Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
BBC Blanks Proposition 19
According to the Home Office there are six million regular users of cannabis in the UK. I have seen just one report on the BBC news about the Proposition 19 vote in California on 2nd November which promises legalisation.
Compare this with the recent wall to wall coverage of the Pope’s visit. How many regular supporters of the Catholic Church are there in Britain? Just 887,000.
This is an appalling failure by the BBC and a dereliction of its duty to provide fair and balanced coverage. Please make a complaint. It will take you less than five minutes and it will make a difference if enough of you take the time.
Here is a direct link to the BBC complaints website. Please do it now!
The Guardian Dances To The Home Office Tune
An astonishing article in The Guardian today on the Home Office’s attempts to prevent UK patients gaining access to medicinal cannabis. See here.
The Home Office’s position is no surprise. What is astonishing is The Guardian’s inaccurate and poodle-like treatment of the story. The article is little more than an obedient reproduction of a Home Office press release. It takes no account of the gross injustice and cruelty perpetrated by Home Office ministers. Neither does it challenge a position that is cleary unsustainable under EU law.
No one can have expected the Home Office to give in on this issue without a fight. I think we would all have expected far more courage and support from The Guardian.
The Guardian’s editor is Alan Rusbridger. His email address is: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk. I would urge everyone to write to him now to protest at this weak and rather pathetic coverage of an important story.
This is my email. Feel free to copy, edit or use it as you will.
Nineteen Nervous Breakdown
I am worried about the neck and neck race in California. The polls are getting tighter and tighter. If Proposition 19 fails it will be a disaster for the cannabis campaign. Certainly in Britain, no politician will want to know. They will say if you can’t get California to vote for it, there are no votes in it at all.
It could knock us back at least five years.
That’s why it’s essential that we win. Whatever it takes. The polls say it depends on turnout by young voters so please, get the lazy stoners off their backsides and down to the polling booth.
Now is the time to get serious and take responsibility. Don’t let us down now!
GO CALIFORNIA! We’re depending on you!
The Robin Hood Tax
Isn’t Bill Nighy absolutely fantastic?
Go here for more information and to sign up to the campaign.
Should Be Legalised
Quite easy on the eye this video for reasons that become very obvious. She’s more than enough to keep me glued to the screen and a very sensible, well written message too.
Well worth watching!
The Severn Scandal Of Huhne
Artist's Impression
If there is idiocy in the coalition this is it.
Chris Huhne, the so-called progressive LibDem Energy Minister has called off the Severn barrage, the biggest tidal energy project ever in Britain. See here.
What more sustainable, reliable, self-evidently ideal source of energy is there than the tide? Until the earth spins off its axis or the moon melts into green cheese, the tides will continue to work. The Severn estuary has the second highest tidal reach in the world. The power inherent in its cycle is unimaginable. When we find a way to harness it efficiently we will have achieved something every bit as revolutionary as cold fusion.
Blind
Yet our short sighted Energy Minister has cancelled the project and says that investment in such new energy sources should come from the private sector. Then he says that private sector investment is unrealistic. There is something seriously wrong with this man’s thinking. This is not the sort of project that you judge on the basis of some nit picking consultant’s report. This is akin to the invention of flight or the microprocessor. This requires vision. This is a project that stretches across centuries and dwarfs Chris Huhne and his shameful decision.
This is exactly, precisely and properly the sort of project that government should be investing in heavily. Only government can promote this sort of essential, long term development. As for the pathetic whinging of the RSPB et al, this reveals how many small minded fools there are in the green movement. The birds will find somewhere else soon enough.
A disastrous and terrible decision that will define and should destroy Chris Huhne’s career.
The Truth About Sativex
Sativex is super strong, concentrated cannabis. Nothing more, nothing less.
GW Pharmaceuticals would have you believe that it’s a “pharmaceutical” product because according to its research that’s what patients prefer. As the GW spokesman puts it, “It’s a pharmaceutical solution, formulated with the ability to deliver a precise dose and with stringent standards of quality, safety and efficacy”.
In fact, what GW does is grow high quality cannabis under pretty much the same conditions as most illegal growers. It uses clonal propagation to ensure consistent levels of cannabinoids. Lighting and hydroponic nutrition is computer controlled with automatic ventilation. It really is no different from the most sophisticated and efficent illegal cannabis farms. It’s a recognised and proven technology now also used by Bedrocan in Holland, the Dutch government’s exclusive medicinal cannabis grower and Gropech in California which is building a new 60,000 sq ft facility in Oakland for a crop worth $50 million per year.
Bedrocan Grow
The difference between these crops from legal and illegal growers is insignificant. It’s similar to buying your tomatoes from the supermarket or the farm shop.
GW Grow
GW takes its high quality cannabis, chops it up and makes a tincture by heating it under pressure with CO2 and then adding ethanol to precipitate an oil. Then, with the addition of a little peppermint oil to mask the taste and some preservative, the filtered liquid is packaged into tiny little aerosol bottles. Each spray delivers 2.7mg of THC and 2.5mg of CBD. What GW doesn’t tell you that it also contains all the other 100+ cannabinoids found in the plant, each of which has its own mechanism of action and effect. It also contains flavonoids, terpines and other compounds. Everything that is found in the plant.
