Author Archive
‘Av’ A Larf At The Flat Caps
The Big Fight
Comrades!
On the third composite of the fourteenth motion, congress declares its unilateral support for workers rights against the capitalist oppression of the management and director classes who we will fight unconditionally without recourse to logic or proper negotiation whatsoever, allegedly, as aforesaid, which will not be unreasonably witheld in any circumstances notwithstanding the wishes of the members themselfs.
Are you wiv me bruvvers?
Short Back And Sides Guv?
Yes, it’s the annual stand-up comedy fest and flat cap style convention known as the Trades Union Congress. After fish, chips, mushy peas and a bottle of warm stout down at the workingman’s club the delegates will be off for a wild night in Manchester. There’ll be cribbage for the boys, bingo for the girls and chlamidya with an E for the youngsters.
Dark, Brutish, More Frightening
If Doris has a snowball or two, Alf might get lucky tonight. If Tracey has more than a dozen vodka and redbulls, Wayne will be breaching his ASBO again. That’ll set them all up for more vigorous and important debates in the morning on the issues that really matter.
Later in the year we can look forward to a “national campaign of industrial action against spending cuts” and a bit of civil disobedience by bruiser Bob Crowe. This must be what TUC chief Brendan Barber meant when he talked of Britain as a “dark, brutish and more frightening place”.
Don’t miss a minute of it!
‘Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky!
In tribute to the finest guitarist and one of the greatest musicians the world has ever seen – who died 40 years ago this week.
This remarkable photograph was taken inside the house at 25, Brook Street, Mayfair where the composer Handel lived until his death in 1759. He was a German whose career took off when he came to London. He was well known for flamboyant displays of virtuoso baroque music.
200 years later in 1968, Jimi Hendrix moved into the same building. He was an American whose career took off when he came to London. He was well known for flamboyant displays of virtuoso blues and rock music.
Their spirit lives on forever.
Is Prof Pertwee A Home Office Plant?
Is He A Plant?
As they say, with friends like these, who needs enemies?
Is It A Professor?
Seriously, or not so seriously, who is this bumbling old duffer wheeled out by the BBC for some terribly weak story that cannabis sales should be licensed? See here. If the BBC wants to cover this story there are at least a dozen far more expert, more eloquent, more telegenic, better informed, more sensible commentators.
Frankly, I’d rather have someone who can put a coherent argument against instead of this pathetic performance by Prof Pertwee. Seldom have I seen any argument for any idea advanced so weakly. I mean, who starts off talking about their proposal by saying “I don’t think it would work”!
It does raise the suspicion that the only people that want the cannabis argument put so badly is the Home Office. There is, quite literally, no other organisation, connected with a democratic government anywhere in the civilised world that is so backwards, regressive and out of touch with the facts than the UK Home Office. A cannabis plant would have been a more exciting interviewee than Prof Pertwee. He must surely be a plant for what Prof. Les Iversen, the government’s most senior official drugs adviser calls “the anti-cannabis brigade”.
Maybe this is a sign that common sense has got the Home Office on the run. Its tired, inaccurate, unscientific, prejudiced and short sighted attitude is on its very last legs. This is either an embarrassingly bad effort by Prof Pertwee (thanks for trying) or a desperate attempt to discredit the truth.
The fact is that the argument has already been won. I’d like to know what the “harms” are that the Professor was talking about in his interview. There’s the tired old chitchat about mental health problems. It’s just propaganda. In Israel, cannabis is now recommended by doctors to help veterans deal with PTSD. This is fact, reality, what’s actually happening, not what James Brokenshire and his cronies dream up in some bunker in Marsham Street.
I see that the story is also running in the Daily Mail. It’s remarkable how even it, the home of hysteria, has changed its attitude on cannabis in the last year or so. This is perhaps a better barometer of public opinion than anything else. When the Daily Mail starts talking common sense it must be very obvious indeed!
Even the FT is running the story. Who knows maybe it will develop into something a bit more sensible. The BBC just did a particularly bad job of covering it!
