Sunny Hundal, over at Labour Liberal Conspiracy reckons that the Sun abandoning the Labour party is playing into Labour's hands because... wait for it...

...the hierarchy feels less need now to constantly appease the Sun and keep it on side.

Many readers are also now likely to see its political coverage as coming from a partisan Tory perspective and therefore be more skeptical of its new reporting.

Pathetic. By alienating supporters, Labour gets close to winning. Labour have just given up, as has Liberal Conspiracy given up any pretence that it is anything other than a Labour shill site.

The Heresiarch deals with Roman Polanski, who doesn't even deny drugging then anally raping a thirteen year-old girl. Inexplicably the Political elites of Europe and the film glitterati are standing by their man. Laws only apply to little people, you see.

Remember the brewers of the Beer called "Tokyo" which was stronger than wine? Well as a result of the bruhaha, BrewDog have released a beer at 1.2% ABV which they've called "Nanny State". Old Holborn is impressed with the company's attitude.

John Redwood thinks that Brown's new Budget Law is a risible piece of legislation and one which he would be breaking now.

Not only does Labour think that everyone's a kiddy fiddler, but that looking after your friend's kid once in a while constitutes "Childminding for gain" if they reciprocate, and is against the law.

The Labour party's police state is starting to come apart at the seams as the people realise that the state, when it's given the power that New Labour has given it over the past 12 years, is not your friend.

If it seeks to regulate something as harmless... no... beneficial as a reciprocal arrangement between two mothers, and has made no secret of its desire to hound people for their vices - smoking and drinking - then they realise that perhaps these are not the people we want running the country because life will get ever greyer, duller and more rule-bound under them.

I'm not sure that the bureaucrats who drafted the abomination of a piece of legislation anticipated that some purse lipped curtain-twitcher could call state agents down upon a couple of friends looking after each other's kids. I'm sure the civil servant who wrote it thought that he or she was engaged in a piece of important child-safety legislation. But these laws are so poorly drafted that some shiny-arse draws up guidelines for their implementation which, essentially, become law. And people whose circumstances are not anticipated by the aforementioned shiny-arse, get prosecuted by Ofstead.

Heaven forbid people do something without being "registered".

For that is what an "activist state" means. That is what Labour is going on about in Brighton. They think that the state SHOULD be the arbiter of what is and is not acceptable. That people should submit their arrangements to the state beforehand for prior approval just in case you're in breech of some health 'n safety or child protection legislation.

So whilst the council jobsworths and union activists who mingle in the corridors at the Labour conference (those who could be bothered to turn up to this year's wake) might get misty-eyed at the great potential of the state to help those in need, the reality is the two working mums from Leicester who face prosecution for not registering as childminders. The reality is that anyone who helps their son's rugby club is assumed to be a paedophile unless otherwise proven. The reality is that more council employees are employed to snoop on what you put in your bin than seeing it emptied.

The state, to use a business phraseology which has been purloined without being understood by the current administration, needs to rationalise its operations. It has become a conglomerate. Unwieldy, attempting to manage the entire process from top to bottom. As a business model, it was made obsolete by the 1980's. Business since then have concentrated on working out what they do, and then doing it. Cadbury makes chocolate and sweets, Vodafone delivers mobile networks, BP makes and delivers fuel and so on. Government needs to defend the realm, ensure property rights and equalitiy in front of the law, provide a safety net for those unfortunates, build roads, provide street lighting and that is about it. It should emphatically not be interfering in a chap driving his son and a few team mates to a match, nor should it be interfering in the childcare arrangements of two working mothers looking after each others kids any more than BP should have an opinion on the colour of the car into which you're pumping fuel.

The state, under Labour has overreached itself, and like the Korean Chaebol, the Japanese Kieretsu, and British Leyland, only continue to function with tax-payer support. Well the tax payers can no longer be persuaded that they want more state in their lives, any more than they wanted to buy British Leyland's shitty cars. Which is why they are going to vote Conservative at the next election.

For every worthy state employee, the Doctors, Nurses, Policemen and Teachers who've been recruited under labour, there are a dozen others whose function is to box-tick, interfere, and generally prod their noses where it isn't wanted or needed. The state is not your friend, because most of it is made up of paper-shuffling, clipboard wielding functionaries whose job, vital to their mind of forms and black biro-ink, is to ensure that rules are drafed and then enforced. At all levels, from the police officer deciding what is and is not an important issue, to a couple of friends mutually looking after their kids, initiative is to be feared. Someone might not follow the rules.

The Childcare act 2006 is not the only badly drafted jobsworths' charter out there. As a result of Labour's 12 years of Legislative diahorreah, the statute book is littered with expamples of petty-minded laws whose function appears to be to give Labour's client state of prod-noses something to do. And that's before we go into the savage authoritarianism of Labour's terrorism legislation, which seems to be turned viciously against anyone who might not kowtow to authority with appropriate deference. It is miserable being a proud, independent-minded young man in Labour's Britain, where the police can and have, harassed one for "looking at them funny".

Everything you do is against some rule or other drafed by Labour's functionary state, and I cannot wait to start rolling it back. If Hannan and Carswell get their way, the Great Repeal Bill will clean up the most egregious of Labour's stupid legislative rusty arse-water in one go. And the best bit, if their display this week is anything to go by, Labour will be unable both spiritually and numerically to oppose the passage of this bill.

