Posts Tagged ‘Conservative Party’
If I Believed Corbyn Could Bring Down This Corrupt Conservative Government I’d Join The Labour Party. But Can He?
I truly believe that tribalism is one of the most destructive forces in politics. Sticking with same party just because you’ve always done so and perhaps because your parents did too, will not advance our society. We should cast our vote for a reason, not out of blind loyalty.
In the 42 years that I have been entitled to vote I have only ever voted Conservative (with one exception which I shall explain later) but as we now have the most corrupt government in my lifetime, I will vote for whichever candidate is most likely to get the Conservatives out of office. I’ll go further in that I am now seriously considering joining the Labour Party.
Self-Serving and Corrupt
Our government is corrupt because it pursues self-serving policies for its tribal advantage and not on the basis of evidence. Astonishingly it has managed to destroy the opportunity that Brexit presented. That the cabinet is still bickering two years after the referendum and has no agreed policy is conclusive proof that the party is reckless, irresponsible and unfit to govern.
The Conservative Party is in crisis and is dragging Britain down with it. It has moved so far away from its fundamental principles of individual liberty, individual responsibility, small government and free markets, that it has become unrecognisable.
Instead we have a party and a rump of aging opinion that has become an authoritarian, bureaucratic, self-serving, repressive enforcer of an austere nanny state. It is so out of touch with developing opinion and values that it is doomed.
My area of special interest, drugs policy, is a pillar of this crumbling mausoleum. What Theresa May and her allies have imposed on us for so long is now causing immense harm throughout our society and it is a microcosm of the wider problem with the party.
As an advocate for drugs policy reform and a Tory, I’ve been unpopular with the party I have voted for all my life and with the left which has tried to hijack this liberal cause as its own.
As I pass 60 I am delighted and rewarded to see so many joining my progressive cause. However, I am no more optimistic about the Labour Party on drugs policy. This reform is being driven from the bottom up and will happen regardless of the buffoons who have resisted it for so long. It is vital now that we overturn this tyrannical government which has failed on so many policies but in particular has destroyed the great opportunity of Brexit and left us in the worst possible position.
In future, I will vote for whichever candidate best assures me of overturning this government. The bigger question is whether I should now join the Labour Party. I will never be a socialist but I am pragmatic and that means I am precious close to becoming a Labour Party member and I will certainly be voting for Jeremy Corbyn.
We must demolish the old Conservative Party before we can rebuild a party of the centre right that is fit for the future.
Never Has There Been A More Important Time To Vote Against The Conservatives #AndImATory
I urge you to go out and vote in the local elections and vote against whichever candidate is most likely to defeat the Conservatives.
This is not a conclusion that I have reached lightly or without a great deal of thought. For the 42 years in which I have been entitled to vote, I have only ever voted Conservative and until Theresa May became leader and, disastrously, prime minister of our nation, I was a fully paid up member of the Conservative Party and an approved local government candidate.
It is my considered opinion that the Conservative Party is a destructive force for Britain and there is clear evidence of serious corruption amongst senior MPs and ministers. They are unfit to govern our country.
By corruption I do not mean that ministers are receiving thick, plain brown envelopes of cash or even shares held by a nominee in some offshore account – though I think it would be naive to completely rule out the possibility. The idea that MPs and minsters are, without exception, people of great probity and honour is a delusion best put behind us. I refer to a more general definition of corruption in which their conduct or intent is not what it is declared to be or what we are entitled to expect.
We are entitled to expect fairness. We are entitled to expect that policy is based on evidence. We are entitled to expect honesty and transparency within the limits of national security.
For instance, when a minister pursues a policy or adopts a position for their party’s advantage before the nation’s, that is corrupt. When a minister acts to hold on to their job rather than to see their department improve its service to the public, that is corrupt.
Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Philip Hammond, Chris Grayling and Matt Hancock are beyond doubt guilty of such corruption and many other members of the Conservative cabinet have a case to answer. Our government is corrupt from top to bottom and from the very core.
Each of us has policies and areas of interest that concern us most. Mine are set out in over 900 articles published on this website but I do not want to distract from this crucial message by repeating myself or exercising my particular hobby horses. Whatever your primary concerns, consider how this government has treated them and recognise that its conduct has rendered it unfit to govern. It is far more than simply pursuing policies that you may disagree with, it is a culture that is systemic within Conservative government: secrecy, cover-up, hypocrisy, arrogance and an authoritarian, intolerant attitude to the people it is supposed to serve. It is corruption.
