Gareth
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Posts
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Posts posted by Gareth
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Our Dear Leader is trying his best to force them upon us, despite no clear reason as to why we need them, as even the government doesn't say they'll prevent terrorism.
The Tories are against them, so are the Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru & Norn Iron parties, as well as a lot of Labour MPs.
Once Parliament gets back of its hols, they'll be debating the amendments that the Hosue of Lords have made to the ID Cards Bill: including an amendment in to make them completely voluntary, which goes against Labour's attempts to make them mandatory after a few years.
If you want info about how it's going, look at the NO2ID website.
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Anyone watching the Scousers v Luton?
Luton 2-1 after 44 min!
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Yep
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Giant killing!
Rovers 0-1 QPR
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Has anyone seen the Wikipedia article on the reasons for and against legalisation?
– it seems the reasons against it are based on “morals” (but whose morals should we base this, or any policy, on?) and fear, e.g.
“If currently illegal drugs are legalized, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [along with drug regulators in other countries] will have to be shut down, meaning that all health and safety restrictions on foods and drugs will be eliminated. Massive epidemics of diseases, overdoses and accidental drug interactions will occur.”
although the response is completely accurate:
* This is a meaningless scare tactic with no basis in reality. Drug legalization does not mean a lack of regulation. Cigarettes come with warnings. Alcoholic beverages are clearly marked with the amount of alcohol. Currently, legal drugs contain a listing of all active and inactive ingredients. There is no legal or moral reason the FDA would have to be shut down.
* Indeed, the FDA should continue to play an important role in the regulation of recreational substances. The government's sole role in protecting the citizenry is to educate and warn. The FDA should ensure purity, dose size, and provide for accurate labelling, indications, and warnings where appropriate. Drugs should be legal for sale only with ingredients, warnings, and purity levels clearly marked.
* It is likely that "legalization" would result in stronger regulation, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms would be expanded to cover these new regulations, since their job is already very similar.
* The Food and Drug Administration regulates legal drugs. The Drug Enforcement Agency, which regulates illegal drugs, would become unnecessary.
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I listened to it on radio 5: sounded like we played well in the 1st half & should have been more than 2-1 up, but we seemed to try & let Pompey equalise in the 2nd half.
Still, we won and are up to 8th! Yay!
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Two quite astonishing contributions to the Guardian's request for comments on the Government's approach to drugs:
"The government is serious about reducing problem drug use and its many harms. There is no room for complacency, but the progress being made, particularly on drug treatment, is probably one of the government's best-kept secrets. There is record spending on drug treatment, with a 40% increase next year. The target of doubling numbers in treatment may be met two years ahead of schedule, but much more needs to be done to improve treatment quality and effectiveness.
"The upward trend in drug use has stabilised, with promising signs of falling use among children and young people, particularly for cannabis and some class A drugs. The government has introduced restrictions on bail for drug-related offences, compulsory drug testing on arrest and, should the test be positive, a requirement to undergo an assessment. The aim is to get more offenders, or potential offenders, into treatment. Cannabis reclassification was not a "soft" response, but based on evidence of its relative harm and the strategy to concentrate on even more harmful drugs such as heroin, cocaine and crack. The predicted increase in cannabis use has not happened. Indeed, the reverse has happened.
"Danny Kushlick
Director, Transform
"On page six of the UK updated Drug Strategy 2002 it says: "We will maintain prohibition. . ." In 2003, the prime minister's strategy unit produced a report for the cabinet that showed that, far from tackling drugs, its policy of enforcing the drug laws was actually creating many of our drug problems. As a result of supply-side drug law enforcement, heroin and cocaine are worth more than their weight in gold and, consequently, organised criminals run the market. We have some of the toughest drug laws in Europe, the highest levels of drug use in Europe, the highest per capita prison population in Europe. Nearly a fifth of UK prisoners are drug law offenders, and more than half are there as a result of committing acquisitive crime to support a habit.
"The crime costs associated with prohibition are estimated at £16bn a year. Prohibition creates crime and criminal opportunities, increases public ill-health and drug-related dangers (especially for young people), wastes billions of pounds, contributes to political instability in producer countries, and infringes human rights. We should plan an exit strategy from the global "war on drugs" and replace it with a more effective system of legal control and regulation.
"Edward Garnier
Shadow home affairs minister"
So the British Conservative Party agrees with me!
Not quite..., you seem to have mis-read the article, as the contributor's names are above their views, i.e. the 1st quote is from DrugScope; the 2nd is from Transform, and the Tory view is the following:
I sit as a part-time judge and most of the people that come in front of me are there, one way or another, because of drugs. Drugs are the single biggest factor behind urban crime. Legalisation is often put forward as a solution, but it is not as simple as that. The people who suffer the consequences of drug abuse would suffer it whether drugs were legal or not. Unless every country in the world legalised drugs, decriminalisation in this country alone would make things worse.
Finding solutions to drug abuse requires more serious action than changing classifications. We need to get to grips with why people turn to drugs. Helplessness, boredom, the breakdown of the family and of communities are all contributory factors. A considered and mature review of our drugs policy should be uppermost in our plans for the future of the Conservative party. If we want a government that really will cut crime and the causes of crime, getting a grip on drug abuse and addiction is absolutely crucial.
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gareth dont underestimate Rovers of course they can keep this run up.
Rovers have picked up 6 points on the road and won a cup tie.