The Tories might not lead Britain to the promised land of Libertarianism, but at least they'll free schools, scrap ID cards and a handful of databases and remove some of the surveillance aparatus. There is plenty postive to vote for in the Conservative manifesto being written which has already been announced. And No-One can be as bad as Labour. I'd vote for a floating turd before I voted for the tired, authoritarian, unimaginative gits mouth-breathing in Brighton this week.

Is up, for the first time at James Higham's Nourishing Obscurity.

The three areas of endeavour in which women are paid more than men for equivalent work are Tennis, Modelling and Porn, and this is because we men like to look at pretty girls. Preferably naked, but a short skirt will do. Or one with all see-through bits like Jasper Conran's latest catwalk show.


Let's go back to sport. I don't know why women get offended by people choosing to watch pretty tennis players. The motivation for women to watch rugby always seems to involve the word "thighs". Do I feel objectified? I like pretty tennis players because I am biologically programmed to seek out healthy, youthful-looking women as mates. Girls like muscular Rugby players because they are programmed to seek out dominant, physically fit men to give their offspring the best genetic inheritance. A pretty face, and large size are some of the unfakable caricteristics with which men and women signal their biological fitness to each other. The fact is we are, as the Bloodhound gang pointed out, "nothing but Mammals". Men and women want to check each other out, and then get to grips with those they fancy. Because we like different characteristics in each other, men and women have evolved to please the opposite sex's predilections leading to sexual dimorphism.

You may not like me saying what I am about to say, but I do not like reading "men are redundant" in what is supposed to be Britain's paper of record. Wishful thinking based on better exam marks does not mean the hairy half of the human race is 'worthless'. Men are not redundant. Despite male performance in academia falling behind that of females, this can be put down to Girls' greater diligence, and the increase in coursework, which favours the 'female' way of doing things over exams, which in general favour boys.

Life is a little less fair, and more rewarding of risk-taking than school. Whatever the exam results, Men are largely responsible for the advances which have seen people's life expectancy at birth to reach 80, as for all their dominance at university, few Girls take a pure science. Name me one thing a woman has invented, Or one field of human endeavour in which a woman has blazed the trail. For every Marie Curie, there's a dozen men of greater achievement: Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton or Charles Darwin leap to mind. Would you pay to watch women play sport? Don't say 'yes', the audience figures on TV and in the stands shout otherwise.

These are facts. There are many reasons for this. Women are on average more risk averse, preferring the safe, if less remunerative job. Women are weaker, more prone to injury if subjected to physical exertion, and therefore aren't as much fun to watch competing. In any case, Women tend to be more consensual, preferring cooperation to vigorous debate, and tend to be less competitive. Which is why they rarely come up with ground-breaking innovation, which requires a bloody minded arrogance that you know best which is much more common in men. Naturally these characteristics are variables, there are women with male pattern behaviour, and vice versa, but there is no doubt where the mean lies, and this explains much of the difference in representation in Boardrooms, trading floors, politics and the upper echelons of professions. When you adjust for the fact that women on average prioritise job security, and do more part-time work, and above all, have and raise children the Gender pay gap becomes the motherhood pay gap. There is a no gender pay gap amongst the single, childless population.

The sisterhood will probably put all this down to "society imposing gender roles" or something, but there are important biological differences, which any attempt to explain away with social-science wishful thinking renders their entire political philosophy ridiculous; like Frances in The Life of Brian, it is pointless to fight for "Men's right to have children". Women have less testosterone, which makes men aggressive and take risks. Women are often observed to have lager Corpus Callosae which enable the two hemispheres of the brain to communicate and is responsible for Women's much vaunted inability to focus on one thing at a time ability to multitask. Women also have 2 copies of the X chromosome, whereas men have just one and the much smaller Y. This means men express many more recessive alleles, and therefore have greater phenotypic variety than women. The male normal distribution in many measures is platykurtic. Thus there are more male Geniuses, and more dunces, whilst the mean intelligence is the same for both genders. So perhaps we should not expect to see women equally represented in boardrooms and parliament, if society is, as it is supposed to be, meritocratic. There are just more remarkable (and remarkably stupid) men than women.

Then there's the undeniable fact of parturition. Women give birth and men generally don't. When they do, women more often than not want to nurture their offspring. Those years taken out of the workforce, and female preference for safer, less well paid work explain almost all of the Gender pay gap. Men, if they've been given a say by the mother of their child tend to feel the urge to provide. Married men with kids work harder and earn more than their single, childless peers. Which again leads us to the 'Men are redundant' meme. Are single mothers happy? No. It appears that women choosing to have children out of wedlock is a large contributory factor in women's happiness declining relative to men since the 1970s.

Most people need a significant other to be happy, and for the majority of people, that means someone of the opposite sex. Herein lies the problem - the opposite sex are space aliens, because as I outlined above, men and women are not the same. We should try to understand each other, and have sex rather than engage in a futile battle of the sexes. But accept that for all the necessary equality, men and women are likely to be very different. Complimentary, but different.

But there is the question of what, if anything public policy can do to address these issues. My solution is to allow genuine choice. There are options available to Men and Women which include Nuclear Families, Childlessness, Single Motherhood, Celibacy. The state should not be sanctioning people's life choices, and measuring things like the gender pay gap or the number of women in Board-rooms lead to measures to do something about it which may well be worse than the disease. As are policies like defining marriage so as to exclude homosexuals. Single or homosexual parents may not be ideal (and even that is debatable), but what is certain is that a loving home is better than state "care". Whenever the state intervenes in people's lives, it creates perverse incentives and misery.