It’s been said many times but never has it been more accurate. Government exists to serve the people and not vice versa. This truth is simply incompatible with our present government and with the Conservative Party in its present form.
I remain a Tory. My principles are of individual liberty, individual responsibility, free markets, justice and small government. These will never change. However, this government must fall at all costs and if that means putting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street, then that is what I shall vote for
The Despicable and Diabolical Home Office. Our National Shame. Designed By Theresa May.
No other British institution is responsible for causing more harm to its own citizens and responsibility for its course in recent years is entirely down to Theresa May. When she first entered government in 2010 she established a culture that truly defines the ‘nasty party’. Even, in her own words, deliberately creating a “hostile environment” for immigrants. The Home Office is hostile towards many sections of our society and it is completely misguided. Instead of supporting and assisting the British people, it is always more concerned about imposing and enforcing its diktat.
The Home Office has to tread a difficult path between protecting the rights of citizens and enforcing the laws that define British society. For far too long, under both Conservative and Labour governments it has acted in a high handed and authoritarian manner. Everything that Theresa May has done has been to increase this and, as the present Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, said in the House of Commons yesterday, it has been “too concerned with policy and strategy, and sometimes lost sight of the individual”. In fact, this is completely deliberate and is the central ethos that defines the Home Office’s work.
It is the horrendous treatment of the Windrush generation that seems to have finally brought this reality into public awareness. People who came here as children, mostly from the West Indies, accompanying their parents who had been persuaded to come here to the ‘mother country’ because after the war we faced a desperate labour shortage. These people re-built Britain. They are as much stalwarts of our society as anyone whose ancestors were born here. It is impossible to overstate how dreadful and unforgivable the Home Office’s treatment of them has been.
There have already been calls for resignations over this scandal and in a just world it would be Theresa May to go first. There must be also be dismissals of Home Office civil servants. Anyone who has been prepared to pursue this disgusting policy without objection is simply not fit to be in public service. Their mind set and conscience is not of the standard we require.
But this is Theresa May’s responsibility. Her style of government is secretive, authoritarian, dismissive of public opinion and everything is played very close to her chest and as much behind closed doors as she can get away with. Her dictatorial, micro-managerial style at the Home Office is continuing in her role as PM and I believe it is unsustainable for the leader of our country. We need far more openness, interest in the people and a desire to inform rather than to conceal. I consider that Theresa May is incapable of these qualities.
She is the would-be promoter of thought crime, intensive snooping, censorship, rigid and inflexible laws, suppression of dissent, severe punishments and, as she has already demonstrated with asylum seekers, locking people up without trial. Her record on immigration, policing, drugs policy, the Passport Office, asylum, the Snooper’s Charter, the Border Force, her general authoritarian, secretive attitudes – she does not represent British values at all, only her own self-serving philosophy.
Theresa May is not a true Tory. The most important, fundamental Conservative principles are individual liberty, individual responsibility and small government. Mrs May is in opposition to these values, she is an Authoritarian Bureaucrat. All her polices are about a bigger state, interfering more and more with our freedoms, micro-managing every aspect of our lives, just as she did at the Home Office. Yet every single one of her policies has been a failure.
Mrs May has turned the government of Britain into government by her Home Office culture. Her successor, Amber Rudd is virtually a clone of herself and every Home Office minister seems to be cast from her mould: intolerant, careless of evidence and autocratic in style. It is government of and by the Authoritarian Bureaucrat and against the individual. Her position as PM is protected by the chaotic management of Brexit which she has overseen and a complete lack of any successor in the Conservative Party. I doubt that the terrible abuse of the Windrush generation is enough to bring her down but as the local elections approach it will be one of many factors which are leading inevitably to the wholesale rejection of her and her party by the electorate.
Misleading Parliament Again. Victoria Atkins, The Drugs Minister With A Family Cannabis Farm.
She’s back! Victoria Atkins MP is again engaged in answering parliamentary questions on cannabis for the UK government. Clearly this is wholly improper when she directly benefits from commercial production of cannabis.
Ms Atkins disappeared from public view for a few weeks after CLEAR revealed that her husband is growing 45 acres of cannabis under government licence while she argues against drugs regulation in Parliament. It was particularly notable that she was absent from the House of Commons during the recent urgent question debate on a medical cannabis licence for Alfie Dingley. Instead, her colleague Nick Hurd MP, ostensibly the Police Minister, was required to answer a question on drugs. Similarly, she was nowhere to be seen as Paul Flynn MP’s bill came up for debate, which sadly, as CLEAR had predicted, never took place.