I do like Prof Pertwee’s recommendation of the Volcano vapouriser though. I concur with the Professor on this. I can tell you that after extensive personal testing I have concluded that it works very well indeed!
Let’s Put Dave The Taxman On The Dole
Collect Your P45 On The Way Out
Who is this pompous, conceited, arrogant, Boris Johnson lookalike?
He’s Dave Hartnett, Permanent Secretary at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. He’s refusing to apologise for getting tax deductions wrong for six million British taxpayers.
Just who the hell does he think he is? We’re back to Sir Humphrey and lazy, fatcat incompetence and corruption again. You’d think the civil service would have managed to drag itself entirely out of the 19th century by now wouldn’t you? Not this prize plonker. Maybe because his overgrown schoolboy, pudding basin haircut is just as messy as Boris’ he thinks he’ll endear himself to the British public? Hogwash. He’s the very opposite of Boris. He represents everything that’s bad about Britain – self-satisfied, smug, deluded, living in the past.
I say let’s get him sacked. Let’s create the biggest outcry against a useless civil sevant that the country has ever seen. Let’s lose Mr Hartnett his job. Let’s put him in his place – in the queue at the Jobcentre. Then we’ll see who’s a cocky, scruffy, little git won’t we?
Barclays’ Biggest Banker Robber Plans Smash ‘n’ Grab On Britain
The Unacceptable Face Of Banking
We don’t want Bob Diamond in Britain. He’s to be the next chief executive at Barclays Bank. See here. He’s not the “right sort of chap” for us or, if you prefer, he doesn’t have “the right stuff” for Britain. He’s a wide boy and a high stakes gambler. We don’t want him anywhere near our banks, our savings or our overdrafts. Why can’t he just go back to the land of the free and the home of the brave and chowdown with all the other cowboys? He’s the wrong man for Britain.
It’s people like Bob Diamond who were directly responsible for the banking crisis and for bringing the world’s economy virtually to its knees. He won all his bets so he’s alright. Let’s be clear though, it’s his behaviour and those like him that is to blame for the massive cuts that we’re all facing. He has robbed our parents of their pensions, hamstringed our business world, destroyed our children’s jobs and sabotaged their children’s education. He is laughing all over his flabby, smug face at our expense.
He’s won a £100 million fortune on exactly the sort of gambling which has destroyed our economy.
Vince Cable should stop posturing. He was great in opposition but it seems, even in government, all he can do is snipe from the sidelines.
I say, deny Bob Diamond entry into Britain on the grounds that he would be a danger to the country. Barclays may claim that it has accepted no help from the taxpayer but its exploitative business model depends on blackmailing us with its size and importance to the economy, just like all the banks.
What we needed to do was clamp down hard on their excess, split them into smaller pieces, separate casino investment from banking services, force them into accountable lending policies, severly limit earnings levels and make it clear that they work for us, not vice versa.
We may already be too late. Britain’s banks continue to be out of control.
For A Bad Cop, Prison Is Just The Start
Doing His Duty
I hope that ex-Police Sergeant Mark Andrews had a really bad night on Tuesday. It was his first night in jail after being sentenced to six months for assaulting Pamela Somerville, an innocent member of the public, someone he was paid and trusted to protect. See here for the full story.
I hope he had a really bad day yesterday too. I hope he’s scared. I hope he’s ashamed and racked with guilt. I hope he has a really bad day tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. I hope every single minute of his jail time is frightening, distressing, humiliating and painful. I hope he misses his wife and two children and is beside himself with grief and shame at the way he has let them down. The man is pond life scum. He should be extremely grateful that he got off so lightly because if I was the judge I would have considered six years to be a more appropriate sentence than six months. In fact, I really hope that the CPS appeals the sentence. There’s no way that it is sufficient. He’ll be out in just 13 weeks and free to go back to his family. He should be made to suffer.
When a police officer commits a crime, particularly an assault while on duty, it is far, far more serious than when it is an ordinary member of the public. It is a breach of trust. It is like a bank manager stealing from his own bank. It can never be forgiven. It has to be marked as the most heinous of crimes.
