Posts Tagged ‘UK’
Proposition 19. Just Say Now!
It looks as if, on 2nd November 2010, a small but very significant part of the world will at last come to its senses and legalise cannabis.
On that date, California voters look likely to approve Proposition 19 on the state-wide ballot that legalizes various marijuana-related activities, allows local governments to regulate these activities, permits local governments to impose and collect marijuana-related fees and taxes, and authorizes various criminal and civil penalties. Currently the polls show that about two-thirds of voters are in favour.
Over the age of 21 it will be legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and to cultivate an area of up to 25 sq ft on private property. The state estimates it will collect about £1.4 billion pa in new tax revenue. save $200 million pa in law enforcement costs and generate an additional $12 – $18 billion pa for California’s economy, with 60,000 to 110,000 new jobs. As the Americans say, with one of their most unpleasant expressions, “It’s a no brainer”.
In America they finally seem to have got past listening to the stupid scare stories and propaganda about the cannabis plant. The misinformation has ranged from the idea that marijuana makes white women promiscuous with black men to the suggestion that it causes psychosis in adolescents. Both of these ideas are as impossible to prove as each other. America also recognises the huge medicinal benefits of cannabis with medical marijuana legal in 14 states and planned in 15 more. As a recreational drug, cannabis use is almost never associated with the sort of anti-social behaviour that alcohol causes. It produces an essentially peaceful, happy and soporific effect.
Instead of insulting and ignoring their scientific experts as we do in the UK, Americans are now more interested in the facts and a pragmatic approach to drugs policy. The “war on drugs” is now universally recognised as having been an abject failure. We should, of course, have learned from the experience of alcohol prohibition in the early 20th century. That created the whole idea of gangsters and organised crime. We managed to repeat the same mistakes all over again with drugs.
In ironic appreciation of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say Nc” campaign, those in favour of Proposition 19 have adopted the slogan “Just Say Now”. In addition to the direct financial benefits, the state expects to be able to focus police priorities on violent crime, cut off funding to violent drug cartels and better protect children, road users, workers and patients from illegal, unregulated use.
The UK will eventually follow down this inevitable path. The only questions are how many lives will we ruin and how much time and money will we waste before we finally get there?
See here for the latest updates and news on Proposition 19.
Cameron Calls For An End To Prison Camp Gaza
A Worthy Leader
I am proud to see our Prime Minister speaking out unequivocally against the Israeli blockade and oppression of Gaza. See here.
As for Turkey, I agree that they should be welcomed as EU members. Perhaps the resistance from other parts of Europe is because they see the EU as a social union whereas even the europhiles in the UK still see it primarily as a trading partnership. There are social benefits to be gained though. Bringing an Islamic nation, just about the only Islamic democracy, into the EU could do wonders for mutual understanding and peace.
Turkey has been a staunch ally in Iraq and Afghanistan, something that must have been very difficult at times for its people to accept. It also looks likely to enjoy explosive economic growth in the next few years. We should welcome Turkey with open arms although there must be appropriate controls on immigration. Any good would be undone if we were to be inundated with Turkish immigrants.
Keir Starmer – The Next Lord Widgery?
No Better Than A Terrorist
The scandalous decision not to prosecute PC Simon Harwood over the death of Ian Tomlinson is reverberating right across the world.
British justice has become a laughing stock and our proud history of freedom, liberty and fairness is heaped with derision – and deservedly so
When the establishment needs to dissemble and misinform it calls on its tame lawyers and paper tiger figureheads. Keir Starmer, the DPP, is clearly angling for his peerage and his place on the government roster of professional liars, deceivers and propagandists.
In 1972, when British soldiers murdered protestors on the streets of Londonderry, they wheeled out Lord Widgery who produced a report of such crass dishonesty and fundamental deception that it took a further enquiry lasting 12 years and costing £200 million to expose it as nonsense.
When millions across the world have witnessed the unprovoked assault from behind on Ian Tomlinson, they have wheeled out Keir Starmer, another tame QC, to demonstrate a complete absence of integrity and deliver a deeply corrupt, manipulative and unforgivable decision not to prosecute.
In the last 50 years more than 1,000 people have died while in police custody in the UK but not a single policeman has been prosecuted.
Is it any wonder that we have pond life like Raoul Moat feted and worshipped by the underclass when they suffer under the yoke of police oppression, when they see no justice nor fairness nor hope?
The truth is that PC Simon Harwood and Raoul Moat are two peas from the same pod. Police websites, such as the notorious Inspector Gadget, reveal serving police officers’ attitudes just as perverse as those that supported the Raoul Moat Facebook page. The police are completely out of control, ineffective, mismanaged and corrupt.
It took 30 years for the Metropolitan Police to admit that one of its officers was responsible for the death of Blair Peach.
The suggestion from the extreme left is that we are being softened up and desensitised against a future where with swingeing public expenditure cuts we can expect to see riots in the streets and more police violence. I don’t buy this conspiracy theory but I am desperately worried for the future of British justice when men like Keir Starmer are in charge.
It isn’t just incompetence. It isn’t just misjudgement. There is clear intent to pervert the course of justice. He knew that the six month limit on bringing a charge of common assault was passing. He knew that the conflict between expert evidence was for a jury to determine. He knew that never was it more essential “in the public interest” for a prosecution to be brought.
