2453 days ago
As a libertarian I really do believe that you should be allowed to spend your money on whatever you want - it is your pocket book and your body. Drugs, guns, sex, nicotine, even books written by crooked Hillary Clinton it is all fine by me and so too is spending your own cash on a Fixed Odds Betting Terminal (FOBT) at William Hill (WMH). But the Government plans to slash the maximum you can wager on a FBOT from £100 a pop to as little as £2 because it wants tgo hbelp problem gamblers. It is nanny state. I should oppose HMG. But a BBC Radio 5 interview with Hill's spokesman Ciaran O'Brien has made me think - O'Brien really is the scum of the earth.
2455 days ago
I have long been critical of Sir Bradley Wiggins and his fellow British cyclists whether in the Tour de Drugs or elsewhere and comment on what today's report says about our double standards and lack of standards. I comment on your comments on the airlines in the wake of my nightmare with EasyJet (EZJ). I look at Interserve (IRV), Feedback (FDBK), King of the spiv tweets UK Oil & Gas (UKOG), Metminco (MNC), Union Jack Oil & Gas (UJO), Fusion Antibody (FAB) and Andalas (ADL) which MUST make a statement ASAP after yesterday's shock revelation HERE.
2537 days ago
First it was Sir Bradley Wiggins who had to use medication which would have enhanced his performance even though he had written that he had no health issues at the time. No problems Sir Brad you are not a Chinese swimmer you are British and a sir and a cyclist so clearly you are no cheat.
2642 days ago
Women's tennis has been lacking something for the past couple of years... that is to say a woman who is not only incredibly good at hitting the ball but is also jaw droppingly good looking. The problem is that Maria Sharapova who fits the bill on both counts was caught cheating by using a performance enhancing drug.
2944 days ago
Last night MPs voted by 203 votes to 7 to elect the Right Honourable Keith Vaz to the House of Commons Justice select Committee. You will remember that Vaz had to step down from chairmanship of the Home Affairs committee just a few weeks ago after being caught offering to pay for illegal drugs for a rent boy with whom he went on to have unprotected anal sex with. It was Vaz who exploited the sex worked as he insisted that the poor hooker engage in this high risk activity.
2989 days ago
Russian hackers of WADA, the Fancy Bears, have now released the drugs files of inter alia the US gymnast Simone Biles, the Williams sisters and our own cycling "legend" Sir Bradley Wiggins. Sanctimony gushes from the Western press as they seek to defend "our own" and engage in more nasty Russophobia. The truth is that pro sport is utterly compromised and we in the West are plain hypocrites in not accepting this. The Sharapova affair and US pro baseball are the big clues as I discuss in this podcast.
2993 days ago
I stress that I did not watch my father and mother in action but one imagines that even contemplating the idea of such a spectacle is the most toe curlingly embarrassing act one can consider. That is until you listen to middle aged and elderly TV and radio news presenters pandering to fuckwit millennials as they try to play Daddy Cool.
Over on Channel 4 News old Jon Snow and his portly pal Krishnan are always talking about the exciting "Grime" scene. For those of you who are not as cool as Jon & the Boyz of the C4 possy
2999 days ago
I do not care a jot that Keith Vaz offers to buy coke for young men who he pays to have unprotected anal sex with. Nor do I care that reports are emerging showing that his pattern of behavior is not a one off. I feel sorry for Mrs Vaz who must be feeling very confused right now, not knowing which way to turn. But Vaz himself has no shame.
The oily old windbag has a history of sinning normally in the cash for favours department and in any normal job would have been fired years ago. But Vaz is an MP. And so yesterday he stood down from the Commons Home Affairs committee which he chaired. Naturally he said that he was doing so "for the sake of the committee"" not for himself you understand, Vaz makes this noble sacrifice for others because he cares. What a saint.
And naturally
3001 days ago
If Keith Vaz was holding a senior management position in the private sector, the rent boy shagging, drug buying MP would not be wandering into work today. He would be suspended on full pay as an enquiry would be underway and concluded within two weeks. Actually following numerous previous episodes Vaz would have been fired years ago had he worked in the productive part of the economy. Luckily for him, Vaz "works" in the public sector, the part of the economy we in the private sector fund. So there is no accountability.