It is simply extraordinary that the so-called Drugs Minister should duck and dive out of view when such issues of massive public interest hit the headlines. She has a massive conflict of interest and it is completely unacceptable for her to continue in her present role.
Yesterday, 7th March 2018, she answered a written question from Roger Godsiff, the Labour MP for Birmingham Hall Green.
“To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will assess the health and economic benefits of legalising cannabis for medical use.”
Ms Atkins answered:
“The World Health Organization’s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence has committed to reviewing the scheduling of cannabis under the United Nation’s 1961 Convention. This is due to consider the therapeutic use, as well as dependence and the potential to abuse constituent parts of cannabis. This is due in 2019 and we will await the outcome of this report before considering the next steps.”
This answer is at best disingenuous and misleading. Once the full facts are understood it is clear that it is deceptive and mendacious.
British Sugar’s giant greenhouse in Wissington, Norfolk where Victoria Atkins husband, Paul Kenward, grows cannabis
Ms Atkins husband, Paul Kenward, managing director of British Sugar, grows cannabis under contract to GW Pharmaceuticals for the production of medicine. Ms Atkins deceit is predicated on another deception promoted by the UK government that is some way or another, Sativex, GW’s cannabis medicine is not cannabis. GW is perfectly straightforward about this. Sativex is a whole plant cannabis extract adjusted by simple blending of two different strains to deliver 1:1 ratio of THC:CBD. It contains all the other cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids and other compounds present in the plants from which it is made. The government deception is to justify the issue of a marketing authorisation (MA) for Sativex by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) which is itself a deception. The MA was issued on the basis that Sativex is THC and CBD alone. The MHRA conveniently overlooks the hundreds of other ingredients and calls them “unspecified impurities”. The consequence of this is that, ludicrously, Sativex is a schedule 4 drug whilst any other form of cannabis remains schedule 1 and may not be prescribed
But the plot thickens. The deceit goes even deeper. It has been widely reported and British Sugar confirms that its grow is not for Sativex but for production of Epidiolex, the 98% cannabidiol (CBD) medicine that has not yet received an MA. If, as appears certain, this is the case then the British Sugar grow is unlawful under the declared policy of the government. Cannabis production licences (other than low-THC industrial hemp) can only be issued for “research or other special purposes“. They most certainly cannot be issued for the production of a medicine that is not yet authorised. Even if the British Sugar cannabis is low-THC, it is definitely not an approved EU industrial hemp strain and the purpose of its production is presently unlawful.
Ms Atkins through her husband is therefore engaged in the unlawful production of cannabis and is directly engaged in misleading Parliament as to government policy, the law and the medical value of cannabis. The World Health Organization story is a trick, a distraction, an excuse to divert Parliament from understanding the truth.
Ms Atkins conduct cannot be described in any other way except as corrupt. She is a disgrace as a minister of the Crown, to Parliament, to her profession as a barrister, to the Conservative Party, to her constituents in Louth and Horncastle and to the United Kingdom as a whole and all of its citizens. She is manifestly unfit for any public office.
Gavin Williamson Shouldn’t Resign, He Must be SACKED. #AndImATory
The disgusting abuse of Jeremy Corbyn by the immature young man who has been give the grave responsibility of running Britain’s defence is beyond redemption.
I am a Tory. I’m no longer a member of the Conservative Party and after 40 years of voting for it I shall never do so again until it turns away from its authoritarian and illiberal path. But I am a true Tory instead of the fake that inhabits 10, Downing Street and her sycophants and hangers on.
Similar smears about Corbyn’s efforts in talking to the IRA and Hamas by other Conservative politicians are also beneath contempt. If our senior politicians aren’t doing all they can to reach out to such organisations in peaceful dialogue then they are irresponsible. However, that the Defence Secretary demeans himself and his office with such puerile conduct requires firm action. It is horrifying that this idiot has our armed forces under his control. It would be like giving his allies in defaming Corbyn: Murdoch, Dacre and the Barclay Brothers, access to our weaponry.
Williamson is totally unsuitable for his role and he was well before these events. He should be a junior assistant at some obscure party branch where he can make his childish mistakes and clumsy errors without causing real harm. The combination of youthful arrogance, incompetence, poor judgement and a flappy mouth should now destroy his political career for good. Perhaps his chums in the Fleet Street Mafia can find something for him to do publishing more poison and abuse?
Before that he should be dragged through the courts and bankrupted. There is no defence of fair comment or honest opinion for his behaviour, not even against the leader of a political party. Indeed, Williamson’s behaviour is an argument for bringing such serious slander back into the criminal courts.
How Long Until This Wicked And Deranged Woman Steps Down?