Keir Starmer is every bit as dangerous to the fabric of our society as any terrorist or subversive. Look at how many lives Lord Widgery’s behaviour was responsible for. Look at how his lies prolonged the violence and fed the divisions within Northern Ireland. The same thing is happening all over again.
PC Simon Harwood, Raoul Moat, Keir Starmer. They are all the same. They are all a danger to society. They should all be behind bars.
“No More Obvious Waste” Than UK’s £19 Billion War On Drugs
A Wise Lady
In the House of Lords on 15th June 2010, Baroness Meacher announced a “radical shift of policy” from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The UN’s “war on drugs” has been an abject failure creating an illegal trade worth £320 billion and financing civil war in South America for the last 25 years. British soldiers die almost every day in Afghanistan fighting an enemy financed by the illegal opium trade.
The UK spends £19 billion annually on the costs of drug law enforcement.
According to Baroness Meacher there is “no more obvious waste” of public money. When will our leaders have the courage to grasp this nettle, to liberalise our pointless, self-defeating laws and free up billions of pounds of our money for more sensible purposes?
In addition, expert research indicates that a legalise, regulate and tax regime could contribute at least £6 billion annually in additional tax revenue. How can we afford to ignore these huge sums of money which we could make available to the country at little more than the stroke of a pen and with only a beneficial effect on the health of the nation?
Dying For A Stupid Law
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 launched only this morning is already inundated with proposals to legalise cannabis and to end the futile war on drugs. The site is crashing under the strain of a massive outcry from British people for the state to back off and give us back our freedoms.
We don’t just want our freedom back. We want our money back too.
Paradise Valley
The latest instalment in the extraordinary story of the most beautiful place on the planet is available here. Don’t miss it!
Heaven On Earth
Peter Reynolds 
A Fundamental Problem At The BBC
with 3 comments
I am very close to being the BBC’s biggest fan. It is a remarkable and entirely unique institution. Somehow it occupies a place between the state and the people which I can find no comparison for. It would be easy to define it as some sort of socialist idea but it is genuinely independent from the state. I do, however, have some concerns about its accountability. I am very concerned about the way it handles complaints.
No Complaints Accepted Here
I have grown up with the BBC and I trust it. In fact, I think that it’s done a better job of maintaining Britishness and values of integrity, tolerance, fairness and justice than any UK government of any political complexion. That’s why the curmudgeons in all political parties turn against it. I think Jeremy Hunt’s recent attacks and comments were particularly poorly judged. He hasn’t a had a good start in government at all has he?
I made a complaint to the BBC recently and I am very, very unhappy about the way it has been handled. The subject is not relevant here. I shall write about it in future but for now it would distract from my point. I am horrified to discover that the BBC does not handle complaints itself. They are outsourced to Capita in Belfast which describes itself as “the UK’s leading outsourcing company…at the leading edge of redefining and transforming services to the public.” For me that needs a huge pinch of salt, a mountain in fact and even then I’m choking on it.
Handling complaints should be at the very heart of an organisation. It is the essence of your brand. There is no more important management function. Contracting them out is an abdication of responsibility. More than that, it is a complete failure of integrity, a massive mistake. If an organisation is truly committed to meeting its customers’ needs it must be as close to them as possible. This irresponsibility strikes at the very heart of everything I value about the BBC. I am deeply disillusioned.
If this disastrous decision had resulted in a well administered service then that might be some consolation but not a bit of it. It is dreadful. Every bit as bad as any horror story you’ve heard about British Gas, BT or yes, even a bank. This is the British consumer experience at its very worst.
Not What It Used To Be
In sharp contrast to the rest of the BBC’s websites, try making a complaint online. It’s like something from the very early days of the internet with clumsy, badly aligned fields and an archaic feel. I almost expect to hear a modem whistling away in the background. From a complainant’s point of view it’s quite useless. You don’t get any option to save a copy of your complaint or email it to yourself. You don’t even get an acknowledgement once you’ve completed it so you’re left with a completely unsatisfactory feeling of uncertainty. Did they get it or not? Will I get a reply? When?
It gets worse. Complaints are lost. They don’t get answered at all. They certainly don’t get answered within the 10 working days promised. One answer I received was just laughable in its anodyne, crass simplicity. It was nothing more than an patronising acknowledgement of what I was “unhappy about”.
Useless
I could go on even further but I won’t. It does get even worse and it becomes embarrassingly so when Capita start to trot out the oldest excuse of all about “system problems”. It is an excruciatingly bad, defining example of appalling customer service. I’d say it takes the biscuit.
All this is the inevitable result of outsourcing your complaints procedure. That aspect of business that should be one of your most important tools. What’s worse is that Capita are absolutely useless at doing the job.
It is no exaggeration to say that, for me, this rocks the very foundations of everything I believed about the BBC to the very core. It is not the organisation I thought it was. I feel betrayed. I am “disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”. In fact, I am very, very, very disgusted of Weymouth, Dorset.
Written by Peter Reynolds
August 12, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Posted in Business, Consumerism, Politics, technology, television, The Media
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