Take parliament. There are many fewer women than men on the green benches. But fewer women put themselves forward than men, probably for reasons outlined above. If 80% of applicants for a job are men, then if everything else is equal you would expect 80% of the successful candidates to be men. By this measure men are discriminated AGAINST in politics. It is therefore reasonable to argue more women should be persuaded to apply for politics, in the interests of better representation. It is not reasonable to look at a very male House of Commons and cite this as evidence of discrimination. Just as the Labour party enshrines discrimination with all-woman shortlists, Harriet Harman, by comparing Male full time work with female part-time work to come up with a Gender pay gap of 17% is guilty of the abuse of statistics to justify what she already thinks is necessary: more anti-discrimination legislation.

I am not arguing for a return to traditional gender roles. Nor am I arguing that women are on average less able. Nor am I arguing that discrimination should be tolerated. Just that with the complexities involved it would be better from a public policy point of view if we were all treated as individual people, not put into gender boxes, by making the insane assumption that men will choose the same things in the same numbers as women.

Now overt discrimination is a thing of the past, better just to let people get on with their lives, without being told they're a failure if they want to bring up children, or take a safer, easier job for better quality of life. Or indeed if they work every hour of the day to provide for a family, or even buy a bigger car. How about just accepting that people whether they're men or women are the experts in the incentives in their own lives and react accordingly? Because if you're arguing for more state regulation, when you look at the evidence it rarely tells the story you wish to tell.

Charlotte Gore has an interesting post about why politicians cannot lead a debate. Bloggers are able to tell the truth as they see it,

On the other hand, there’s politicians.

With a few exceptions, they’re not free to talk openly and freely in public. They need to win elections so they need to avoid committing political suicide. The result is political dialogue that, I think, leaves a lot to desired. Anyone with even the most basic critical thinking skills can see that political communication and policy is dominated by rhetoric and fallacy, and this compounds the problems of trust in politics and politicians.

It especially means that politicians cannot question certain policies, and the War on Drugs is one of them. Again Charlotte identifies a reason which I've always called the "Daily Mail Line" but she describes as the

Argumentum Ad Maternitate (and i’d like to thank people on twitter for helping me with the latin on that one). This is the belief that mothers are always right, so the opinions of “Mothers Against Drugs” (or MAD for short) for example, seems to take priority over everyone else when drug policy is being drawn up… and I think that’s damaging and unhealthy for democracy in general and pretty close to rule by lynch mob.

This is not grown-up debate

The miserable reality here is that the three main political parties are holding a proverbial gun to each other’s heads. As long as we all follow the usual populist authoritarian nanny state tabloid agenda, everything’s fine… but it’s not fine, is it?

She then goes on to lament the Liberal Democrats record, many of whose politicians have stood up and questioned the War on Drugs, but it's always been in terms of decriminalisation. No-one it seems has the guts to stand up and say what needs to be said.

• The war on drugs is lost
• "Drugs" are available on our streets despite prohibition, which is incapable of any more than a temporary local disruption of supply.
• Decriminalisation of users leaves the supply chain of the worlds most profitable industry in the hands of criminals
• Therefore the supply, possession and consumption of drugs needs to be legalised.

The problems faced by anyone advocating removal of prohibition are practical, personal as well as political. This is because the first overdose from legal heroin will have the mother of the 'Victim' all over the Sun blaming the politician personally for piloting the legislation through. This person will become the face, the martyr of the campaign to re-prohibit drugs.

Vested interests in Law-Enforcement will make sure that the statistics show that more people are using, whether or not this is the case, which will again be campaign fodder for tabloids.

It is likely that the first country to end prohibition will become a distribution hub, as was Amsterdam's experience, much to the annoyance of other countries, rendering its citizens more likley to have a DEA hand up their bum should they try to fly to the USA.

And I could go on.

But these are problems with the psychology of prohibition, and this does not make it any less the case that the war on drugs is a disaster for us in the rich world, for people who take drugs and most of all for the countries where it's grown. The war on Drugs: corrupting police forces world-wide since 1882.

Counting Cats has some amusing quotes from physicists, which brought me to mind of another comment from Richard P Feynman, one of the greatest theoretical Physicists of the 20th Century, who would surely be amused by the world now.

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

The current US national debt now stands at $1.2 x 10^12. an order of magnitude higher than when the great man said it back in the 1980 - a decade of fiscal responsibility compared to the Bush/Obama/Brown lunacy...

Is up at the Wardman Wire, and apparently it's the Lib-Dem Nazi edition...

Thankfully Baroness Scotland is going to lose her job, not just because she broke the law, but because she's been exposed as a expences cheat too, to the tune of £170,000. Fun though it is watching the New Labour nomenklature self immolate, I think though we should spare a thought for the unfortunate Tongan lady, who is going to get dragged through the British press (which is in itself a crime against humanity) for having the temerity to come here and work. She was doing work that the British underclass would turn up their noses at, even if one would let them unsupervised in your home. For this 'crime' she had her door smashed in by 'officials' from the border agency, and have paparazzi stalk her every move. I hope the Sun pay her well for the story.