Can you be deranged and still wicked, or does an unbalanced mind excuse immoral and harmful actions?
In the case of Theresa May there can be no excuse. Her wickedness is persistent and has been since 2010 when she entered government as Home Secretary. She refuses properly to consider the consequences of her actions. She refuses properly to consider expert advice and evidence. Her explanations of why she persists with damaging policies are at best disingenuous but more often deliberately deceptive. She runs everything on the basis of her personal opinions, prejudices and with a myopic determination that some mistake for strength but is actually bull-headed ignorance.
Her continual evasion of proper answers on NHS funding must be her most serious deception. Yes, the NHS may well be seeing more patients, performing more operations, receiving more funding every year but the gap between demand and delivery is widening ever further. Does she think the electorate is so stupid as to be taken in by her deflection and refusal to answer questions properly? Perhaps she does. Many politicians seem to think they can get away with such bluster and deceit and there is so much fatigue over the nonsense these people try to palm us off with that, to an extent, she is correct. The electorate is not provided with proper means to hold our politicians to account because of course it is politicians that would have to implement such reform.
She is exactly the same on nearly all issues. She has successfully buried the child sexual abuse scandal, the misconduct of the British press and the refusal to continue with the Leveson Inquiry, the criminal complicity of local and national government in the Grenfell Tower tragedy. She is deceit and untruth personified when it comes to the Carillion scandal and all aspects of government outsourcing which is a deeply corrupt policy, not in the interests of anyone except politicians. And what other leader anywhere in the world, apart from the murderous thug President Durterte of the Philippines, has recently called for a continuance of the war on drugs?
Like most UK voters I am tired, cynical and fed up about the behaviour of our politicians who are entirely self-regulating, self-serving and have no interest in making themselves properly accountable. They have all forgotten that they’re there to serve us and not the other way round.
At two periods in my life I have been a member of the Conservative Party but I fervently hope that at the next election the party receives the biggest drubbing ever in its history.
I am also now firmly of the opinion that religion can play no part in politics and any politician who calls on their religious faith as some sort of qualification for public office should be disbarred for life. I consider that people should be free to pursue whatever belief they wish as long as they do not impose on or affect others but to bring such delusion into any aspect of public life should result in summary dismissal. This is the 21st century. Any politician such as Theresa May who proclaims her faith as a factor in the way she works is not fit for public office.
Hopefully the one thing Theresa May has achieved is to make the Conservative Party unelectable for a very long time. Even better would be that is is destroyed and the centre right of UK politics has to rebuild itself under a new banner. I am not optimistic about a Labour government. I admire Corbyn even though I don’t agree with him about many policies but it is the Labour MPs who concern me, most of whom are exactly the same as Tories, only out for themselves.
Never since the time of Cromwell has this country been so ripe for revolution. I don’t expect it to happen imminently but unless the younger MPs can work together to reinvigorate our politics then I do believe Britain will continue to slide towards some sort of violent uprising. We cannot, we must not and we should not tolerate any longer the weak, ineffectual and corrupt politicians that have led our country for the last 30 years.
“The Settled View Of Ministers Is That The Medicinal Campaign Is Just An Excuse To Take Cannabis”.
These are the words of Sir Oliver Letwin, my MP, during a meeting with him just a few days ago.
To some this may be an astonishing revelation, to others it will be depressing confirmation that this bigoted and out-of-date view still persists. Anyone with even a modicum of knowledge will agree that it is deeply ignorant and in defiance of a vast quantity of scientific evidence.
This is the end point of my two and half years of discussion with Sir Oliver. He’s not currently a cabinet minster but through his 20 year parliamentary career he’s always been at the top of the Conservative Party: Shadow Home Secretary, Shadow Chancellor and then in government in 2010 elevated to the status of right hand man to David Cameron. As Minister for Government Policy and then Chancellor of The Duchy of Lancaster, he was been described as ‘the intellectual powerhouse of the Tory Party’ and as ‘number three in the government after Cameron and Osborne’.
So what goes through Oliver’s mind is a pretty good indication of how the Tory Party establishment thinks. I’m absolutely certain that what he has told me is exactly the present mindset of ministers from Theresa May down.
Back in 2015 Oliver wrote to George Freeman MP on my behalf, then the minister with responsibility for medicines. He’s also written to Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary and Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary. None of this correspondence has resulted in anything but the usual, anodyne words that are nothing but a brush off. I did think I was getting somewhere though when he told me he would establish with the Department of Health what its position was on the scientific evidence. Back came the answer that all the evidence had been considered, expert advice had been taken and the conclusion was that the risks of legalising for medicinal use would outweigh the benefits.
