and rattle through Cameron, Osborne, Paul Dacre, Kathy Gyngell, Melanie Philips and by the time I got to the judiciary there’d be plenty more senior than Ms Davies with much greater reason to go (see here for a few examples).
A ‘cannabis zealot’ I am. Just as the 1st century Jewish sect who fought against the Romans, I will stand every time, in the face of whatever odds, use whatever means, to tell the truth about cannabis. It is an immense gift on our planet in so very many ways – which is exactly why it is demonised, why it is only its harms that are discussed and never its benefits.
Yes. I gladly accept the title. A ‘Cannabis Zealot’ am I.
Next Time A Young Person Dies From Legal Highs, Blame David Cameron, Theresa May And Jeremy Browne.
See the excellent article in today’s Observer
Legal highs are the product of prohibition. If we made cannabis and MDMA legally available to adults under responsible regulation the market for these new, untested substances would virtually dry up.
We have at least 5,000 years experience with cannabis and for most adults, used in moderation, it is actually beneficial as a supplement to the endocannabinoid system and it helps protect against cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative and auto immune conditions. Each year in Britain we hospitalise three times as many people for peanuts as we do for cannabis and that puts the health risks into proper perspective.
Similarly, MDMA is far less dangerous than aspirin or alcohol and if, as in Holland, we tested and certified the contents of a tablet we would protect people far better than the present inane and self-defeating policy.
The people who are directly to blame for the fact that our children are taking these dangerous, untested new substances are the idiots who run our drugs policy: David Cameron, Theresa May and, shamefully, against his own party’s policy, Jeremy Browne.
These weak, hypocritical, self-serving and cowardly politicians have allowed themselves to be bullied by the alcohol industry and a malevolent, sensation-seeking tabloid press into maintaining a policy that is simply absurd.
BBC Staff Display Rudeness And Ignorance Towards HM The Queen
I have seen nothing so shameful, crass and ignorant as the behaviour of staff in the BBC newsroom during the Queen’s visit today.
I saw not one bow, curtsey, nor even a bow of the head as Her Majesty passed by. Instead, in vulgar and embarrassing fashion virtually everyone was pointing their mobile phone, gawping, intruding, forgetting themselves. ‘Chav’ seems the perfect moniker for such individuals.
If this is the behaviour of well educated people at the world’s leading news organisation at the pinnacle of British cultural life then we are sadly diminished.
Peter Reynolds 