She wanted to work, and indeed pay tax. Which makes Loloahi Tapui a more valuable citizen than 15% of the native-born population who sit on their fat arses watching Jeremy Kyle and reading the Sun (those who can actually read), and who don't get their doors kicked in by uniformed thugs in the pay of the state, which instead subsidises their idleness through a complex smorgasbord of 51 different benefits which ensure that no-one born in the UK has to work if they don't want to, and indeed get punished with marginal withdrawal rates of 90% should they even try.

Borders are an affront to human dignity, as is the welfare state.

Update: Here's the ever lovely Sun's article. Apparently being Bisexual is a "Sordid sex secret"

Nothing gets a good frothing comment stream going better than the "war" between motorists and cyclists, and right on cue, up pops another anti-motorist piece of greenwash - the plan to assume motorists' guilt in collisions. I am both a motorist and a cyclist, and as the latter, most definitely a combatant in the war 'twixt the twain. DK lets forth with his normal invective. And I agree with him, in part, because it is just not acceptable that someone be held responsible for incidents that are not their fault. But his normally forensic in his debunking of idiocy however, he accepts that cyclists cause accidents by running red lights.


They don't. I've always said that the cyclists who get killed are the ones who meekly observe the rules of the road. The spitting rage that motorists feel towards cyclists making progress towards their destination whilst sitting in an entirely unnecessary queue is motivated by jealousy, and nothing else.

The fact is when in traffic, incentives matter. In collisions between a car and a bike, the most dangerous is when the car hits the cyclist from behind (the most common fatal accident for a cyclist outside towns), and the vehicle coming from behind is already assumed to be at fault for insurance purposes. On a country road, it is difficult to imagine an accident where the cyclist was at fault because they're so much slower. The other lethal accident is lorries turning left and crushing a cyclist against railings - and this is usually an inexperienced cyclist, meekly obeying the lights. Had (and it is usually a) she run the lights, she would have lived. Had he or she been taught about blind spots she might have been in the right place - instead all we get is constant exhortations to commit suicide by obeying red lights. The third bane of the London cyclist is the Taxi U-turn... apparently at random. The answer is to give dangerous vehicles - taxis, lorries, BMWs, anything white and van shaped, and anything driven by a woman* a wide berth and assume it to be driven by an incompetent.

In my experience, too many motorists drive like idiots and do not understand how vulnerable a cyclist is. In collisions, the cyclist is responsible for fewer than 10% of the accidents which get reported. This does not mean that all cyclists are paragons of virtue, rather the result of a cyclist colliding with a vehicle results in no damage to the vehicle and lots of claret from the cyclist's head, both parties leave chastened, and officialdom is not invoked.

It's not who's to blame - it's the consequences. The consequences of careless cycling are SO much lower to others than the consequences of careless driving.

I don't support this ridiculous idea to assume motorists' fault, because it addresses a symptom and not the cause of the problem, which is that the motorist is too burdened with information and measures to control his speed and direction that he gets stressed and frustrated. In taking it out on the right-hand pedal, he ends up making life risky for more vulnerable road users. In experiments in the UK and Europe, towns which have shared space have seen collisions drop. With little road furniture corralling motorists, cyclists and pedestrians to compete for the same, limited space, they are free to move in a collaborative way through the environment.

For the evidence is counter intuitive. Cycle lanes, unless physically separated by curbs mean the motorist psychologically assumes that the cyclist is in "his" space and feels free to use theirs. This means the car passes the cyclist closer and faster than without the cycle lane. Likewise helmets make the motorist feel less guilty about driving close and fast to the cyclist. Cycle lanes and helmets make the cyclist less safe in urban cycling.

By removing barriers, traffic lights, curbs and most signs except telling directions, congestion is eased, and stress for all parties is reduced. You don't need to demonise motorists or cyclists. You need to treat them both like free people, not competing tribes.

*Anecdotal evidence. I've only ever been hit by female motorists.

Is guilty not only of breaking the law, by employing someone guilty of not having the correct paperwork, but also guilty of ensuring that law was passed through parliament. Will she be prosecuted? Probably not, because she's part of the New Labour Hierarchy. Compare her treatment with that of a farmer accused of the same offence. Over to the Englishman's Castle...

The Heresiarch puts it well: She should be prosecuted...

...Not because she's guilty of knowingly employing an illegal immigrant. But because she's guilty of knowingly passing the ridiculous law that she innocently violated. Along, of course, with many other laws that are even worse.

Of course immigration law is a gross affront to human dignity, and it seems only desires to prosecute those immigrants who are prepared to work, often doing the jobs our home-grown chavs turn their well-fed noses up at, choosing instead to watch Jeremy Kyle.

It is the welfare state which creates the economic pull, by leaving these jobs undone, by preventing people taking casual labour (because the bureaucracy of welfare is so onerous that people don't want to risk their benefit income on a short-term job). The asylum-seeker is not allowed to work, instead we feed and house him at the public expense. Other classes of immigrant are only allowed to work under specific criteria for "sponsor companies" or as part of a student visa. The system is cruel, capricious, complex and bureaucratic, and designed to generate fine income rather than ensure fair and reasonable immigration for the benefit of Britain and the people who want to come here.

Immigration should be free, but no public money should be given to immigrants till they've paid tax for a few years. Simple... only those who can and will support themselves will come here. Then innocent farmers and barristers will not be prosecuted for employing someone who doesn't have the right paperwork. Perhaps the ancialiary benefit is that potential terrorists will be too busy earning a crust in a society which doesn't value a Madrassa education, to foment jihad.