Now this didn’t make sense to me. I wanted to know what evidence and what experts. After half a dozen requests for this information and no response I submitted a Freedom of Information Request to the Department of Health. Eventually it was returned stating quite clearly that it had neither requested, received nor considered any evidence on medicinal cannabis. Coincidentally, just a few days later, Paul Flynn MP asked almost exactly the same question in Parliament and received the same answer. So I wrote to Oliver and said that either he had been misled or he was misleading me, which was it? It was at this point that he stopped replying to my emails.
After several months of repeated requests and no response I went direct to his parliamentary secretary and booked a surgery appointment to see him as a constituent. I was quite prepared to confront him face to face. I was amused to receive an email from Oliver the very same day in which he said that would reluctantly agree to see me on the subject “one last time”. So at the meeting his explanation was that it had all been a huge misunderstanding, he didn’t mean to suggest that any evidence had been examined, it was simply “the settled view of ministers is that the medicinal campaign is just an excuse to take cannabis”.
Such is the state of our so-called democracy and so-called evidence-based policy.
My Resignation From The Conservative Party.
From: Peter Reynolds
Sent: 31 August 2017 11:20
To: ‘Chris Loder’ <chairman@westdorsetconservatives.org.uk>
Cc: ‘LETWIN, Oliver’ <oliver.letwin.mp@parliament.uk>; ‘Antony Stanley’ <agent@westdorsetconservatives.org.uk>
Subject: My resignation from the Conservative Party
Dear Chris,
After the disastrous handling of the EU referendum result, the ludicrous decision to appoint one of the most incompetent and out-of-touch ministers as prime minister and her farcical election performance, I have been wrestling for some time as to whether to renew my membership. The Conservative Party is now far divorced from its fundamental principles of liberty and small government and Mrs May is an authoritarian bigot stuck in some 1950s delusion of what Britain is today.
Following her ridiculous announcement last night that she intends to stay on as leader I am now tendering my resignation forthwith. She has no mandate, no respect and in my view is held in utter contempt throughout the country. It is also self-evident that all other minsters are too weak, cowardly and neurotic about their own jobs to do anything to stop her.
Mrs May failed consistently over six years at the Home Office. She is a Remainer and should never have been permitted to lead the party or the country after the referendum result. Mrs May and all ministers failed entirely to plan for a leave vote and they have dithered, waffled, dodged and tripped up again and again, achieving absolutely nothing in the period since the result.
Brexit was a huge opportunity for the UK but the Conservative Party has wrecked it and damaged Britain irreparably in the process. If I had my way Mrs May would be led in chains out of Downing Street and placed in stocks in Parliament Square to endure the humiliation she so richly deserves.
I refer you to my article ‘Has There Ever Been A Worse UK Government Than This?’ which has produced the biggest response to anything I have ever written about politics in more than 30 years of journalism. It well sums up the tragic and diminished state in which she leaves our country.
https://peterreynolds.wordpress.com/2017/08/06/has-there-ever-been-a-worse-uk-government-than-this/
Yours sincerely,
Peter Reynolds
Has There Ever Been A Worse UK Government Than This?
I am a member of the Conservative Party – just. My annual subscription is due and I feel physically sick at the prospect of doing anything that is supportive of the appalling collection of third and fourth rates that presently sit round the cabinet table.
The Conservative Party has Lost Its Way. We Need To Get Back To Being Tories.
We need to re-focus on our fundamental principles: individual liberty, individual responsibility, small government, free markets, evidence-based policy and a benevolent, responsible, one-nation approach.
Let’s face it, we’ve had a privileged toff, little more than a ponce on the nation, who from his position of wealth found it very easy to impose austerity on people with whom he was totally out-of-touch. Throughout his political career he vacillated and dithered on policy because he has no principles except self-advancement. Now we have some fake Tory, an authoritarian bureaucrat with big government, nanny state instincts, daughter of a high Anglican priest stuck in some 195os delusion of what Britain is today.
Meanwhile, a socialist activist but a man with integrity, courage and vision has stolen our place. Jeremy Corbyn provides more leadership in the UK than the entire Conservative cabinet put together. He was magnificent at Glastonbury, seizing the hearts and minds of not just the young but the young at heart – seizing the future! Where is the Tory alternative? There is great excitement, belief and enthusiasm for Brexit, 17.4 million people voted for it! Where is the Conservative spokesperson passionately declaiming this? The party has been hijacked by Remainers, determined to undermine the referendum result, interested only in the ambitions and concerns of the Westminster Elite.
