Government Covers Up The Facts And Trys To Ban Honesty On Cannabis

Prof David Nutt is the former chief drugs adviser to government.  He was recently sacked by the home secretary for being honest.

When Gordon Brown came to power as Prime Minister he ordered a rethink and re-examination of the facts regarding the classification of Cannabis as class c from the previous level of class b in 2004. When the scientists reported the facts and gave their advice the government chose to totally ignore the advice because they felt they knew better.

The scientists had no axe to grind and after a lot of work, which is apparently unpaid, they produced a report that rated drugs according to their serious effects and they considered cannabis was correctly classified as class c.

The government, having asked for advice, chose to totally ignore it and proceed on their mission regardless. In a way this was not too dissimilar to the Iraq war where the government asked for the evidence for justifying the war and when they couldn’t find any they went ahead anyway. They clearly didn’t learn any lessons from that.

History tells us that when a government bans something the people want it breeds further problems for the future. Prohibition in America is widely considered to have been the catalyst to widespread crime in the US. Giving criminals a huge market for illegal products is a sure way to make crime a very successful business and that is what happened in the US.

Here in the UK we have draconian drug laws at the same time as we have an enormous demand from the public for leisure drugs. The laws make the drugs more expensive and provide a huge profit opportunity to the criminals and drug users are often willing to commit crime to pay for their drugs.

It all leads to a huge mess where people do not believe what the government says about anything because we know they can’t be trusted to be honest when it comes to the effects of drugs use, as the case of Professor Nutt being dismissed proves. The government doesn’t want to hear the truth and they don’t want us to know the truth either.

We have far higher crime than we need to have because of people stealing to fund their habit and we have the police tied up chasing small users of cannabis when they should be targeting serious criminals and harder and more dangerous drug dealing.

More honesty from this government seems unlikely to appear any day soon but sadly the Tories are just as bad and David Cameron took the view that government should tighten up the drug laws when the review was being considered.

We hear a lot from politicians saying they need to reconnect with the electorate, especially after the disaster of the MP expenses row. They could try being honest for a change and that would have a huge effect on the public moral and view of MP’s and goverment.

They should not be surprised by the rise in popularity of the BNP when they constantly demonstrate that governemt and parliament cannot be trusted. I want, and I believe most decent people want, government and political parties that can be trusted. We want honesty and while that may be a hard concept for politicians to understand or accept, until we begin to see signs of greater honesty and integrity we are likely to see growth in fringe parties that many people consider totally unacceptable.

If the major parties cannot be trusted to be honest with us what are we to do? How can we be expected to vote for them. The ball is in their court and it is up to them to demonstrate they can be trusted.

Sadly it seems likely they will continue to ignore facts and continue to be less than honest about them. Instead of educating the public with statements of the facts and warnings about the true effects of drug use they make things up. We have seen with the European constitutional changes, when they promise something in their manifesto at election time they are likely to ignore that commitment when it suits their purposes. Nobody should be surpised that politicians are not trusted. It is because we know they can’t be.

Gardian Gagged – Is This Democracy?

It is sometimes hard to remember that we live in a democracy. There are plenty of examples where government appears not to listen to public opinion and does whatever it wants regardless but at least we usually know what they have done.

The Guardian is reporting that it has been prevented from writing about a question due to be asked in the Houses of Parliament by a gagging order in which somebody, or some company, has got a court to prevent the newspaper reporting on what is happening in Parliament. No matter that you elect these people to act on your behalf. It seems that a company or individual is able to prevent us knowing what is being said.

The Guardian reports that:-

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.
The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

Members of Parliament are protected and can basically say whatever they want in Parliament without fear of prosecution but it does seem ridiculous that in a democracy we are prevented from knowing what they say.

Presumably we will eventually get to hear about it one way or another but this seems to stink whichever way you look at it.

** UPDATE **

The Guardian has just announced that the ban on publishing has been lifted since lawyers acting on behalf of clients have given up their attempts to prevent the reporting of Parliamentary business.

The Guardian now reports that the question to be asked in parliament is the following one from Labour MP Paul Farrelly:-

“To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.”

This will be a feather in the cap of Guido Fawkes who had correctly assumed this was the question that was being blocked from publication.here

Time For A Change On The TV Licence Fee?

When the tv licence fee was first introduced it made sense that only those privelidged few who could afford televisions should pay the licence fee but in this modern age where tv has become almost universal in evey home it seems madness to maintain an expensive to collect system for raising the finance to produce television programmes.

I agree with those who feel that since they are not interested in watching television they should not have to pay for the service but on the other hand it seems crazy that there is an expensive process of collecting licence fees from those who are liable to pay.

The cost of collecting the money could be cut at a stroke by the simple expedient of making a payment from tax revenues which would also save the majority of families who do currently pay the licence £140 per year and also prevent the ridiculous situation of people having to be sent to jail because they cannot afford the tv licence fee or the fines that are imposed if thaey are taken to court.