Posts Tagged ‘Ken Clarke’
Even When It’s Theresa May We Must Not Constrain Our PM From Taking Effective Military Action.
I’d prefer Theresa May wasn’t in charge of putting out her own recycling, let alone the defence of our nation but those MPs and commentators calling for a vote in Parliament before military action are misguided and foolish.
It’s absurd to expect any prime minster to go to Parliament before acting on what may be an immediate threat to our nation or, indeed, to human life elsewhere.
It’s difficult to think of anyone more unsuitable to have their finger ‘on the button’ than Theresa May. She’s a religious nutcase and shifts her position with the wind to suit her own political advantage. Nevertheless, we just have to accept the fact that for now she is prime minister and she has to have the authority to act.
Whether we should attack the Syria government is another matter. With the amount of disinformation coming from all sides it’s impossible for me to make a rational decision. I don’t trust the Russians at all but then neither do I trust Mrs May nor the totally incredible Boris Johnson whose bluster and exaggeration has finally destroyed any confidence I had in him.
There’s disinformation from all sides on Syria, on the Salisbury nerve agent attack, even this morning from the Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick, on gangsters and violent crime in London. The news is full of propaganda these days and both the BBC and the press are playing their own games. They’re all unreliable and untrustworthy.
What I am sure of is that our weak and pathetic MPs, the likes of Chuka Umunna and Ken Clarke, should have had the courage to deal with Assad back in 2013 when he first used chemical weapons and before Putin muscled in when the West was too timid to act. The last thing we need now is to let them delay and bicker and score party political points off each other.
The Real Prison Drugs Scandal
The real scandal about drugs in prison is that they’re even there in the first place. How do they get in? It’s prison staff of course.
That’s the uncomfortable truth which Ken Clarke and the government won’t talk about. Compared to the extraordinary security and penalties that prison visitors face, the screws have it easy. There’s an organised network at each prison, run by screws, for screws, supplying drugs to prisoners. Of course there is!
The even bigger scandal is that what used to be a cannabis culture, with prisoners alleviating their boredom with a relatively harmless joint, has become a health nightmare, with prison regulations forcing them into heroin.
You see Ken Clarke’s bright new ideas of drug free wings, testing and incentive regimes have been going on for more than 10 years already. I support Ken’s new ideas. I think he’s a breath of fresh air but this is just unhelpful propaganda. You see, prisoners stopped smoking cannabis when they started getting tested regularly. Evidence of cannabis remains in urine for up to 28 days, whereas heroin or cocaine washes through in 48 hours. Once the testing started and the prison officer-run cartels cottoned on, heroin began to flood our jails. A nightmare but true.
Of course, the fact that the drugs problem exists at all in prison is because it’s just a microcosm of society. If proper treatment was provided to those entering prison with a habit then it’s the perfect opportunity for them to clean up. If prohibition wasn’t creating a fantastically profitable black market then the drugs problem would gradually recede just as it would in society in general if we introduced fact and evidence-based regulation.
Prohibition doesn’t work. It just makes the problem worse.