When I try to talk to my MP, Sir Oliver Letwin, formerly number three in Cameron’s cabinet, although I am talking to someone a few months younger than me, I feel I am talking to my father’s generation – and to someone particularly old-fashioned and out-of-touch. My local Conservative Party branch, charming though many of the members are, is like an episode of Last of the Summer Wine, as disconnected from the rest of the UK as Cameron is from anyone on less than £250k per annum. At 59, I’m a youngster.
It’s outrageous really that my party has got itself into such a state with years of weak opposition, popular support for non-socialist policies and, until Corbyn, an absence of effective alternative leadership. It’s nothing less than disastrous and unless we change now we are doomed. The membership is old and dying. If we don’t get a grip within five years we will be gone forever.
A Perfect Storm Of Failure, Corruption And Arrogance.
I’ve been fascinated by and active in politics since the late 1970s. Never in my lifetime have I seen such a combination of mistakes and scandalous cock-ups. Brexit has been sabotaged by dithering and delay – and I’m quite ready to believe this is a calculated deceit. With the BBC, the bankers and the Twitterati renewing Project Fear on a daily basis, is it any wonder that the going is tough? Cameron resigned because he said we needed a Leave supporter to take charge but instead we have a Remainer, one of the worst performing government ministers ever. How, after six years of persistent failure at the Home Office, she became PM is beyond belief but even more incredible is that after her terrible election performance she is still in No. 10. It is ridiculous!
The failures are all too easy to see but let’s list them to be certain that the huge scale of this crisis is understood.
Brexit – Total failure to plan, perhaps deliberately, best illustrated by the absurd spectacle, just last month, of the Home Office commissioning analysis of the economic and social contributions and costs of EU citizens in Britain. Surely something that should have been done years ago? Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have both proved themselves to be lacking in courage and leadership skills. The bumptious fool Dr Liam Fox, who does seem to stick to his principles on Brexit, shames us by his foreign adventures, recently praising the murdering thug President Duterte of the Philippines as having ‘shared values’ with Britain.
NHS – Persistent deceit from ministers, including the utterly in-credible Jeremy Hunt, about how much money in real terms the health service is receiving. Scandalous failure to keep multiple promises about mental health having parity with physical health.
Democracy – The UK’s system of government is now a joke compared to other modern democracies. Our electoral system is primitive. Conservative and Labour parties conspire to keep the system as it is because it keeps them both in power. It is obvious that we should be moving towards some form of proportional representation, online voting and a radical shake-up of the House of Lords. MPs also need to be much more accountable. The terrible murder of Jo Cox has let too many of them off the hook that the expenses scandal put them on. Recently they have been whining about the abuse they get online. In general they deserve it for the terrible job they are doing. Also, they get protection from the police for such abuse. The police are useless when it’s a member of the public under attack. We need a job description for MPs, rights for constituents and a complaints procedure with teeth.
Social policy – I am ashamed at how Conservative ministers in reality are indistinguishable from the populist caricature of the ‘arrogant, uncaring, effing Tories’. The Grenfell Tower tragedy encapsulates everything that is wrong with the high-handed view that they take of the people who pay their wages.
Justice – After food, shelter and health what is more important than justice? The destruction of legal aid is one of the most dreadful developments in my lifetime. All governments delight in making more and more law but what use is it if it cannot be enforced? There is no justice if it is not available to everyone. I am delighted at the Supreme Court’s ruling that makes legal aid available once again for employment tribunals Without it employment law was literally useless and thousands have been deprived of their rights. And for his disastrous, destructive, incompetent and thoroughly nasty attitude the man who defines injustice in modern Britain is Chris Grayling. No other minster has more disgraced our party. He is unfit to be in government and why he remains anywhere near ministerial office is unbelievable. No one individual better epitomises the nasty, arrogant, incompetent Tory.
Prisons – There is no greater truth than that in a free society we are defined by how we treat those we send to jail. This is a terrible condemnation of Britain. Our prison system is a production line for turning petty criminals into alienated, aggressive, violent repeat offenders. There is no one who deserves the additional punishments we impose on top of deprivation of liberty. I would make an exception for Chris Grayling who really should be made to experience a taste of his own medicine. The Netherlands is closing prisons because it doesn’t send enough people to jail. We should swallow our pride and copy their system exactly.
