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Again from The Register: Government mulls mind expanding drugs, man

Government mulls mind expanding drugs, man

Soma time
By Chris Williams
Published Monday 5th June 2006 11:25 GMT
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New Labour's top science advisor has told government a new generation of brain function-enhancing pharmaceuticals are set to change how people live their lives over the next 20 years.

In a presentation to ministers at Downing Street, Sir David King said “recreational psychoactive substances” will be used by healthy people to improve their cognitive abilities, The Sunday Times reports.

Just what is "new generation" about this? And what is "brain function-enhancing"? Half a million clubbers a week apparently take one or two pills to enhance the sensitivity of their snog receptors. Or maybe the sort of brain function-enhancing that gave us Alice in Wonderland and Sherlock Holmes? Or that great DFD (Debate Function Disinhibitor) Tetrahydrocannabinol? Whilst millions' of eyes are opened to appreciate true beauty after a few shots of good old alcohol.

Better the devils we know, I say...:)

Technorati Tags: drugs laws

Probably the incident that set my mind against the war in Iraq was a day I watched Colin Powell have a stand up row with Hans Blix in the Security Council chamber. Hans Blix, for all I know a public servant who had few if any vested interest in anything other than peace, the great commission of the UN, was explaining how Saddam's ability to create weaponised bioldogical or chemical weapons had been virtually destroyed and that the constituent ingredients he may have had his hands on ten years previously would by then be next to useless.

In reply, Colon Peril insisted in some detail that Saddam had mobile weapons plants and the huge extent of the international threat he now posed. This despite himself having gone before the world just two short years previously alongside Ms Rice to explain that Saddam had no capability in 2001 even to project conventional force against his regional neighbours let alone produce biological or chemical weapons.

It sticks in my mind because it was an ugly and, frankly, undignified display by the old soldier. Blix had years of UN inspections on the ground to back up his calculations and Powell had, well, dodgy dossiers and bluster. One might have suspected at the time that Powell was putting his thin arguments almost under protest to fit the agenda.

So, it is with some grave concern that I read today:

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | US Iran report branded dishonest:

The UN nuclear watchdog has protested to the US government over a report on Iran's nuclear programme, calling it "erroneous" and "misleading".
In a leaked letter, the IAEA said a congressional report contained serious distortions of the agency's own findings on Iran's nuclear activity.

The IAEA also took "strong exception" to claims made over the removal of a senior safeguards inspector.

Apparently you can read the congressional report here and the UN letter here. I haven't done so yet, but the story is enough to give me the heebie-geebies. I have no doubt that we have to be wary of Iran's intentions, though on balance personally I do believe at the moment they are for civil nuclear technology. But one wonders whether the Great Satan has learned anything out of the shambles in Iraq and how they got there through what now seem like a tissue of lies and distortions.

Technorati Tags: christian right, imperialism, islam, religious wars

...imagining a Wireless Oxford.

I'm surprised at how good a service they offer on the Oxford Tube, wireless wise. I'm off to a day conference on "Wireless Cities" where I'll hear from other areas miles ahead of Oxford about how they plan to unwire their cities/districts, courtesy of the people that brought us the Oxfordshire Community Network, Synetrix.

EDIT:...but I'm absolutely appalled at the thought that most of my journey companions do this every day. I truly hope they are handsomely rewarded for this monumental waste of their lives...:)

Responding to Michael Gove's announcement on Tuesday that the Tories were going to support the idea of Community Land Trusts as a key part of housing policy Dan Rogerson's press release was out today:

Liberal Democrats : Tories are playing catch up on community land trusts - Rogerson:

Tories are playing catch up on community land trusts - Rogerson

4 January 2007

The Liberal Democrats today attacked the Conservative’s latest housing policy initiative as a desperate attempt to catch up with reality without offering a new vision. Liberal Democrat Housing Spokesperson, Dan Rogerson MP said:

"There’s no need to set up a taskforce to look at whether community land trusts can deliver affordable housing - they already are, and have been doing so for many years in the UK.

"The key issue is whether there is land available to make them work. One answer is to use surplus land held by Government departments such as the MoD, the Department of Health and English Partnerships.

"Another is to use the planning system to require developers to provide land that can then be handed over to the land trusts.

"For all of Mr Gove’s claims to be following in the footsteps of the 17th century Levellers, I can’t imagine he’ll be clearing the millionaires’ mansions off St George’s Hill in Weybridge, Surrey, where the Levellers’ first community land trust was set up."

The problem I have Dan, as a Lib Dem activist and Community Land Trust activist, is that two years ago we were all very excited about the party supporting CLTs in the Housing Policy paper. We had a conference at Warwick the following week and a magazine did the rounds with Charles Kennedy in full flow at conference on the cover setting out our Community Land Trust policy. But in those two years we have done absolutely nothing to back up our policy that I can see or hear, and I'm pretty well plugged into the CLT gossip.

Tell your local government planning and housing leaders that "there’s no need to...look at whether community land trusts can deliver affordable housing - they already are". You may be convinced but that hasn't filtered through to local policy making even in those local authorities we actually control. I know of one council with a "CLT officer" if you will, and another paid for out of housing pathfinder money or whatever it's called.

The plain fact is that Michael Gove on Tuesday did more to get CLTs in peoples' minds and on their lips than we have in the two years we've had the policy. Truth is, I never did really believe we understood the model when we adopted it as policy and have been shy in promoting it as a result. I have offered your team leader that I could go round to Lib Dem council groups to explain it to them if he thought it was worthwhile and it didn't even get a response.

Well guess what, tonight I've written to all the Tory group leaders in Oxfordshire offering to go and give them group briefings on it. When will we as a party learn that if we have good ideas, it's no use sitting back and waiting for one of the others to adopt it and then complain that they're johnny-come-latelies adopting a good policy that we first thought of?  We need to yell about such things with conviction as soon as we adopt them and be the obvious reason others adopt it too!

Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see the local MP speaking on the same platform at Burford as Billy Bragg and Tony Benn!