Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
‘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!
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.
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!
Tony Blair With Andrew Marr
Showdown
I have to admit I was impressed.
I do not begrudge it all. It was fantastic, riveting television – if you’re a politics junkie like me. I know there will be vociferous opinion against but I thought he was marvellous, quite inspiring and utterly convincing.
He always was the best possible successor to Margaret Thatcher and that shone through in the interview. He’s explicitly not a socialist, so why he persists in the Labour Party I don’t know. I can see why he supports the coalition. In fact, he’d make the perfect coalition PM with Dave and Nick as his deputies! Now there’s a thought!
I never voted for him but always rather liked him. I confess I allowed myself to be swayed by the Bliar and anti-Blair brigade but yes, even I am susceptible to propaganda. Recently, I have given serious attention to his involvement in the Israel Palestine dispute. I have been deeply impressed at his even-handedness. It is a talent to remain so impartial in such a heated and emotional situation. It convinced me of his integrity.
That is the quality that shines through. It is the quality that matters to me most, that I think means most of all. He is a man of integrity. I do not agree with him on everything by any means but…
He is a great man.
My MP, Richard Drax, To Write To David Cameron On Drugs Policy
The Honourable Member For Dorset South
Today I met with my MP, Richard Drax. He was just as sickeningly handsome and charming as I expected him to be! So I showed him no mercy and bombarded him with my opinions for a good half an hour.
I realised afterwards that my favourite maxim “less is more” would have been a better strategy. Nevertheless, he did offer to write to David Cameron on my behalf on drugs policy and seemed genuinely sympathetic to some of the points I made.
I have just sent him a lengthy email in confirmation which I reproduce below. If anyone wishes to use this as a template for a letter or email to their own MP, please feel free to do so.
******
Dear Richard,
Thank you so much for your time today. I very much enjoyed meeting you. As I said, I came with opinions not problems. I am grateful to you for listening to me.
I realise that I made the classic mistake of bombarding you with far too much information and not giving you time to absorb any. I hope I may correct that error by summarising here what we talked about.
1. Gary McKinnon. Thank heavens that progress seems to have been made on this. The idea of an “extradition” treaty that provides for someone to be sent to the USA for trial on an alleged crime committed here is iniquitous. It’s particularly unfair in McKinnon’s case as he suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. You pointed out to me that similar dangers exist with the new European arrest warrant.
I would urge you to do everything possible to ensure that if Gary McKinnon is to be tried, it should take place in the UK.
2. Ian Tomlinson. In my view the failure to prosecute the policeman who assaulted him is an outrage and Keir Starmer’s reasons entirely inadequate. Now that the credibility of the pathologist in the case has been destroyed by a GMC panel, Starmer should at least reconsider and hopefully reverse his decision.
References here:
http://pjroldblog.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/killer-cop-harwood-must-be-charged/
http://pjroldblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/keir-starmer-the-next-lord-widgery/
I would urge you to press for a re-consideration of the decision not to bring charges. If no criminal charges are brought, at the very least the disciplinary hearing should be held in public as the rules allow. The Tomlinson family are entitled to justice.
3. Drugs policy. You very kindly agreed to write to David Cameron on my behalf. I am very concerned at the conduct of the Home Office at present and particularly James Brokenshire, the Minister for Crime Prevention who is causing great damage to both the coalition governemnt and the Tory party by promoting ideas and policies that contradict virtually all expert opinion, including the government’s own scientific advisers. He also seems to be completely at odds with the calls for drug law reform which both David Cameron and Nick Clegg have made consistently over the last 10 years.
This is not a peripheral or secondary issue. According to Baroness Meacher in the House of Lords on 15th June 2010, “There is no more obvious waste than the £19 billion annual cost of the UK’s war on drugs”.
There is a huge amount of reference material on this subject on my blog:
http://pjroldblog.wordpress.com/?s=drugs
I would also refer you to the Transform Drug Policy Foundation which has highly detailed and almost universally acclaimed proposals for drug regulation:
Virtually all experts agree that the “war on drugs” has failed. In exactly the same way as alcohol prohibition in the US led to a massive increase in crime and violence, so drug prohibition has created an illegal market said to be worth £350 billion per year. It has also financed civil war in Latin America for 25 years and is the principal source of finance for Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Our soldiers are dying every day because of the illegal trade in opiates. Why don’t we just buy up the whole crop for the next 10 years? It would be much cheaper in both cash and lives than the Afghan war.
Virtually all experts agree that regulation would be a better solution. I have distilled the following five point plan from everything that I have read and learned over more than 30 years:
1. An end to oppression of drug users (at least 10 million UK citizens)
2. Removal from the criminal law of any offence for possession and/or social supply
3. Fact and evidence-based policy, information and regulation
4. Re-direction of law enforcement resources against real criminals
5. Treat problematic drug use as a health issue
Five years ago, while campaigning for the Tory party leadership, David Cameron called for “fresh thinking and a new approach” towards drugs policy and said that it would be “disappointing if radical options on the law on cannabis were not looked at”. Nick Clegg has promised to repeal “illiberal, intrusive and unnecessary” laws and to stop “making ordinary people criminals”. There can be no better example of this than the laws against personal use and cultivation of cannabis, particularly for medicinal reasons. The coalition government’s new Your Freedom website has been inundated with proposals to legalise cannabis and to end the futile war on drugs. In July a poll carried out for the LibDems showed 70% of people in favour of legalising cannabis.
The Home Office and James Brokenshire are completely out of touch with expert and public opinion as well as the declared views of both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister.
In my view, regulation means tighter control on the most dangerous drugs such as heroin, cocaine and alcohol and lighter regulation on relatively harmless substances like cannabis and ecstasy.
There is also the very important question of medicinal cannabis. The discovery of the endocannabinoid system in 1998 has led to an ever-escalating volume of evidence of the medicinal value of cannabis. In June the MHRA approved Sativex as an MS medicine in the UK. It is a whole plant extract yet presently, the Home Office refuses to consider a regulated system of the plant itself for medicinal purposes. This is completely irrational and absurd. The House Of Lords scientific committee recommended such a system should be introduced 12 years ago. Medicinal cannabis is available and regulated throughout almost all of Europe, Israel and 14 states in the USA (with 12 more in the planning stage). The UK stands almost alone in its obstinate refusal even to consider such a system.
Already this is leading to quite obscene injustices where patients have been prescribed Sativex by their doctor but their health authority has refused to fund it and patients are then facing criminal prosecution for cultivating their own plants. There is a case of exactly this going on in the Dorchester Crown Court at present and the CPS insists it is in the public interest to prosecute!
Thank you once again for listening to me Richard. I hope these notes are useful in composing your letter to David Cameron and I look forward to hearing from you in due course.
Kind regards,
Peter Reynolds
Peter Reynolds 