Peter Reynolds

The life and times of Peter Reynolds

Posts Tagged ‘deluded

Young Jimmy’s Jolly In Peru

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There’s all sorts of perks to being a government minister you know.  If you’re young Jimmy Brokenshire then as part of your courageous “war on drugs” you get an all-expenses paid trip to Peru to have a good laff at the poor sods who’ve got themselves jailed chasing the white lady.

Jimmy's Holiday Snaps

Apparently, most cocaine in Britain now comes from Peru rather than Columbia so, of course,  it was vital for young Jimmy to get on a plane and do some fact finding.   What I’d like to know is did he find anything of decent quality or is it all crap like it is on the mean streets of Britain?  Did he rub it on his gums, sniff a few lines and get partying or was it bubbling in a spoon and blazed on a big glass pipe to get him rampant and raving and even more dangerous than he is at home?

The terrible story of Nick Jones from West London can be seen here.  He was caught trying to bring back two kilos of Peruvian Flake.  Sure, I feel sorry for him but it’s an extremely high stakes game.  He knew full well what he was doing and chose to take the risk.   Jimmy went along to gloat and use the opportunity for some easy propaganda.  I think he must have still been cracked out though because he told the BBC,  “The liability that you will be caught is very, very high”.  Now that’s some malapropism.  Maybe he’s got some other “liability” or likelihood on his mind or maybe he really was “very, very high”.

It makes me sick that this vile, baby faced punk is frittering our money away on his unjustified jollies.  The Minister for Crime Prevention is a disgrace, a prohibitionist,  a propagandist and a dissembler.  Probably the most dangerous man in British politics, I’d rather see Nick Griffin at the Home Office than young Jimmy.   He couldn’t be worse.  He couldn’t be more poorly informed.  He couldn’t be more regressive or oppressive or smug and self-satisfied.

Jimmy Visits A Peruvian Prison

In my wildest fantasies, maybe someone will slip a couple of wraps in Jimmy’s pocket and he’ll get busted at Heathrow.  A few weeks in Brixton would do him the world of good before his chums pull strings to get him off.  He’d be a better person for it.  He might have to face up to some realities rather than the deluded, fantasy world in which he lives.

Alternatively, maybe he could do the decent thing and swop places with Nick Jones?  Now that would be truly useful.  I’d be the first to recommend him for a medal.  Then, in a few years time we could send someone out to gloat over him!

Well I can dream!

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

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?

Obama From Britain

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After Bush, to my knowledge, the worst US President ever, I was excited about the prospect of Hilary Clinton in the White House.  The election of Barack Obama was simply stunning.  For me, it rejuvenated the whole idea of America – the noble principles of the  Constitution, the idea that anyone can rise to the very top based on merit alone.  It updated that dream by transcending race, prejudice and history.

Ordinary And Extraordinary

As it happened, I  watched his inauguration with my parents.   I  wept at Obama’s words, at the huge symbolism of his achievement, at Jesse Jackson’s overwhelming moment.  My Mum & Dad said that it was like Kennedy was for their generation – the sense of new hope and optimism.  The same idea that makes me think of Churchill’s “broad sunlit uplands”.

So what’s going on now?  I ‘m sure I don’t understand a lot about American politics.  I can only see it from my perspective.  That means I get most of my news from the BBC.  I balance that with a daily trawl through the blogs and online newspapers on the issues that interest me.

In some ways I think the BBC is more British than Britain.  In fact, I trust the BBC more than I trust any politician.  Its standards and independence preserve our national integrity better than any political leader.

Going online gives me a broader view, often composed of ridiculous extremes as well as mainstream media.  There are so many highly literate, super clever bloggers who are completely deluded and beyond any reason.  Going online provides an overall summary of all different points of view and sources of information.

I think Obama is a fundamentally decent man.  There is a coterie of bloggers who believe he is a Chicago politician just the same as when Al Capone was in town.  I think he is bigger than that.

There is also a sisterhood (men and women) of Democrats, bitter supporters of Hilary, who are determined to undermine him.  Republicans say he is un-American and claim that he won the election through fraud.

I still have faith in the man.   In the horribly murky world of American politics I don’t think he would have risen to the top unless he was very special.  I detect authenticity.

The oil spill has been his greatest challenge. I feel that when he speaks for himself, from his heart, he speaks the truth.  When he is confused and manipulated by those around him he fails.  Many will say I am naive but how can anyone triumph without support?  We need leaders who can inspire, who can make us believe in them.

From the very beginning Obama has “extended the hand of friendship” towards Iran but it becomes clearer every day now that the current regime must be condemned without reservation.   He has stood up against Israel better than his predecessors and in the overall moral balance that was well overdue.  I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on the attempted kidnapping of Gary Mckinnon  It’s probably not high enough in his priorities to have had his proper consideration yet.

No one was more critical of Gordon Brown and his foolhardy, self-serving government than me but the way that some Americans criticise their leader horrifies me.  Some of the conspiracy theories and charges levelled against Obama are worse than those against Hitler or Mengele.  There are are so many complete nutters in America I really do wonder what they put in the water.

After re-consideration, from my British perspective, I still have faith in this extraordinary man.  I urge him to continue to have the courage of his convictions.  I wish he could put aside short term political considerations.  I think, almost whatever happens,  he will win a second term so he can afford to look at least six years in advance and ignore his critics.  I still believe in him.

Sex And The City

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I Don't Think Much Of Yours

The sight of these four pitifully deluded women on the sofa today promoting their new film…..eurrghh!  It has to be one of the most embarrassing things I have seen.  I saw the much-more-gorgeous-than-them Susanna Reid interviewing these hags on BBC Breakfast this morning.  I had to switch over urgently it was so excruciating.

The expression “mutton dressed as lamb” isn’t quite right.  It’s more like “sad fifty-something dressed as bad taste hooker”.  In fact, I thought the Bradford hookers also being interviewed today were much better looking.

How can these four preposterous women display themselves in such gaudy, tacky, cringeworthy fashion – fashion?  Do they think those ridiculous shoes, those absurd hairdos, those undignified dresses have any appeal at all?

This is about as far away from sexy as you can get.  It’s almost enough to make me start looking at boys!

Khamenei Defiles Islam

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An Evil Old Man

Evil Hypocrite

When you see an old man like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei talking such absolute drivel it is tempting to think that he is either senile or mad.  Clearly though, the truth is he is simply bad.  His conduct will do more to set back the cause of Islam than almost anything else.  This is why the name of Islam is shamed throughout the world.  If followers of the Prophet can not find some honest, intelligent and sincere spokesmen then their religion and the culture that surrounds it will be forever condemned as a medieval anachronism.

His speech today is a catastrophic mistake and misjudgment but it will lead to a better future.  I believe it will enrage the educated and intelligent people of Iran.  He obviously believes that the people are stupid and that they can be bullied or terrorised into accepting that the elections were fair and that there is no corruption.  It would be easier to claim that he is deluded but no, I think this man is simply evil and it would be in the best interest of all mankind, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, non-believer if he were gone.

Who will rid us of this turbulent priest?