Vaz has been caught on tape so appears to be slam dunk guilty of offering to buy illegal drugs and of paying male prostitutes for sex. Given that the committee he chairs is producing reports on prostitution right now and that he has spoken in debates at sleaze central on drugs he is guilty not only of a crime ( offering to buy illegal drugs) but of what we in the private sector term "an undeclared conflict of interest (COI)"
As a libertarian
3025 days ago
It seemed that almost as soon as Euro 2016 was over West Ham were getting thrashed in pre season friendlies. And now football is back. The Premiership starts tomorrow and the hammers kick off away at Chelsea on Monday. I should be excited.
But I am not. This will be my third campaign without a season ticket. Last year I saw precisely no ga
3032 days ago
Airports across Britain are today being disrupted by activists protesting that #blacklivesmatter - well of course they do. All lives matter but for white middle class liberals in the media and on twitter and facebook this is an opportunity for angst, guilt and self loathing that cannot be missed. But what about the hard data?
Sod the hard data, lets just feel guilty about slavery and how everyone, especially old Brexit voters, are all racists, facts do not matter any more do they? This is Airstrip One and its 1984 every day these days. Okay
3068 days ago
Jeremy Corbyn has just emailed we loyal Labour party members urging unity. It seems like only yesterday that my local MP Kerry Mccarthy emailed me to urge lack of unity, viz sacking Corbyn. In fact it was yesterday. Whatever. Fraternity, Liberty, Unity, Comedy - we march on togther.
3118 days ago
As ever, when Avanti Communications (AVN) sees its share price slipping it announces a new contract win. There is a brief rally, and the rally gets smaller each time this trick is pulled, and then the shares start to fall again because - as we know - this company is hurtling towards insolvency. And so with the shares sub 90p to sell on Friday what do we have today?
3131 days ago
Hypnobirthing is apparently a way to make pregnancy less painful and stressful and so the Mrs and I went on a "taster" session with a private company charging an arm and a leg for full courses. I would rather have spent an hour watching paint dry as it was from beinnning to end both excruciatingly awful and also a really unpleasant sales pitch for old rope.
We were one of five couples. I was the only person in the room who has been through this birth process business before and the naivete of the other members of the Bristol middle classes present was jaw dropping. We started in a session where we split into three groups and had to say how many weeks we were, what our names were and what we brought us to the session. Honestly, I relayed that I thought the whole thing was a total con and I was there becuase my Mrs wanted me to be there. Our group spokesperson had to summarise what the 4 folks in our group thought but for some reason omitted my remarks.
This was a session about beng "nice" to everyone. A woman who was 28 weeks and had a face like a horse
3250 days ago
Happy New Year to you all, I hope that you have a wild party tonight. Remember kids, if someone tries to sell you drugs just say no. You should always try to get drugs for free. Only kidding. Thanks to today's news about Pirate Pete Landau I am in a good mood. You send the Sheriff of AIM lawyers letters and karma is going to get you in the end. My good mood is compounded by diabolical interims from the David Lenigas boiler room operation Inspirit (INSP). It really is in the merde. I discuss companies that leave it to the wire to report.
3535 days ago
A younger wife means that I have to attend parties, something a man of my age should be dodging. Cocoa, slippers and a quiet night watching Midsomer Murders with Oakley, that is what I want on a Saturday evening, not a trip up to London for a party.
At least it will be recognised that I am an older man so I will be offered a seat in the corner where I can fall asleep as the young folk stand, chat and do whatever young folk do. Texting? Drugs? I just don’t know.
The hosts are among the least mad of the friends of the Mrs.
3731 days ago
It is a twenty five minute walk from the Greek Hovel down snake hill to the spring and up past the deserted monastery and a stretch of olive groves to the village of Kambos. But it is where my nearest neighbours live and I now know enough folks to say yassas to many of them as I bike in, although no-one other than wonderful Eleni, the taverna owner speaks any English. One of the joys of Kambos is that absolutely nothing ever happens there. Me falling off my motorbike at 3 MPH in front of Eleni’s taverna was the big news of the summer. That was until we had the murders.
3827 days ago
The big news for libertarians, like me, last week was that vice (drugs and prostitution) look set to be included in how we calculate GDP in the UK. Apparently they are worth a combined £10 billion to the UK each year. You can from that number make a number of assumptions.