Illegal Grow
I applaud GW Pharmaceuticals for bringing the enormous benefits of cannabinoid therapy into the 21st century. It’s nothing new though. The medicinal value of the plant has been known and widely used for thousands of years. Only in the last century has it been demonised by lies and propaganda. It would be a mistake though to think that Sativex is anything different from the plant itself. It’s just been wrapped up in a marketing and physical package which has enabled stupid and cowardly politicians to accept it.
In fact, Sativex remains just as illegal in Britain as herbal cannabis. Even though it has received MHRA approval for use in the treatment of MS spasticity and may be prescribed by a doctor, it remains a schedule 1 drug under the Misuse Of Drugs Act. The Home Office has indicated that it intends to amend the law but has not yet done so. This means that any pharmacist who dispenses Sativex at present is guilty of exactly the same criminal offence as any street dealer in weed or hash.
The Home Office will, of course, turn a blind eye to this but not to medicinal herbal cannabis even though, in every sense, it is identical to Sativex (except that Sativex also contains alcohol and peppermint oil). The stark idiocy of British law is revealed.
Never before has there been a better example of the how the law is an ass and so are the spineless politicians who support it.
Alan Johnson – An Absence Of Integrity
Shadow
I used to be an admirer. Even as a rabid Tory, in fact, very much as a Tory, I thought the story of postman to Minister of the Crown was Boy’s Own stuff.
He has a sharp intellect and an easy charm with nothing of the snide trade union whinger that he might have been. Then came Professor Nutt and, almost as never before, a politician’s true colours were revealed. Not the gentle pink blush of embarrassment but a black deception and dishonour. It was an astonishing position to take. As David Nutt recalls, “Alan Johnson famously said in the House that he was “big enough, strong enough, bold enough” to sack me for saying cannabis was less harmful than alcohol.” And he did. See here.
Even worse, as a replacement he appointed Professor Les Iversen, author of “Cannabis, Why It Is Safe” and countless other publications extolling the innocuous nature of the plant. He is on the record as saying that “cannabis should be legalised, not just decriminalized”. The complete absurdity of Alan Johnson’s actions were astonishing. He was stating boldly and without apology that whatever the science said he wouldn’t listen to it. Even more than that, he would try to silence the truth.
This is a politician without a shred of integrity. A man of great achievement and intelligence who has shamed himself and destroyed his own career. He is not fit to be in the shadow cabinet. That he has been appointed shadow chancellor is a hollow and sickening joke.
Well Done Jedward, I Mean Edward
Harriet's Impressed!
It was a good start for a young man. Solid. Dignified. Then, suddenly, a scimitar sharp riposte. Cameron almost fell backwards!
I think Ed has been underestimated and will prove to be a dangerous and very clever adversary. For a while the coalition will get away with patronising him like the new boy at school but his time will come.
I think that’s a very, very helpful thing for parliament and for Britain. The most dangerous thing for British politics at the moment is that the LibDems simply dissolve away. A strong Labour party will bolster the LibDem’s position.
Please though, the sooner those two old farts, Harriet Harman and Alan Johnson are gone, the better. Isn’t there a deep hole in the ground somewhere we can drop ’em down?
UPDATE On Legal Medicinal Cannabis In Britain
My article on Jim Starr and his medicine has been bouncing around the internet for nearly two weeks now. It was offered to every quality national newspaper and The Daily Mail but none have seen fit even to cover the story. The Daily Telegraph, to its credit, covered the BMJ article about how cannabis prohibition in the US is counterproductive. Other than that all the press can be bothered with is trivia about celebrities and cannabis. The truly important news that tens of thousands of people now have legal access to the medicine they need is of no interest to the erudite editors of Fleet Street. I wonder what their readers would think?
The feedback I have received has been overwhelming. I know of hundreds of people who have written to the Home Office asking for confirmation that they may follow in Jim’s footsteps. Many have telephoned and it seems a different story or excuse has been given to each one. What is certain is that the prohibitionists and legislators who care not one jot for others’ pain and suffering are in disarray.
I can now add further clarification and evidence in support of the rights of those who need medicinal cannabis. Surely now those cruel politicians and civil servants who are depriving so many British citizens of the medicine they need must relent. The truth is out!
1. Under the United Nations Single Convention On Narcotic Drugs, the UN International Narcotics Control Board determines the documentation required for the transport of such medicines across international borders as, simply, “a valid medical prescription”.
2. Under article 23 of the Geneva Convention (which specifically applies to all parties even outside time of war), protection is provided for the transport of medicines across borders.
3. Article 75 of the Schengen Agreement also provides protection for persons to carry their medicine throughout the EU. The UK has been bound by this since 1st January 2005. In support of this, I refer to the proceedings in the European Parliament on 1st December 2009 on the Right To Freedom Of Movement In The EU, in which the European Commission Advocate stated unequivocally that article 75 of Schengen is “binding” on the UK. I also refer to the letter from the Home Office dated 14th December 2009 to Mr Noel McCullagh concerning Bedrocan medicinal herbal cannabis.
UPDATE 9th November 2010
Noel McCullagh has asked me to remove the reproduction of the letter to him from the Home Office. He originally published the letter on this site himself but now for reasons only known to him he wants it removed. Suffice to say that in it the Home Office confirmed he was entitled to import Bedrocan herbal medicinal cannabis under the protection of a Schengen certificate.
Peter Reynolds 