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Whisky, and other spirits, specially distilled to take their alcohol (the chemical that provides the "high" - well, "low" actually in both cases!) content up from the usual 3-5% of beer to 40% or more, are dangerous.

Non sequitur? Indeed - we all know that you don't drink whisky by the pint by and large. But people still use spirits to get blotto as fast as they can on as little liquid as they can and for those people, yes, it is dangerous. Yet such a FUD mantra (fear, uncertainty and denial) is routinely trotted out by the twenty-first century's New Temperance League in their relentless attacks on other drugs, such as here at the First Post:

Cannabis growing hits a new high (was the pun intended I wonder?)

The plant most popular with illicit farmers is actually skunk, a hybrid cannabis plant specially bred to be more potent: whereas standard cannabis contains about one to five per cent of THC (tetrahydro- cannabinol - the chemical that provides the "high"), skunk can contain as much as 30 per cent THC, making it dangerous.

And yes, of course, like whisky when drunk by the pint it could be dangerous. Now of course, with the benefit of regulation, we know exactly what the alcohol content is of every alcoholic drink that is sold (except that scrumpy stuff that is still brewing when it hits your stomach!). But cannabis users do tend to know how to dose themselves - and you don't, indeed physically can't in most cases, sit there and smoke yourself comatose like people do with booze. Unlike with alcohol, there usually comes a point at which your body actually cannot take any more well before you're actually semi-conscious - you're "toked out" in the lingo - and you cannot for love nor money force yourself past that point, often even having to stub out a joint halfway through, so it seems much more self regulating than strong alcohol is where you can down a bottle of the stuff and pass out a few minutes later.

But all this FUD reminds me of the Untouchables and prohibition in the US. Of course in an underground market people produced the strongest most rancid hooch they could, because shipping bulk tankers of lite beer around the country was just not on. Prohibition didn't work then, so why do we think it should work now? And just like back then, there are other very real dangers - in cultivating the stronger stuff, in making it quickly and covertly, they use hydroponics with all sorts of chemicals that stick around after the plants are harvested. So not only are you consuming artificially strong stuff, but chemically tainted stuff as well. Double bad!

And thinking about strength of drugs they are fighting a losing battle on most of them - did you know, for example, that it is possible to concentrate the active ingredients of heroin to such an extent that you could pass around enough supply for an addict to live off for a month if he knew how to dilute it again properly under a postage stamp? How are you supposed to stop that sort of concentration getting past the authorities?

Conrad Russell suggested that when a law has a significant amount of the population either disregarding it or contemptuous of it, it has become de facto a bad law. The numbers of people that now appear to be involved in cannabis cultivation suggests this is now the case here if it wasn't already.

The best, nay the only way, to deal with this is to legalize and regulate it, and bugger the Temperance League ladies. Make sure that, as with tobacco and alcohol, everyone knows precisely how much of the active ingredient they are taking and then leave it up to individuals to decide whether they want a quick snifter of the strong stuff, or an evening's socializing with the old tongue loosener.

Technorati Tags: prohibition, liberty, drugs laws

Just 21% of Tory MPs put the environment as their top priority, compared with 75% of Lib Dem MPs and a mere 40% of Labour MPs, says a survey for House magazine highlighted by ConservativeHome.

So what is the Tory top priority? 81% said international security, 38% financial stability and 38% NHS privatisation reform. These are all of course valid political concerns, but putting them in that order proves a remarkable lack of understanding about the threats and opportunities environmental politics throws at us.

It seems to me that the environment, climate change, natural resource availability and consumption and so on, well, these are the major threats to international security facing us this century. And, whilst I would contend that most of our Lib Dem MPs have so far shown little understanding of this, things like the "green tax switch" could be a massive force for economic stability and equity, not just means to an environmental end.

Neither MI5 nor the Royal Navy can control the weather, or help ensure we don't have hundreds of millions of the world's coastal have-nots displaced and looking for a culprit amongst the haves of the world to blame for their plight. The City of London cannot keep us warm when Russia turns off the gas taps, and especially if it's under seven meters of water!

ConservativeHome concludes by suggesting that the new candidates selected for seats under Cameron's leadership will be more attuned to Cameron's priorities. Maybe, but who is selecting them? What priorities do they have? Is not the party membership likely to reflect those they already have representing them? They won't all be selecting flip-flop wearing trustafarian environmentalist milionnaires.

Technorati Tags: conservatives, Dave the chameleon, tories, environmental politics

I got an email late today from an LVT supporter saying that Nick Clegg had spoken about the role of LVT/SVR in enabling more affordable housing in a BBC panel discussion after the Queen's Speech today.