1. The vast amounts the State spends trying to tackle these crimes is not working and is money wasted.
2. There are very few rich hookers or drug pushers (the actual distributors) and since the non-labour cost of sales is very low (drugs are cheap as a raw commodity and condoms and a bit of advertising cost sod all) you can assume that organised crime is raking in billions a year.
So please can anyone explain why the current system ( which brings endemic health risks for many, a tab the State then picks up) can be said to work?
3891 days ago
As a supporter of both gay equality and also a believer in the decriminalisation of prostitution (more on that next week) and of drugs, in an ideal world Tory MP Mark Menzies would today still be a junior minister. But we do not live an in ideal world and thus news that Menzies paid £250 to bunk up with a 19 year old Brazilian rent boy and asked him to buy drugs on his behalf has seen Menzies step down as a junior minister.
In a sense I feel sorry for the chap. But then I read that on the gay marriage bill last year he voted yes but had said he planned to abstain. Why cannot he a little bit more honest about the fact that he is gay. After all, his boss – until today – Alan Duncan is openly gay.
And so the long line of Tory MPs and gay sex scandals goes on. Harvey Proctor (rend boys), Ted Heath (warned for cottaging but hushed up at the time), Stephen Milligan (died playing sex games with an orange), David Ashby (shared bed with male friend on holiday “to save money”), Jerry Hayes (under age sex). Right now Tory MP Nigel Evans is on trial accused of gay rape.
Surely someone should tell these chaps that as the law stands certain activities are somewhat unwise. In light of this all I simply re-run the picture from last week and invite you to post your captions in the comments section below.
For what it is worth my entry is:
3933 days ago
A few days ago I praised Nigel Farage for contemplating what most politicians do not dare – an acceptance that prohibition does not work, the legalisation of drugs. I am now hauled up with the question of taxation as a form of quasi-prohibition. I refer of course to cigarettes.
My local tobacconist in London offers me a choice of regular Marlboro Lights at £8.50 or what he terms “under the counter” Marlboro Lights from Vietnam at £5. I much prefer the Vietnamese Heath Warnings, although I am sure that the smoker depicted is Gollum and I much prefer paying £5 rather than £8.50 and so I buy “Under the Counter”.
It is estimated by the Government that 10% of fags sold in the UK are “under the counter.” I rather suspect that the real number is far higher. Why is this? Because when I pay £8.50 for a legit pack of fags £6.50 goes to the Government in tax. That leaves c£1.40 for the manufacturer and 60p for the newsagent. The “alternative arrangement sees the manufacturer get his £1.40 with the criminal smuggler and the retailer sharing the remaining £3.60. The retailer is far better off and as long as he is not caught had probably trebled his profit margin and the criminal smuggler coins it in. You will have noticed that the big loser is the Government whose take falls from £6.50 to nil.
The point is that so great are the rewards
3937 days ago
Perhaps the UKIP leader is a libertarian after all? You know that I regard his utterances on immigration as truly awful and UKIP’s economic policies do not stack up – scrapping foreign aid and ending EU contributions saves £16 billion. You cannot re-use that n times to spend, spend, spend and also cut the £100 billion deficit. But he has today written a brave and good piece in the Indy on drugs. Well done Nigel.
Farage starts with a long grumble about dirty tricks and the anti-democratic nature of by-elections. There is one looming on Thursday in some grim Northern shit hole and Labour won before it started by tying up the postal votes. The system does not work. I agree with Nigel. Moreover the contempt with which Labour regard the “poor” vote as its own is – as Nigel says – pretty lamentable.
But Farage’s more interesting point is on drugs. He writes:
Last week, Nick Clegg returned from a trip to South America. Goodness knows what he smoked out there, because he actually made a couple of smart points. First, the so-called War on Drugs isn’t working. Second, we should appoint a royal commission to look into the alternatives.
The fact is our current approach to drugs is neither practical nor effective. I strongly believe in promoting individual freedom – but I also strongly believe in reducing the public harm caused by drugs. As a parent as much as a politician, I say we have to accept that current policy has not achieved the reductions in crime or consumption that we’d hoped for. I know he slagged me off in this newspaper yesterday, but on this one I agree with Nick
Ends.
Come on Nigel (and Nick) you are almost there saying what all politicians know to be true but just cannot be brave enough to admit. Prohibition NEVER
4088 days ago
I was once again back in my Clerkenwell rabbit hole. The dormouse was again pouring some tea of a herbal nature and produced a tray of cakes each one saying “Eat Me NOW or Pinsent Masons will frigging sue you.” “Surely we have been here before?” I asked the dormouse who just smiled and pushed the tray gently towards me.