Sleazy Starmer
I suppose we have to be thankful that the CPS even brought charges in the first place. It and its thoroughly sleazy boss, Keir Starmer, seem to do everything they can to avoid bringing police officers to justice. Keir Starmer has the brazen cheek to pontificate about changing the system of murder charges when he is complicit in enabling police officers to avoid justice! See here. We’re really not interested in his thoughts about the future of justice in Britain. He is too deeply ensconsed in the corruption and failures of the past. We want him out of his job and on the scrapheap with Andrews. In fact, I’d have him in the cell next door to Andrews and I’d put them both back on slopping out but they could do each other’s rather than their own.
I congratulate Wiltshire Constabulary on bringing Andrews to justice and particularly the police officer who turned him in. That man deserves a medal.
Killer
Thug
This should send a signal to thugs like Delroy Smellie, Simon Harwood and every other bent cop that you will never, ever get away with your behaviour. Even if you manage to wriggle free like Smellie with the assistance of slimeball judges or evade the full force of the law like Harwood with the help of his crony Starmer, we, the British public, will never let you off. It won’t ever be over for you, whether or not you do time in prison. You and your kind are on a life sentence. You will be despised, reviled, hated and subject to ridicule and abuse until the end of your days. You deserve nothing less.
Vauxhall’s Ad With The X Factor
As an adman, I have to say I love the new Vauxhall commercial, the one for the lifetime warranty. I can see how it’s spot on brief, catching the zeitgeist, truly the first of a new generation of advertising with a different type of offer. It’s designed for these just coming out of recession, hovering on the edge of double dip times. It’s great.
It achieves excellence by obeying the good, old fashioned rules of good old fashioned writing. It attracts your attention, inspires your interest, builds desire for the payoff and creates action at the end. Old fashioned principles with leading edge delivery. That’s advertising at its very best.
I’ll give you an example of the opposite. The X Factor is becoming like Fox News, utterly carried away on its own hype and insensitive to its audience. It knows how to pull my heartstrings and invoke my tear ducts almost at will but as it goes into its own advertising and promotion between the commercial breaks, it loses me. I wander. I write or I go into the other room. When I come back it’s telling me what’s coming up “after the break”. This is insane. I feel cheated, used and abused. I feel that I’m being toyed with and exploited.
In another echo of so many over-inflated advertising egos of the past, I laughed out loud when I saw the double page spread in The Times for Christine and Adrian’s new breakfast show “Daybreak”. This is an utter waste of money. Double page spreads are the creative team’s favourites because there are their words and pictures up in lights, like a poster, unsullied by editorial or other content. They’re the account man’s favourite too because they make for an excellent presentation and impress the client easily. Watch how readers behave. The page gets turned in double quick time. And in The Times? What objective is being achieved for ITV’s marketing strategy? Are readers of The Times part of Daybreak’s target audience? If this is aimed at potential advertisers it is an extraordinarily expensive way of reaching them.
Countless millions are wasted based on the petty pretensions of marketing directors or their advertising agencies. Similar egotistical spendthrifts inhabit TV production. Occasionally though, particularly in Britain, you see beautifully crafted and intelligently written masterpieces of communication. The new Vauxhall ad is one of these.
What Else Could £12 Million Buy?
Irrelevant
Apparently, excluding policing costs (!), it’s going to cost Britain £12 million for the Pope to come here. Now what else could we spend that on to better effect?
There must be at least twelve million answers to that question. It is an absurdity, an anachronism, a throwback to an earlier, superstitious age when the masses were controlled by their fear of some nonsensical, supernatural power.
Pope Katzinger, ex-Hitler youth member and embodiment of the ultimate hypocritical idolatry and perversion of God, is not worthy of admittance to our country, let alone such expense.
I’m not sure that the Vatican state is part of the EU so do we have to let him in? I suppose he will produce a German or Italian passport if necessary. I would want to see it and ensure it is up to date. Surely we could arrange a unilateral European arrest warrant or USA extradition request to get rid of him? Now that would be a useful purpose for unjust and unfair legislation.