You'd have thought that he would have been inured to pain from years of wearing high heels, but Eddie Izzard lost his toenails running 43 marathons. Having done one Marathon, I'm seriously impressed. His prize: to meet Gordon Brown. Poor fucker.

Like Clyde the cat, who was on the run and managed to cover 2400 miles before being recaptured and returned to some Australians.

All that effort, running thousands of miles. For nothing.

If Jimmy Carter says it, it ain't so.

It's a pretty good rule of thumb.

Incidentally, while I write this, an American Blogger has just opined that "no American president has been likened to Hitler" whilst being interviewed sky news. Which is just wrong. The hysteria with which Democrats have accused critics of their great hope of "racism" only matches that with which they criticised Bush. Hysterical left-wing shrieking smacks of desperation at the speed at which Obama's approval ratings are falling. The people know in the US, like here, that Governments are going to have to do less, and the era of Big Government is over: an era that the current president represents as the last hurrah.

The Tea Party protesters useful idiots don't know it yet, but the future is bright. The Future is libertarian.

*Distant Challenger.

Lest we forget, the Khmer Rouge trials are finishing in Pnom Penh today. Though that regime is an extreme example, it is where things can go when the state considers people guilty unless proven innocent, and considers the collective more important than the individual.

It could never happen here? Well perhaps finally the public have woken up to their lost civil liberties - but it took the Government announcing that it considers every adult a paedophile unless proven otherwise, to show me that the crimes of Kiang Geuk Eav, Alias 'Duch' head of Pnom Penh's notorious Tuol Sleng gaol probably couldn't happen here. For this, we should be thankful: for the first time in a decade, I'm convinced that the British People may have finally woken up to the statist hell into which they were sleep-walking.

Eternal Vigilance is the price of liberty, said Wendell Phillips. And it is clear from history that it is the socialists (Including National Socialists) we must watch, for they dress their desired tyranny as 'management', their envy and spite as 'concern for the poor', and excuse their prejudices as reasoned policies.

Several Members of the British Cabinet were members of the communist parties when their fellow communists were smashing babies' heads against Chankiri trees in Democratic Kampuchea, yet they thought American foreign policy a bigger issue.

In 2005, the sale and possession of fresh mushrooms containing Psilocybin became an offence - the fresh shrooms are now a Class A drug. Before the "clarification" of the law, only dried or otherwise prepared mushrooms were outlawed. This was in response to the "problem" of an increase in the number of shops selling these mushrooms: usually Psilocybe cubensis. Did anyone notice an increase in the number of hippies wandering around, giggling during 2004? Was there a rush of admissions to hospital with magic mushroom poisoning in that year? Were shroomed-up thugs raping grannies, and stealing their pension-books to get their next fix of fungus?

No.

There was no reason for these mushrooms to be made illegal, except the Government wanted to be seen to be "tough on drugs", and to send a message.

Naturally, there are a number of exceptions. Psilocybe semilancea grows on most sports pitches and sheep 'fertilised' farmland, and is extremely common in the UK. Possession is legal if it is merely growing in your garden. It is also legal if you can "prove" your ignorance and can argue that you were looking for edible mushrooms. As a result of these exceptions, there has never been a successful prosecution for possession of this mushroom: Frankly the police have better things to do than arrest people for a crime that has almost no chance of reaching a positive result and is as close to victimless as it is possible to get.

The other main effect is that it is now impossible to buy Psilocybe genus mushrooms, but Amanita species remain legal, the most popular of these is Amanita muscaria. These are mildly psychotropic but are also mildly poisonous, and there have been several admissions to hospital, though no deaths... yet. People are still trying to get high, but are doing so with more poisonous species. Whilst the Fly Agaric pictured above is unlikely to kill you, it does have some much, much more dangerous cousins, with which it shares a number of characteristics, especially in early stages of fruiting. It is only a matter of time before some young psychonaut mistakes an immature A. muscaria for A. phalloides a species also appropriately known as the death cap.

Nice one, Government.

Whilst I hold no great regard for Mad Nad Dorries, with her anti-abortionist religious enthusiasm who appears to be not at home to Mr & Mrs Logic, I would still vote for her, even though I know her likely Labour opponent and know him to be a good bloke. I've agonised about writing this post, because I like him. Nothing I'm saying here I haven't said to his face, and he knows my view that Labour are vermin.

My problem is that he's not a socialist. Nor is he a Labour person. He's not even left-wing. Indeed, politically he's a low Tory, Daily Mail authoritarian who's served as a soldier in Iraq. He's in favour of ID cards and CCTV, but thinks the tax bill is too high, but also thinks the state is the right means to deliver services. Politically, he sits in exactly the same socially authoritarian, economically unimaginative place as his opponent and like Her, usually agrees with Sun Editorials. I think he may have even said "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear". This is not about whether I agree with him politically; he's much more mainstream than I am. It is about the kind of people who see Politics as a career.

So Given that David Reeves has almost nothing in common with Labour activists, and espouses an alien political philosophy to that of the Labour Movement, what the fuck is he doing standing for the Labour party? Well this is the question I put to him in the bar last year. And the answer was pure New Labour. He's in his 20's and he's made a low calculation about the political pendulum, and by the time he's in his political prime, in 15 years or so, he should have fought an election or two and be in line for a safe seat or already have one, and thence get himself into Government. The Labour party is the vehicle for his political ambitions.