I've not been able to find it via the BBC website (it doesn't help not actually knowing what the program might have been - I'm guessing it was Daily Politics). So did anyone happen to see it and either point me to a "watch again" URL or explain what he said, specifically about LVT and housing. Because it would be quite significant since even LVT supporters in the higher echelons of the party have so far not been keen to discuss it as anything other than a taxation base and this could be the first time that someone has shown they understand it's got a whole greater relevance than that.

It's a great rarity for me to be heard praising any member of the dysfunctional "Wal-Mart family" but Cod taken off the shelves at Asda to preserve stocks is surely worth some. Well done ASDA.

Don't get me wrong, I love cod. But I love it too much to see the ugly great brutes (and especially the uglier little tyke young'uns now being taken) eradicated by over-fishing.

This reported in today's Oxford Mail:

Life Ban For Leys Thug (from thisisoxfordshire)



A violent thug has been banned from setting foot in Blackbird Leys for the rest of his life.

Magistrates slapped an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) on David Reid, 37, after hearing about 26 convictions for offences including theft, burglary and assault in the past 22 years.

Reid is banned from ever entering Blackbird Leys the first life-time ban for an area of Oxfordshire and will eventually be barred from entering Greater Leys, where he currently lives.

Now, I am sure that this chap has caused a huge amount of misery to other people in his time. And he clearly deserves some kind of punishment and management. But an ASBO? Banishing him from his home area, where his family still lives, for the rest of his life? It's positively mediaeval. What's next for the New Labour Big Brother? Public floggings? Using the perfectly good vegetables thrown out by Tesco for throwing at the prisoner in the local stocks? I appreciate he did not contest the order - though that's probably a reflection of the assistance available to people faced with this non-criminal sanction - but one does wonder whether he'll even understand it.

Even more importantly, does anyone in their right mind believe that the trouble this chap has created will stop because he leaves Greater Leys? No, it will no doubt go with him. That might help Greater Leys, but it's not going to help other areas to have him moved around. So, does he get another ASBO when he causes "sub-criminal" trouble in Northway? Then again in Barton, or wherever he finds himself next? He clearly can't help himself, but whether a series of threats like this is helping him, and therefore those who might have to come into contact with him in future, is extremely doubtful.

So what are the answers? Well, for a start, it was reported also that the magistrate heard that over that 22 year period Reid had picked up convictions carrying 20 years' worth of jail sentences. Has he served them all, in full? It's in cases like this that one is sorely tempted by the Californian idea of "three strikes and you're out" - in other words on the third offense you get life. I don't personally agree with that though, because it has ended up in some very petty criminals incarcerated for life little more than being "naughty boys".

But we have a system of license here. If you do not serve your entire sentence behind bars, which we presume this chap hasn't since he's had time in between sentences to run up 26 convictions, and you're allowed out on "license" it means you can go straight back inside to serve the rest of your original sentence as well as any new sentence for not keeping your nose out of trouble.

So why is a civil order being used here where serving his sentences out might be more appropriate? It is clear he has not been rehabilitated or reformed by his sentences yet, though I do as a good (sic!) Catholic firmly believe in the ability of every individual to be rehabilitated, to show genuine contrition. And this sort of thing clearly diminishes the threat of a civil order intended to curb anti-social but not quite criminal behaviour, or where a criminal conviction would be hard to obtain.

I've long wanted to rail against ASBOs, particularly in Oxford where they are clearly being used as a political tool. Labour's local election leaflets even proudly proclaim that "they" have doled out more ASBOs than any other town in the Thames Valley, as if it's some kind of league table to be proud of. And to hand down the same potential five year sentence to a 37 year old with a twenty year history of criminal offences against which convictions were secured and a bored teenager not getting enough attention at home, at school, not on the correct diet or whatever is just mad.

And I am particularly sad that my good friend, Mick McAndrews, standing for Labour (this time around) in Barton, has allowed his name to go on a leaflet promoting ASBOs, when he himself has realised they are not what is needed in many of the cases he has dealt with. There are some parts of town is which the most decent citizen might be hard pressed not to become terminally depressed and in some cases anti-social as a result. Depressing areas with housing that will never be "decent" except in the fairy tale world of John Prescott's housing team. If Labour were truly ambitious for Oxford they'd be finding ways of dealing with such endemic depression to give their residents some hope for the future. They're not depressing because of the people that are there, I hasten to add, but because homes fit for heroes are no longer even fit. And that responsibility lies firmly at the feet of housing authorities.

I forget the name of the comedienne woman on TV but with Labour in Oxford she was right: "don't abolish ASBOs, they're the only qualification some of these kids will get!" More appropriately, perhaps, "don't abolish ASBOs, it's the only league table a Labour run Oxford can top"!