Technology – As the nation that has led the world in virtually all new technologies, we are now falling a long way behind. The government has failed miserably to give enough priority to high speed internet. We will never catch up now and our children and our businesses are forever disadvantaged. Progress is hampered in development of new energy sources, transport and infrastructure by bureaucracy, endless bickering between special interest groups and weak strategic management. The EU has magnified all these problems and prevented progress in GM foods and other technologies that are essential to our future.
Transport – With Chris Grayling at the helm and the farce that is HS2, there is no hope for a sensible transport strategy. I simply don’t buy the argument that a slightly faster journey time between north and south will do anything to create a better future. Train fares are ludicrously high. The conditions commuters are expected to travel under are ridiculous. The Southern Rail scandal is a microcosm of government incompetence and inaction. It should have been re-nationalised at least a year ago and there should be massive fines and penalties on those responsible for the chaos, including individuals. I see no conflict with Conservative principles in re-nationalising the whole network. The mess that has prevailed since privatisation could not be any worse and compare us with railway networks and service on the continent for a true picture of our national shame and decay.
Environment – Technology and transport converge with environmental policy and this is a difficult, challenging area of policy. What we need is strong leadership – no, not the empty claims of Mrs May but the real leadership of Mrs Thatcher. Even the despicable Tony Blair showed more leadership than we have had from any current Conservative politician. We need to take bold decisions and act on them. Ecology and controlling pollution must be a real priority but we must not be distracted by the greeny loons and their endless prevarication and delays. I have no objection to fracking as long as it is strictly regulated and in recent visits to Ireland I have seen how forests of wind turbines do not destroy wonderful countryside and can have their own beauty, just as we now revere Victorian aqueducts and civil engineering. Most of all though we should racing ahead with tidal power. As an island it has to be our future and its potential is unlimited.
Northern Ireland – I hope one of the by-products of Brexit will be a united Ireland. There is no longer a real majority of unionists in the six counties and it only ever existed because of immigrants from Scotland. The UK’s shameful history in Ireland places a heavy obligation on us. We are one and the same people and the damage inflicted by the English Parliament on our neighbours must be put right. We are far closer to the Irish than we are to the French, the Dutch or the Belgians. As independent nations, with Ulster properly restored, we could be closer than ever and if Ireland wishes to remain in the EU, we should respect that.
Drugs Policy – No policy better demonstrates the incompetence, prejudice, cowardice and corruption of government ministers from all parties. Deaths from drug overdose have reached an all time high. There has been an explosion in highly toxic new psychoactive substances and the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 has increased harms, deaths, associated crime and potency, exactly as was predicted, warnings the government chose to ignore. The government has refused to consider or take any expert advice on introducing legal access to medical cannabis, something that virtually all other modern democracies are moving forward on. Its continuing policy on cannabis defies scientific evidence and real-life experience from places where reform has been implemented. It also supports the criminal market, encourages street dealing, dangerous hidden cannabis farms and the production of poor quality, low-CBD, so-called ‘skunk’ cannabis.
Defence – A catalogue of cock-ups, dullards in charge and weak, indecisive leadership. In my view we should cancel the renewal of Trident and spend more on conventional weapons and defence measures which we may actually have to use. We should retain some battlefield nuclear weapons but invest more in our soldiers and their technology. We should also look after them far better when they leave the service
Foreign Affairs – The UK is the world superpower in ‘soft power’. Our culture, language, history give us more influence than any other nation and we should be proud to exercise it. We should have the courage to stand for our principles, independently of the USA and Europe. The £12 billion we give in international aid is far too much when there is real poverty at home but even if we halved the present budget we would still lead the world. We are responsible for the injustice perpetrated on the Palestinian people when we facilitated the seizure of their land in the 1940s. We should be standing up to Israel which has become an out-of-control monster. We created it and we must take responsibility for bringing it to order and helping it to live alongside its neighbours respectfully. Its conduct is unacceptable and we should be pursuing war crimes prosecutions against Netanyahu and many of his cronies.
Housing – The housing crisis needs a courageous, radical solution, not the pathetic, sticking plaster gimmicks and gestures that is all we have had for 50 years. Massive investment in social housing would create jobs and boost the economy all round. We shouldn’t hesitate. We shouldn’t fear a dramatic fall in house prices caused by massive extra supply. We have to get real and government must stop shirking its responsibility for a strategic role that only it can fill.
Boris is the only one with a brain
I have not yet decided whether I shall renew my membership. I’m not even sure if there is any future in the UK for me. Brexit was a great opportunity which has been sabotaged, perhaps fatally. Britain may well become a tourist destination, fascinating for the way such a small nation led the world for centuries. We are being led by weak, ineffectual, self-serving, out-of-touch and out-of date politicians. As the Conservative Party is dying, it is dragging Britain down with it.