Don't get me wrong. David is a good guy and a good man-manager. He's Decent honest and hard working and will make a fine constituency MP somewhere, if he makes it. It's just that he's chosen the wrong party for the wrong reason.

Without an idealogical underpinning - Labour's idiotic socialism, Conservative patriotism or Liberal... urm... thingy... um... y'know..., then the party will find it difficult to reconnect with its core. Dave Reeves is part of Labour's problem, as are most of the Authoritarian blairites - they are managerialists who see the party, and by extension the activists as mere vehicles for their own ambition. Ideology does not come into it. The labour membership and the trades unions will not recognise the party if it is not speaking its language. They will drift off to other parties or single issue groups and the labour party will become an irrelevance and people like Dave will not be able to find anyone to knock on doors for them.

The Tories in opposition maintained their structure because most activists recognised their MP or candidate as someone like them, and by and large, the MPs continued to argue for lower taxation, less European legislation and against the new housing estate on the edge of Town. There was no other party making theses noises and the party survived. Dave is not like the activists, and does not share a single idealogical thought with them besides the tribal marker: Labour.

It won't be enough.

Passengers on the idealogical movement like Dave, and Luke Akehurst will condemn Labour to the fate which befel the Liberals in the 20's: Oblivion. If you want to know what Labour's saviours look like, they look like this, or even this.

Is up over at Philobiblon

Every now and again, when I talk to coppers about drugs (socially, not professionally), I have noticed that the older the cop, the more likely he is to favour legalisation.
My rationale is this: young men think they can change the world. Old men know they can't. Minds can be changed - the older the cop, the more likely he is to have been exposed to logic, as opposed to cop-school brain-washing and for this logic to tally with his experience on the streets. Especially powerful is the argument that illegality of addictive drugs CAUSES demand because of the need of users to become dealers, thereby creating an incentive to recruit new users; drug prohibition ensures a highly efficient pyramid marketing scheme for users, which does not exist in a legal supply chain.

Ask yourself some questions: the answers are often counter intuitive.

1) Why do people inject mucky, cut heroin using AIDs infected needles? Because they don't have access to medical-grade diamorphine or clean needles.

2) Why is Marijuana illegal? Because black people and hippies smoked it and 1950's America did not like Negroes and those damn nigger-loving beatnicks. Did you know there was a specific exception for 'communion wine' in the 18th Ammendment, which meant that wine, as drunk by senators, congressmen etc, was essentially legal? Wine consumption went up in the USA during prohibition, which kickstarted the American wine industry. The same hypocrisy informs drug prohibition When the kind of bollocks found here masquerades as "facts about drugs" but are far from reality of most people's experience, it discredits the whole edifice of "just say no, mkay"

2) How many heroin/morphine addicts were there before prohibition compared to now? The answer is not very many - a few thousand heroin users at most in 1967, Comapared to something measurable in percentages of the population, several hundred thousand now. Though predictably the ONS does not carry the data which means either a) the evidence was not important in the decision to criminalise drugs or b) the evidence would be embarassing to the Government. Reading this, both a) and b) appear to be the case. (If anyone can point me in the direction of reliable statistics going back beyond 1967 for the number of drug users, I would be eternally grateful.)

3) Why are addicts ill? Because they don't know what they're injecting, and whatever they are, is not sterile.

4) Why do addicts steal/street walk/deal? because drugs are more expensive than they need to be, and because of (3) they are more likely to be too ill to work, and without work, there's no incentive to restrain their habit.

5) Will you take heroin or crack, which are both a bit moreish to say the least, were they to become legal? It is likely that the answer to this question is 'no'. Everyone who is likely to want to try it has already tried it, so prohibition does not even function as a deterrent. This is not my conclusion: it's Professor Nutt's, who's crossed the path of this blog before.

6) Ignore the effects on "society", or the "dangers" of drug use for one minute, because most of those problems are caused by prohibition... what is wrong with someone getting high? All they will do is roll around and giggle. The answer is 'none' because it is not in any substantive or significant way different from being drunk, which however much you disapprove, remains legal.

Think about that one for a second and the logic of prohibition falls flat on its face.
The USA spends $70 billion dollars a year, a sum equivalent to (for example) the entire UK defence budget on trying to prevent drugs getting into America. In doing so, they gift profits of a multi-trillion dollar industry to criminals, destabilise countries around the world and destroy communities at home as criminals fight over the profits. Wouldn't that be better spent enforcing laws which can be enforced, and educating uses on how to get high responsibly, and clean up if they want to quit?

The fact is that drugs are available freely despite prohibition, and there is nothing that can be done about this, if you want to pretend that we live in a free society*. The best thing to do is legalise, regulate and monitor the problem users, so at least they know what they're chucking into their veins is clean.

Now I have my problems with the police, mainly because of UK Plod's obsession with traffic violations, their complete disinterest in crimes committed against me and my property, and their current status as the paramilitary wing of the New Labour jobsworth movement. Most people however think for some reason the police have insight into drug use and listen to their opinions on the subject. Most cops, it has to be said are in favour of prohibition, mainly because they've never really considered the alternative - it is literally unthinkable. But this is slowly changing: Our own lunatic traffic nazi, Richard Brunstrom is onside, and I'm happy to point you to Law Enforcement Against Prohibition on the other side of the pond.

