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See, some people think I am over the top saying that supporters of drugs prohibition are complicit in the murder of the victims of the illegal drugs trade, but I'm not the only one...

Are you a death enabler?

"If you support drug prohibition policies that make black market drug sales profitable, then you are encouraging violent behavior by criminals and supporting the funding of terrorists. This directly results in the deaths of thousands.

You are a death enabler.

If you support drug war enforcement..."[continues]

Not surprisingly there's a reasonably well informed debate going on on Starkey's Last Word with Howard Marks on the show, Fraser Nelson from the Spectator - "I'm normally of a libertarian leaning but..." (you either are or you aren't IMHO) - has brought up some hackneyed cliches -

The illicit drugs market is not like the smuggling of tobacco:

He was worried that if you made drugs legal and controlled you would still have a huge amount of black market product like the fact that one in four packets of cigarettes are smuggled. The point is is that for the main part the smuggled tobacco products are legally produced and controlled, they're just avoiding the tax on them. If you could buy quality controlled Heroin from Beyer (who hold the trademark on the name incidentally) in small measured doses quality controlled and as "safe" as can be made, why would you ever go back to buying the Vim (sorry, Cif) cut crap sold out of the back of white BMWs? Even if you did have smuggled stuff to get round any tax measures imposed by government, it would be of the same quality as the legally sold and taxed stuff or they would not be able to sell it.

They've tried legalization in Alaska/Netherlands/Switzerland/wherever and it didn't work:

Erm, no, they didn't. They made possession and use a lesser or no offense, but acting alone in the world they could not get into the supply side and start controlling the quality and availability of supply. They practiced "tolerance" rather than full blown legalization with all the structures of the market opened up. It still did not make it socially acceptable to be a drug user and seek help for it when you needed it.

We're an island, it ought to be easy to cut off the supply:

Wrong. Especially with "harder" drugs. Such is the technology available to concentrate and then dilute drugs, especially heroin, that you can fit enough to supply an addict for a whole month under a postage stamp. How on earth are we supposed to police that? You don't have to ship it around in multi-billion dollar bundles on board someone's Falmouth registered yacht. The more we clamp down the more people work on the concentration technologies and the only thing that is likely to result is that people who don't know how to dilute properly will die.

The Oxford Mail/Times reports today that the New Westgate [shopping centre is..] Vital For City

Confidential documents have revealed that Oxford would suffer serious economic damage if a hash is made of the Westgate redevelopment.

Plans for the £300m scheme to transform the shopping centre are due to be considered by a specially-convened planning committee later this month.

But papers leaked to the Oxford Mail show real concern at the consequences of the project failing.

When I was on the council I was wary of confidential documents that only councillors were supposed to see. If one were leaked there was always an outrage and often a bit of a witch hunt to try to find out who did it if it weren't already obvious. But most of the time, they did not relate to the specific wellbeing of an officer, as perhaps would details of a pay or disciplinary issue, but that much wider catch-all of "protecting commercial confidentiality" for the council's business affairs.

Well bugger that. It sounds to me from what little is in the Oxford Mail report that this is exactly the sort of information that is needed to help inform the public debate about what will be a massive disruption to our city for many years and which we are now led to believe could have more devastating long term efects on not just the city council's finances, in which we all have an over-riding interest since it is our money they are looking after but the general economic wellbeing and vitality of Oxford's city centre.

So. What precisely was confidential about these reports that the Oxford Mail got hold of? Perhaps the cabinet member for a better value Oxford could shed some light?

This project is already contentious. Has been in the air for, what, six years now already and has yet even to get planning permission. Frankly, I'm sceptical about the whole thing still and I hope they don't roll over and accept an application just because it might prove least worst for the city council, but local people have got to have a fully informed debate, which now cannot happen before the planning hearing happens if there really are such far reaching potential consequences for the city.

Yes, it's not a planning matter. they can still give planning consent and then pull out of the contract as landowner, but that is the bit we, the people, need to give a steer to our servants in government on.