I was concerned that Rovers got manure in the cup, but on the face of it, why should we be worried when we have already shown we can take old t and beat them on their own mudheap.
I think January will be the making of BLACKBURN ROVERS season
Hope so, it's just after our experiences of the past few years (read since 1994-5) that I'm used to us letting ourselves down, so I usually predict a defeat...
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Here's the Sunday Times's article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2093-1965871,00.html
Matt Jansen ripped up his Blackburn Rovers contract yesterday, sacrificing around £500,000 in wages, and admitted that he is willing to go on trial without being paid in order to win a contract at another Premiership club.
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Rovers 0-2 Pompey
Time for a come-down from the last few good games... We can't keep this run up.
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A come-down from Boro' (which we would have had if we'd played the Mackems
):Pies 2-0 Rovers
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Expect a come-down from Boro':
Rovers 0-2 Makems
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A bit of a comedown from Wednesday: Everton 2-0
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The government has decided to come up with even more pointless drug laws, which, going on previous experience, will be a complete failure.
The new regulations specify an amount above which a person is to be resumed to be dealing drugs, not possessing them for their own use:
* 120g cannabis resin,
* 500g cannabis leaf,
* 10 Es,
* 7g of heroin, coke, or crack cocaine, and
* 14g speed
There doesn’t appear to be a specific limit for mushrooms or LSD; maybe they want us to see things… What about ketamine?
The fact that the drugs laws (along with most other policies based upon 1920s-USA style prohibition) are completely ineffective (as the government admits (see also my comments)), give criminals a licence to print money, cause high-levels of crime and poverty appears irrelevant (see this report for details).
This government always wants to appear to be “hard on drugs”, despite the fact that we are just past an election so even they don’t even have that use (unlike with the Drugs Act 2005, which criminalized the sale of magic mushrooms, even though they grow wild in the UK. How the (Please don't use that word again) can you make a plant illegal?) and despite the fact that they (likely) new Tory leader David Cameron is on record as saying that the laws should be scrapped and replaced by a legal, regulated system for the production and supply of currently illegal drugs.
Depressingly, though it should be completely expected, both the Daily Mail and Daily Express (about half-way down the page) are opposed to the new laws, but not because they won’t work, but because they don’t go far enough! These are the types our Dear Leader panders to with these sort of laws…
They seem to think that by having more laws it'll make people go off 'em. Guess they're unaware of the concept of a forbidden fruit...
On a related topic, despite the government’s intention to re-classify grass as a Class B substance (a pre-election ploy to get their downgrading of it out of the headlines), according to the Sunday Times, the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (the body assigned with the task of deciding what to classify drugs as) as said that it will remain a Class C substance, for the following reason: although there was evidence linking cannabis and mental illness, it was not strong enough to justify raising its classification.
The police will be happy, as it means they don’t have to waste their time enforcing a failed policy and can get on with other, mote important tasks, e.g. murder, rape, terrorism, all of which are slightly more important to society than trying to stop someone inhale the fumes of a plant…
Been speaking to someone about this & he says they're very liberal amounts, compared to what's normally allowed! I said they'll be reduced once the Mail & Express have big campaigns against 'em & it's the fact they're enforcing an admitted failed policy is what pisses me off - you can't keep doing the same thing and expect to get different results.
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As these fixtures have been completed I thought I'd bring this back up to the top.
4 pts from Chelsea, Man City & Arse away & Charlton home must be seen to be a decent return...
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I'll re-use my prediction of the FA Cup semi: Arse 3-0...
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Chelsea 3-0 Rovers
I'd already written off this game in September & have no reason to change my mind, despite our run...
Bring on Charlton!
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Yeah, you'd get Radio York who may have it as when I was a tax-dodging student over there the place seemed to be full of Leeds fans...
Not sure if you'd pick up Radio Leeds though.. guess it depends on which part of York you're in.
Think we'll lose on pens.
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It'd be a lot more likely that heroin would only be available on prescription, like it was before the Misuse of Drugs Act was passed in 1971.
Many drugs can also be ingested in several different ways, and come in the form they are currently known in for smuggling/cutting/weighing purposes rather than because thatys how the end user wants it. A bit of good hash in some coffee works wonders, and theres no worries about damaging your lungs...There's also sticking it in a casserole...
Yes, young perople sould be protected, but you have to accept that a fully-grown adult has the right to make their own decisions...
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So how many chemists are going to be happy stocking this stuff and having 20 smackheads queueing in their shop, probably helping themselves to various other items whilst they're there?
And is the resident junkie going to nip down to Boots and pay £5 for a fix (complete with £3 tax) or is he going to ring up Dodgy Dave and get it illegally for half the price?
You don't have to have it in a shop - make 'em go to a hospital & give 'em clean needles & safe injection rooms, like they do in Holland, Switzerland & parts of Australia
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If you work it out, 6000 deaths from 500,000 users equals 12 deaths per 1000; while 500,000 deaths from 18,000,000 equals 27.8 deaths per 1000.
So although fags are more dangerous, they're not quite 3 times as dangerous, more like 2 1/3 times.
I agree with decriminalisation, purely from a practical point of view, as it's better to have a substance legal & regulated than illegal & un-regulated. Plus if it's legal you can tax it & don't have to waste police resources on trying to enforce prohibition.
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[Archived] Id Cards
in I Can't Believe It's Not Football Archive
Posted
According to the Sunday Telegraph the government wil give local councils the power to fine people £2500 for not having an ID card, even though they're "voluntary".