Pope Katzinger is not welcome. That is a fact. If we must adhere for a little longer to the idea of a church then we have our own. The Pope’s has already been banned by royal decree and I hold much closer to the United Kingdom than to any kingdom of supernatural power, particularly one of such evil reputation.
If the head of the Catholic Church wishes to visit this country and meet with his congregation then, as a liberal and open society I suppose we must allow him to do so. We should not have to spare one penny from the care of our elderly, our sick or our needy for the pretensions of this old fool and his entourage. Let them indulge their fairy tales, games and petty diversions at their own expense.
Home Office Backtracks On Cannabis – Part 2
See the original article here.
The Home Office has been denying to me all week that it had changed its story. It claimed that it had said “Drugs such as heroin, cocaine and cannabis are extremely harmful and can cause misery to communities across the country.” It claimed that cannabis was never included in this statement.
Today it finally owned up. It issued this statement at 5.18pm this evening:
A Home Office spokesperson said:
“There is clear evidence that drugs such as heroin and cocaine are extremely harmful substances.
“There is also clear evidence that cannabis is a harmful drug which can cause both physical and psychological problems. Even the occasional use of cannabis can be dangerous for people with diseases of the circulatory system, and it can contribute to heart disease and lung cancer.
“In this instance there was a drafting error with the original version of this statement, which was subsequently rectified.”
Does It Look Dangerous To You?
Now, I understand and respect the professional efforts of the Home Office PRs to damp down this story. It just doesn’t wash though does it?
Why did it take nearly two weeks to correct this error?
Why did they try to cover up the error in the first place?
All this from a government department that emphasises how important are its “health and education messages” and that it must not send “the wrong message – to young people in particular.”
Of course, the truth is that the Home Office sends inaccurate and misleading messages about drugs all the time. Everyone, except the Home Office ministers and mandarins, agrees that the present drug classification system is nonsense, that it amounts to nothing less than misinformation. In fact, the Home Office is currently less than seven days away from a judicial review of its political manipulation of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The Drug Equality Alliance co-founder, Casey Hardison, has taken it upon himself to challenge the Home Secretary and the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) in the Administrative Court for its irrational, unfair, and possibly illegal exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from control under the Act.
Even David Cameron agrees that ecstasy should not be a class A drug – see here. The debacle and embarrassing nonsense about the ever-changing classification of cannabis destroyed Alan Johnson’s integrity for good. Young people have been watching the government’s “messages” for years, comparing them to their own experiences and realising that the government talks rot when it comes to drugs. The Home Office is inconsistent, unreliable, contradictory and nothing short of dangerous when it comes to messages about drugs – as they’ve just proved, yet again.
As for the revised statement, there is evidence to show that smoking cannabis can cause the same damage to the cardiovascular system as smoking tobacco, but no one smokes anywhere near the same amount of cannabis as they do tobacco – they’d be asleep! In fact, the very latest research shows that cannabis has an extraordinary protective effect for tobacco smokers and may actually reduce the likelihood of lung cancer. Other recent research has also shown cannabinoids to have remarkable effects in shrinking brain, head, neck and breast cancers.
The Home Office is so far out of date it’s difficult to believe. It still talks sensationally about the dangers of “new stronger strains of cannabis known as skunk”. The truth is that skunk has been the predominant type of cannabis available in the UK for more than 20 years. That’s how up to date the Home Office is. Finally, the “psychological problems” story. Sure, any psychoactive substance has the potential for harm but increasingly there’s evidence to show cannabinoids actually have an anti-psychotic effect. One of the most useful applications of medicinal cannabis is in the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
To those who don’t already know the facts, I say simply google your questions. Even the Home Office, much as it might try, has not yet found a way of silencing the truth.
Cannabis Is Medicine
It seems to be coming of age. This is the first ever TV commercial for medicinal cannabis. This ad first ran on FOX 40 in Sacramento, California in August. Times are changing. The truth will out!
Peter Reynolds 