A few weeks ago this ten year old article by Fred E Folvary was brought to my attention. I thought I had blogged about it before, but in the light of what I said in 'Revolutionary Liberalism: 5 - The "Sovereign Individual"' the other day and the welter of stories of party funding corruption this week it's worth reprinting today I think:

Democracy Needs Reforming

by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor, The Progress Report

Ever since the 1996 elections, we have had wave after wave of revelations about improper or suspicious political campaign finances. Campaign contributions from Asia, soliciting contributions from government offices, overnight stays at the White House, diversion of "soft" money to political parties -- all this money sloshing and influence peddling points to the corruption of government, whether it was strictly legal or not.

The finance reform bill now being considered may be blocked by Democratic opposition to the "paycheck protection act" that would bar unions from using dues for political contributions without the members' approval. Even if it passes, the problem will remain. We've had campaign finance reforms every few years, and 114 votes on the issue by the Senate during the last ten years, but nothing really changes.

The basic problem is the way we elect our representatives. Our system is mass democracy: a large mass of voters elect a Congressman or Senator, or the President. The voters' don't know the candidate personally, so the candidate relies on advertising in the media to project a favorable image. This costs money, and the special interests are happy to contribute the funds.

No matter what laws are passed, the special interests will find ways around them, because of the tremendous gains they can get. Government financing of campaigns only gives more power to the two major parties, reducing even further the opportunity for smaller political parties to challenge the system and come up with new ideas. The problem is the corrupt incentives built into the system. To solve the problem, the whole voting system has to be changed.

Since the key problem is mass democracy, the only remedy is to change it to small-group democracy. Have every election take place in a small group. That would eliminate the need for mass media, and therefore the need for mass campaign funds, and thus the opportunity for special interests to buy out the election. Also, wealthy candidates would no longer have such an advantage.

But if a Congressional district has several hundred thousand people, how can we elect the representatives with small groups? The solution is multi-level voting. Divide cities and counties into small neighborhood districts. Each district elects a council. Then the council members elect one of their members to a higher- level council made up of a dozen neighborhood districts. These then elect members to the next higher level, and this continues on up to the representatives to the city council, state legislatures and Congress. One of the rules is that a lower-level council may recall a representative at any time if they are not satisfied.

Now you the voter are electing someone from your neighborhood for the neighborhood council, somebody you might know or easily have access to. Instead of mass mailings and TV commercials, the candidates would hold neighborhood meetings. All the higher-level elections would also be personal, since only a dozen or so councils would elect representatives to the next higher level council. The President himself would be elected by Congress, and the House of Representatives would only have, say, some 60 members instead of 435. And let's cut the Senate to 50 members, while we're at it. We want smaller groups, right?

Somebody might object that he or she wants to be able to elect the President directly. But one vote out of tens of millions does not amount to much. One vote in a neighborhood election of about 200 voters does count for something, plus your voice will be heard, and those who want to be representatives don't need to raise money.

This bottom-up multi-level voting system would also profoundly change the incentives for taxation. Power would shift dramatically to the neighborhood councils. Decentralized voting would lead to decentralized government and decentralized taxation. With local funding that gets sent to higher-levels of government, income and sales taxes would not longer be practical. Taxation would shift to real estate, especially to land, which does not flee when taxed.

Small-group democracy would be a radical change, but if we want to eliminate special-interest influence and the corruption of government, campaign-finance laws alone won't do it, because of the incentives built into the system. Either we change the voting system, or we will continue to let the special interests have their way.

...remember when policemen were people you felt you could go up to and ask for directions?

No longer it seems. In fact, if you have anything like a map with you, you could find yourself staying at Belmarsh (warning, watching the whole of this may cause you to damage your computer in anger!):

H/T Tristan

I am so glad Terence was filming this. Everyone should get the chance to see this kind of thing and have a real good think about the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" attitude that is allowing our country to become a fascist state. The ability to stop at random (I was going to say "take to one side", but clearly they're happy to do this in full view of the entire concourse), with no probable cause whatever, and humiliate them in order to show other passengers "look, we're doing something about your security" is utterly obnoxious. I must say, though, I am amazed that he was allowed to continue filming, considering all that has been going on about photography in public places.

Britain, like never before, needs Fourth Amendment rights enshrined in law: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."