A small mole appeared in the corner of the room, winked at me, grabbed a cake and gulped it down. Shroooooooooooom. Suddenly the mole was ten foot tall and was holding a smoking gun. He laughed, devoured another cake and was then carried away on a magical boat back to the Pinsents bunker on a journey past tangerine trees and under marmalade skies.
Curiouser and curiouser I thought. What might the mole have in store for us next?
Before
4094 days ago
Suddenly I was back in my Clerkenwell Rabbit hole sitting with the dormouse sipping what looked like a cup of herbal tea. “Is the acid trip over?” I asked my new friend. “Surely with Sefton’s only witness exposed as a liar and a crook, with Pinsents in breach of the SRA rule-book if it continues to act for Sefton given that Russell Booker is now my star witness and given that the case was bollocks in the first place it is all over?” The dormouse leaned forward.
But at that point there was a loud knock on the door and a man dressed in a red military uniform with round gold rimmed glasses appeared. Bloody hell. It was John Lennon from the Sergeant Pepper album. “Are you sure that was tea?” I asked the dormouse. He smiled. Shrooooooooooom.
Rather thankful that it was not colourful James out on a bender with not Johnny Depp I opened the door. “John – where are Ringo, Paul and George? “ I asked contemplating how Real Man was attracting all the stars these days.
“Do not be so daft. John Lennon was shot dead thirty years ago by Mark Chapman, surely you know that I am Chris Mullen the senior partner at Sergeant Pinsents legal tarts club band? Here. Have some candy from my five million pound Notting Hill townhouse paid for in part by Sefton’s shareholders.”
4098 days ago
I have not actually taken any LSD or even a magic mushroom for years but as I contemplate the insane world of Pinsent Masons and the Sefton libel case I feel like I am on the most amazing trip. For Pinsents yesterday stated that it is ploughing ahead with the libel case. I happen to know that this is bollocks – the remaining Sefton directors met Pinsents and other advisors last Friday and are trying to find a way out. Oh yes, I have my sources Pinsents, try not to get too paranoid. But anyhow let’s go on a magical mystery tour with the bully boy lawyers…
Suddenly a giant caterpillar appeared and beckoned me from my Clerkenwell rabbit hole towards the High Court. I called as a witness of fact Mr Russell Booker, a partner at Pinsent Masons, and asked him to read out his memo to the Sefton board in which he said that Jim Ellerton (Sefton’s only witness) was “discredited as a witness” and thus the case was unwinnable. “Thank you Mr Booker” said the white hare “would the plaintiff like to cross examine?”
The Barrister for Sefton consulted his team of lawyers from Pinsent Masons about how they would cross examine a partner from Pinsent Masons who was appearing as a witness of fact for the defence. Shroooooooooooooooooooooooooom. No conflicts of interest here said the Pinsents team as they smoked a large hookah offered to them by Dr Ali in lieu of his final draft preliminary final report on steamflooding.
The Judge offered everyone more tea and a piece of cake
4114 days ago
There are a few documents on their way to me by email from Colorado but I was chatting to my partner and we remembered that Mork & Mindy came from Boulder and so we sort of fancied a road trip. Now, as you know, I have a laissez faire attitude to recreational drugs and so I wondered if I might drop some acid while I was over there. So can anyone help me score a few LSD tablets?
I see one name crop up as a possible contact (see here) – a Mr. John Ellerton who was a good source of supply back in 1969. Does anyone know if he is still involved in the Colorado business scene in any way?
If anyone can help me find out what he is doing these days I’d be really grateful
4247 days ago
I see that the papers are having a field day with Paris Brown who was hired as a youth crime Czar by Kent police on £15,000 a year to “provide a teenager’s view on policing.” But Paris has apparently spent some time on twitter to boast about binge drinking, drug taking and to make a series of racist and homophobic comments. She should have been in the Sweeney. Inspector Reagan would have felt right at home.
That she is a silly girl is beyond doubt. Apparently she is not quitting and will carry on doing her job. But what is the point of this job? It is not that she should be fired, just that this post should be made redundant. Along with all the other daft non-jobs that our PC police forces create to divert resources away from tedious things like catching criminals and getting them sent to prison.