*Note this excludes executing drug dealers, executing junkies, deliberately poisoning drugs on the street, nuking Afghanistan, defoliating South America etc or any of the other lunatic solutions which appear in comments threads on the subject.

Iain Dale points us to Prisoner Ben, who's doing time for Murder, and asks "should prisoners be allowed to blog?" A question posed by Prisoner Ben himself.

I think you know that I cannot see a reason why not. Especially as there is no "think what lags will do on the internet" stuff going on, because he posts his missives to friends by snail mail who then post them online for him. It seems He and I disagree on the issue of TVs in prisons, but I see where he's coming from.

Could be an interesting addition to the reader.

So... the FTSE 100 has done it, and just a few short weeks after the left were masturbating themselves to the thought of the death of capitalism, it transpires that the private sector (which is more than just the banks) is quite capable of bouncing back from adversity.

It now appears that the major threat to the world economy is Government debt...

Hahhhahahhahhahhha. Statists have fucked it up again.

I'm looking forward to seeing papers complaining of Bankers' 'obscene' bonuses* and whinging about 'business as usual'; while the dole queues are swelled by an army of unemployed diversity outreach co-ordinators. Think how pinkos felt in 1997, but with extra malice.

*For the record, I'm not a banker, and my last two Christmas bonuses were £10 odbins vouchers.

Does anyone actually read 'Bloggerheads' and is Tim Ireland as much of a twat as he appears? Does he ever post anything other than witterings about how unfair Iain Dale is? One might almost say he's obsessed. How is a blog so repellent to look at and so devoid of meaningful content consistently near the top of blog lists? Is this what Search engine optimisation does for you?

Not jealous*, you understand, just curious.

The reason for this post can be found at number 7a here.

*not jealous because in this one for example, I'm an inexplicable 17, and Bloggerheads is 51

Is up over at Suz Blog...

In a recent post I made the assertion that "Every argument in favour of retaining drug prohibition can be shot down by anyone prepared to apply logic." Anonymous took issue

Every argument except that the purchase of drugs funds terror all over South America and Asia. If you'd ever lived in Colombia, Bolivia or Peru, you wouldn't be so fast to squeal about legalisation.

Notice the emotive language: "Squeal". This is not a man applying logic. What has destabilised these countries is the fact that the profits available from the most profitable business ever invented in human history are held, because of prohibition, by criminals. It is thought that some of the Narco-lords where amongst the richest people in the world, living in some of the poorest countries. Of course this was destabilising. Making the business legal would give the governments a share of the profits through tax, and the criminals would be brought into the fold - they would be businessmen selling products, not terrorists fighting wars.

The fact is, Western countries must keep drugs illegal until such times as the South Americans (and other drug-producing nations legalise them - otherwise we're simply funding terrorists.

The only reason Coca is illegal is the fact that the Americans demand that it is so, despite a millennium-long history of use. A fact that Anon is aware of:

The drug-producing countries can't legalise the drug trade until the Americans get off their backs.

Does he want the Americans to jump first, or do the South Americans need to legalise first, because he has asserted both propositions in proximate sentences. And to top it all off, I have never contradicted his initial assertion that drugs are illegal round the world mainly because the Americans are on people's backs. As I've often said All this does is gift profits to criminals, rather than legitimate businesses, thereby destabilising poor countries where the stuff is grown. The horror, war and terrorism is just fighting over profits, which is a direct result of prohibition.

So, really, what it comes down to is this: if you want the drug trade legalised and controlled, you need to take that big American cock out of your mouth

Was never there, if you trouble to read any of my posts on drugs, you will see that I blame the Americans for all the world's prohibition, and the complete lack of perspective, subtlety and sense from any administration on the far side of the pond on the issue of Narcotics

and you need to stop getting a hard-on at the sight of the Stars-'n'-Stripes

Never have. D'you think this guy is arguing with me, or a version of me which exists only in his diseased mind?

and you need to educate your ignorant self on the realities of America's War on Drugs.

I suspect I've forgotten more about that than he will ever know.

Until the Americans get a fucking grip on themselves and stop allowing their drug policy to be set by pig-ignorant pants-pissing Soccer Moms in Kansas and Nebraska who use drugs as a proxy to express their terror of the nigras, legalisation is a pipe dream

I'm not going to argue with him there - this piece of analysis is spot-on, though we part company on his pay-off.

a pipe dream of ill-informed middle class white boys.

I love it when lefties reveal their class-hatred masquerading as argument. His whole post is building up to that smug ad-hominem. At least Raedwald admits his prejudice is irrational. This guy just cannot accept that a righty, me, agrees with the substantive points of his argument - that the Americans will never legalise, and that it is in the current political climate, a pipe-dream. We certainly agree that the DEA and prohibition is the cause of instability round the world. But he cannot follow through with the logic - because some people who self-describe as libertarian, who might even be white and middle class, think so too.

But

There are countries who are decriminalising. And they are not turning into Narco-hells. Western Governments are broke. Eventually the cost-benefit analysis will prevail. I am not going to stop calling for legalisation of Drugs just because no mainstream politicians can yet espouse the 'unthinkable' policy. I'm certainly not going to stop calling for a change in a policy which I suspect to be one of the most expensive and destructive policies to ever cross politicians' desks simply because I am white and yes (upper) middle class. (Don't fucking demote me, oik)

I suspect, however it is not as far away as he thinks. Reality eventually bites ideologues on the bum. Even ideologues such as those who would prevent people getting high, low, or otherwise stimulating or sedating themselves. People will always want to and pay to get their rocks off. If private conversations with senior police, military and political figures who've endured my rants on the subject, the notion that the war on drugs is lost has gained ground. It is just not possible in a free society to prevent the inflow. Legalisation, regulation and tax is the only answer.

