Peter Reynolds

The life and times of Peter Reynolds

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

The Catholic Church – Fount Of Greatest Evil For 2000 Years

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Evil Personified

The Crusades.

The Inquisition.

Witch hunts over hundreds of years.

The oppression of the poor.

Oppression of the Jews.

Abuse of children by bishops, priests, nuns, monks and Church officials over hundreds of years.

The theft of land and property.

The mass deception of humanity for financial gain.

The cover-up of guilt and responsibility for all these things.

The prohibition of contraception to those who know no better and so are consigned to poverty, starvation and death in their millions.

The prohibition of abortion, even to women whose own lives are endangered.

It’s an appalling total of evil, misery and death.  Frankly, I doubt that Islam even comes close.

Yet we entertain, revere and pander to Pope Benedict, this embodiment of the greatest source of evil for 2000 years filled with agony, suffering and death!  Our leaders fawn over him as if there is some significance other than his depths of wickedness.

Even under the terms of his own doctrine he is a blasphemy, a craven idol, a personification of God.  I thought these were sins!

I’d be prepared to overlook his membership of the Hitler Youth, even his dilatory attention to the child abuse scandals and his complicity in the cover-up.  As an old man, I’d be prepared to forgive all of his personal failings but he holds himself up as the Church itself.  He is utterly condemned.

It is nothing less than an outrage that he pollutes our shores, invades our nation, sullies our national consciousness with his presence.  His kisses on our babies are filth.  His deception of our people is an abomination.

Get him out of my country NOW!

Alcohol And Cannabis. Putting Drugs In Perspective.

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I am not a fan of embedding YouTube clips unless they’re about films or music.  I’ll make an exception for these two though.  They make a very important point very powerfully.

The first is a very short US TV commercial with an anti-drugs messsage.   The second is a witty, incisive stand-up routine that knocks the pomposity, arrogance and stupidity of our drug laws for six.

Written by Peter Reynolds

September 17, 2010 at 11:29 am

Spectacular Spectator Drivel On Cannabis

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Melanie Phillips

A Zionist, Labour supporting, Daily Mail journalist – it’s hardly a good start is it? I should have known better than even to start reading her article in The Spectator.

This woman is a dangerous liar and propagandist.  Astonishingly, with breathtaking hypocrisy in promoting the most dangerous of drugs, The Spectator describes itself as “Champagne for the brain”.

Here is her article, reproduced without kind permission of The Spectator and my letter to the editor in response.

Yesterday morning, BBC Radio Four’s Today programme broadcast an interview with a professor of neuropharmacology, Roger Pertwee. Prof Pertwee was making an eyebrow-raising suggestion – that cannabis use should be licensed. His argument was as incoherent as it was irresponsible. He maintained, repeatedly, that all he wanted to do was to reduce the harm done by cannabis – from dangers which he appeared to define merely as smoking an adulterated form of the drug, or getting lung cancer from smoking it. So he wanted to restrict it to people whom it ‘wouldn’t harm’. They would use it in other ways than smoking it, so they wouldn’t get cancer. They would go along to their GP who would pronounce them fit enough to use it.

Hello?!?

What about the harm that we know is done by cannabis itself to the brain — to cognition, to memory, to motivation, to personality? What about the tremendous increase in psychosis caused by cannabis use? What about the harm it does to other people in the user’s ambit?

Yes, said Prof Pertwee, indeed, his scheme wouldn’t reduce the harm done by cannabis itself.

What about all those millions more young people who would start using the drug and become addicted and do themselves and other people all that harm?

Yes, stammered Prof Pertwee, that would indeed be an enormous problem with his scheme. But all he wanted to do was, er, to reduce the harm. And when he’d chased his own tail round that pointless circle a few times, he fell back on ‘all I want to do is stimulate discussion’.

In short, it was a stupid and dangerous idea which even in its own terms made no sense whatever. Why on earth was this professor of neuropharmacology spouting such self-evident drivel on the BBC that even he himself had to keep demurring at his own argument?

What the BBC didn’t tell us was that Prof Pertwee was not some dispassionate expert who just happened to breeze into the studio with a cockeyed idea about turning GPs into cannabis pushers.

Prof Pertwee is Director of Pharmacology of GW Pharmaceuticals – which has a special Home Office licence to market a cannabinoid medicine called Sativex which is used to treat certain medical conditions.

His embargoed press release even said of his proposal:

‘I think this might be the way forward, but it might not work…  It depends on a private company being willing to produce a branded product’.

But it’s his own company which is best placed to do just that! In other words, the Today programme – as a result of its own lazy and frivolous bias in favour of drug legalisation,  which presumably meant it didn’t do due diligence in researching its interviewee because he had the Correct Opinion on drug policy – was played for a sucker by Big Pharma. It was used to give prime air-time to a piece of commercial advocacy which was passed off as a neutral policy discussion. Except that the product being promoted here wasn’t soap powder, but a drug that enslaves.

Who needs cannabis when the Beeb is so dopey already?

—– Original Message —–
From: Peter Reynolds
To: letters@spectator.co.uk
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2010 11:20 AM
Subject: Melanie Phillips, The Dopey Beeb, 15th September 2010

Dear Sir,

The disgraceful display of ignorance and propaganda about cannabis by Melanie Phillips cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.

Her biogtry plumbs new depths of scandalous nonsense.

In the 1930s they used to say that cannabis makes white women promiscuous with black men. Ms Phillips continues on this shameful path of crass misinformation. She needs to do some research before inflicting her ignorance on readers any further.

I agree that Professor Pertwee was incoherent but he is an academic, not a professional communicator.  At least he was dispensing facts. Ms Phillips’ diatribe was, to say the very least, economical with the truth.

Cannabis does not harm the brain or damage cognition, memory, motivation or personality – at least no more than breathing oxygen does and a whole lot less than any other recreational drug.  The phrase “tremendous increase in psychosis” is just a bare-faced lie and that it harms “other people in the user’s ambit” is the very worst sort of journalistic hogwash.

By all means, Ms Phillips, wallow in your own deluded opinion but don’t use your position to spead such wicked, dangerous nonsense.  You should be ashamed of yourself!

Authoritarian scaremongers, political cowards and cheap scandal-seeking journalists have been urging scientists to prove that cannabis is harmful for well over 100 years.  They haven’t succeeded yet.  On the contrary, all the latest research proves that cannabis is a remarkably benign substance yet with some extraordinary medicinal properties. The endocannabinoid system, which was only discovered in 1998 is now known to be fundamental to life and good health.  The only source of cannabinoids outside the body is the cannabis plant.

I used to have time for Melanie Phillips and some degree of respect for her opinion.  I see now that she is just the same as any tabloid hack who cares not one jot for the truth, merely for cheap sensation and worthless rhetoric.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Reynolds

Get This Man Out Of My Country NOW!

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Pointless Pompous Pontification

He is a monster, a walking, talking blasphemy and perversion of the whole idea of God.

He is not welcome.

He is not wanted.

Throw him out and kick him in the backside so that he sprawls in the gutter as he goes.

Written by Peter Reynolds

September 16, 2010 at 11:53 am

‘Av’ A Larf At The Flat Caps

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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!

Is Prof Pertwee A Home Office Plant?

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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

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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

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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

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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.

What Else Could £12 Million Buy?

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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.