UK Drugs Policy Equivalent To A Grenfell Tower Tragedy Every Fortnight, Yet Ministers Prescribe More Of the Same.
The scandal that is UK drugs policy deepened last month as the Home Office published what must be one of the most irresponsible government reports ever.
UK Drugs Policy Kills As Many People Every Fortnight
The 2017 Drug Strategy adds nothing of any significance to the same document published in 2010. Since then, deaths from drug overdose have reached an all time high of 2,479 (latest 2015 data). There has been an explosion in highly toxic new psychoactive substances and the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 has increased harms, deaths, associated crime and potency, exactly as was predicted, warnings the government chose to ignore. The government has refused to consider or take any expert advice on introducing legal access to medical cannabis, something that virtually all other modern democracies are moving forward on. Its continuing policy on cannabis defies scientific evidence and real-life experience from places where reform has been implemented. It also supports and encourages the criminal market, encourages street dealing, dangerous hidden cannabis farms and the production of poor quality, low-CBD, so-called ‘skunk’ cannabis.
Do not doubt that this dreadful toll of death could be drastically reduced, at least halved, by a more responsible, progressive and evidence-based policy. We should treat those with the disease of addiction humanely, not criminalising them for their drug use, prescribing pharmaceutical heroin where necessary, introducing drug consumption rooms and giving far more weight to harm reduction rather than the unrealistic and ideological pursuit of abstinence. That would deal with the problem of drug deaths but millions more could have their lives improved, billions in public expenditure could be saved and many divisions and causes of conflict in our society could be swept away by a new approach to drugs policy in general.
Sarah Newton MP, Minister of State, during the drugs debate
The subsequent drugs debate in Parliament exposed the brazen dishonesty and deceit of Home Office ministers. The home secretary, Amber Rudd, couldn’t be bothered to show up so it was left to Sarah Newton, MP. Her performance consisted only of lies, deceit and trickery, the like of which I have rarely seen before. For many years, the Home Office has been systematically misleading and misinforming the public about drugs but here was a minister, clearly, deliberately and without compunction, misleading Parliament. As with so much of the wickedness enforced by the Home Office, Ms Newton is now beyond redemption. There can be no doubt at all about the depth of her dishonesty and the effect on the lives of millions of people should, surely, amount to a very serious crime. Its consequences are far, far more serious than the failure of national and local government that led to the Grenfell Tower tragedy but they are caused by the same mindset of arrogance, prejudice and refusal to listen to expert evidence.
If there is any reason behind what comes out of the Home Office on drugs then it is most certainly corrupt. It may not be plain brown envelopes changing hands but at best it is negligence, failure to act responsibly and in the interests of the public. This is corruption and there is no doubt it is firmly embedded amongst Home Office civil servants. Their reputation is in the gutter: other government departments, universities and research institutions, drug licence applicants and holders, politicians – they all report stubborn, intransigent, uncooperative conduct. While giving evidence to a Parliamentary Committee a year or so ago, I was nervous about how trenchant was my criticism of the Home Office. I needn’t have been. Every member of the panel nodded and agreed with me that Home Office is impossible to deal with.
Nothing can absolve ministers of their responsibility but after nearly 40 years I have seen many of them come and go while the Home Office remains exactly the same. There is a culture amongst the civil service that resists any move towards any drug reform using whatever methods it deems necessary. This is nothing less than subversion of our democracy and it is senior civil servants engaged in this treachery.
There is blood on the hands of Sarah Newton, Amber Rudd and, of course, the former home secretary, Theresa May. That’s on the top of the misery, deprivation, violence, poverty, crime and ill health that their policies cause.
Change is inevitable but only after many more have died and others have had their lives blighted or ruined by this oppressive, unjust persecution. Although the drugs debate was once again sparsely attended, it was better than the last time the subject was discussed and more MPs from all parties are at last beginning to see the light. The Labour Party remains disgraced. Its record is even worse than the Conservatives and despite some positive words from Corbyn about medicinal cannabis, this is not reflected in policy and flatly contradicted by John McDonnell. Diane Abbott, as shadow home secretary, was truly pathetic in the debate and she offered no real opposition at all to the government.
From the campaign point of view it’s very disheartening but reformers should not despair. We are making steady progress, not just among MPs but also within the media. Even the Murdoch press, the Mail and all the tabloids have changed their position. The darkest time of the night is just before dawn and I do believe that shortly we will see the first glimmers of light. We are on the cusp of change and legal access to medical cannabis will almost certainly come first.
Peter Reynolds 