It just needs some big countries to do it, and even the block-headed USA may even see sense.

The other conclusion is that Anonymous, whoever he is, is a complete cunt.

Raedwald has noticed that party memberships are falling below 1% of the electorate.

The barrier for new parties is brand recognition. Is the political 'market' like Cola, with brand loyalty owed to the incumbent market leaders being all but inpenetrable for new entrants? I don't think so.

And as the market becomes more open to new national political brands, as traditional memberships continue to shrink, what of democracy?

But I think there is no threat to democracy from the weakening of the mass-membership parties. It means that there is no "Core vote" or "Baseline vote" below which they cannot fall. Labour, in this environment are plummeting through their supposed floor of 30%. Their incompetence, savage authoritarianism and dishonesty has turned their vote from 45% of those who can be bothered to vote, to a little over a quarter.

The Tories faced no serious opposition for their centre right policies, which appeal to roughly a third of voters who can be bothered to vote, come what may. The reason they survived their wilderness years is that no-one credibly challenged them for this vote when they were on their backs in the late 90s. If you like the market analogy, no-one provided a better product, though UKIP and others tried and the Tories were allowed to come back into fashion. They haven't significantly changed their policies, but they've improved the packaging.

Labour on the other hand are facing electoral wipeout over the next generation, unless they get their act together within one parliament (unlikely). They will be harried by the BNP for their former core vote in the White Working Class, by the Liberal Democrats for their Guardianista wing and the Greens for the confused and scared metropolitan self-loathing hippy wing. This will leave a tiny tribe of Labour loyalists who support Labour the football team in the premier league of politics and will continue to do so even when they've fallen to the Conference, and it's just them their dog and a couple of other sad old men in the stands. Other political brands will rise to take their place.

It is difficult to see that as anything other than just deserts for a decade of spectacular incompetence. The Labour party has lost the right to form another government... ever, if (and it is a big if) the Liberal Democrats can take advantage of the Labour Party's weakness to become the second party of the UK. It is difficult to reconcile this process with "the death of democracy".

Parties are becoming brands. Whilst this is stupid, it's no more stupid than Parties as tribal markers. Indeed I think it is preferable. After all, you can change the brand, but not your tribe. Political parties will have to pander to the electorate rather than their own band of Loyalists. In what way is this a bad thing?

Oooh. The pinkos do love their charge of Hypocrisy don't they? But I hate to break it to them that there is more to the 'Right Wing' than Iain Dale. I for example have never ever been described as a lefty, and I think the release of Al Megrahi was the right call.

So why the shitstorm over the Al Megrahi release? Dave Semple reckons

Despite the Westminster government having nothing to do with the release – beyond Bill Rammell saying that he and his colleagues hoped al-Megrahi wouldn’t die in prison – the issue has become a stick with which to beat Gordon Brown.

Well yes. Because Gordon Brown has not been straight with the British people, or anyone else.

It is not the decision: there is the rule of law and compassion dictates that a prisoner be allowed to die at home. And our butchered constitution (thanks to Labour) means that the Holyrood parish council can take decisions which affect the whole of the UK, apparently without oversight from grown-ups.

It's not the fact that a convicted terrorist gets released as part of a trade deal. Much international diplomacy is grubby. And trade will tie Libya more tightly to the world of Sane countries than any threats, sanctions or sanctimonious piffle about the victims. Al Megrahi was a patsy at best, and certainly not the mastermind behind the bombing. So he gets released... Does it change anything? Cameron, for example trying to claim the moral high-ground is a luxury of opposition which he won't get to enjoy much longer.

It's certainly not about the Americans' opinion of the UK. Americans, who in any case have the attention span of a Goldfish are in no place to talk about justice. When they release our innocent nerds, bankers and businessmen, and maybe if they had handed over an IRA terrorist or two, then I will take lectures in Justice from our cousins over the pond.

But Gordon, despite being faced with the right result: a happy Libya, a trade deal, one fewer drains on the British exchequer (no more appeals, medical care or prison costs) and an American political class who couldn't care less; he still managed to fuck it up.

He (or probably more accurately Mandelson, who's desperately holding the Labour 'Government' together) told the Americans one thing (that he didn't want the release, but it was out of his hands) and the Libyans something else (that he was on the table for negotiation). When the press went wild, Brown simply hid, hoping it would go away, before coming out with a tortuous position of verbal gymnastics in the vain hope that it will solve the crisis of credibility. These are not the actions of a statesman: I've come across chavs smoking roll-ups outside Netto with more credibility and gravitas than our Prime Minister. So the left are accusing "the right" of hypocrisy. But it is not the right who foisted a man of such limitless incompetence on the country.

The release of Al Megrahi was the right thing to do, but Brown should have been honest. But that would take guts. And Gordon only writes books on courage. He has none himself. So, ignoring the rights and wrongs of this, it demonstrates that no-one believes anything the Government says. Even when they do the right thing (in this instance, let the law take its course, and try to secure the best deal for the UK) they still mess it up. And if they said "the Sun will rise tomorrow", I'm sure I won't be alone in buying a torch, just in case.

We need rid of this shower. And soon.