I wonder what Paris has concluded in her first invaluable report: “The bizzies….er whatever…it’s all my parent’s fault…whatever…like...you know…we just want, like, respect…I’m bored…whatever”
I seem to remember that it was the Kent Police that arrested that bloke for tweeting a picture of a poppy burning. It strikes me that this force is run by complete imbeciles. If they want to hire a “Stop Police wasting money on piffle Czar” I am your man and will catch the first train to Canterbury this afternoon to start closing down the non jobs to try to assist bankrupt Britain to save a few quid. And the first P45 goes to Paris.
4273 days ago
There are few sentient human beings who maintain that prohibition of alcohol in 1920s America was a roaring success. Criminals benefited and made a killing. The costs of law enforcement went through the roof. Customers had to pay more. Checks to ensure safe supply of liquor became impossible. And anyone who wanted a drink could get one anyway. Yet still mainstream opinion argues that prohibition is a good idea elsewhere. The results are always the same.
As a libertarian I believe it is my call on what I put into my body not that of the State. So I have a philosophical opposition to prohibition. I do not expect many of you to agree with that stance. But you should see that on a practical level it does not work. Legalise drugs and allow supply via tobacconists and you could ensure that no dirty heroin hits the streets, tax receipts would go up, prices would go down. The 80% of crimes that are drug related would disappear and so we could reduce policing costs. With your car & house less likely to be broken into your insurance premiums would fall.
But there is another prohibition which is an abject failure – that on the movement of people into this country. It emerges today that it costs £25,000 to boot an illegal immigrant out. And he or she will soon be replaced. Criminals make a fortune trafficking people into the UK. A whole industry of lawyers and other parasites makes a living (from the taxpayer) arguing that folks should not be deported because it will infringe the human rights of their cat, result in homophobic bullying or whatever. And still we have no idea how many illegals are in the UK – it is probably well over one million. The whole system is a costly farce as any system based on prohibition always is. All those who talk tough about immigration seem to miss the point. We could spend 20 times as much as we do on “getting tough” but prohibition NEVER works.
And so why not allow anyone who wants to come to the UK? But with a twist. It is quite clear that we have vast number of home grown Heather Frost figures who have never worked, will never work and regard welfare as an entitlement. That is not sustainable or equitable. And so we make a small rule change. You can only claim income support up to a value of x times the amount of NI contributions you have made historically. And unless you have paid NI you and your offspring shall have no entitlement to schooling, healthcare, subsidised housing or any other state benefit. If you cannot afford kids do not have them and simply expect others to pay.
If one adopts these rules for our own home grown Heather Frosts you will not – with an open borders policy – get folks moving to the UK to live off the State because the same rules will apply to them. By all means let the Rumanians come en masse. But unless they are working they will starve. Make that abundantly clear and those who want to work hard will come to the UK and we will benefit from that. Those who want to scrounge can go to a “caring, socialist paradise fucked economy” like France or Scotland when it gets its independence. Perhaps they can take Heather Frost with them.
Adopt this policy and UK welfare spending will plunge. The parasite lawyers who feed off immigration law at the taxpayers’ expense will have to go get proper jobs and save us all a packet. All those employed by the State in this futile pretence that we are tough on immigration can be let go. And the vast savings can go on slashing the UK’s unsustainable deficit and on raising the threshold at which anyone pays tax to £20,000 so making ,low paid work that much more attractive.
Obviously this makes sense. The chances of it happening zilch.
4298 days ago
By the time we got past Chippenham on the 9.45 from Paddington last night the carriage was almost empty. The lager louts who had got on at Swindon had left the train, much to my delight, and all was calm. I sat there writing an article and across the aisle a mother and her young son chatted amicable. And then a clear smell wafted its way along from the gap to the next carriage, the very powerful smell of weed. The mother and I nodded at each other – we both recognised what was happening.
A couple of minutes later the smokers wandered along the corridor. A lanky fellow with glasses, greasy hair and wearing a suit lead the way laughing out loud. He looked as if the suit was not his normal gab. What do you call a weed smoking loser in a suit? The defendant. Behind him was a man with little hair, obvious tattoos, wearing a parker and clutching a can of cheap lager. The scowl on his face was an ugly one and he strode menacingly along the aisle. I made temporary eye contact and regretted it as his look said very clearly “what the f*** are you going to do about it?”
The answer, of course, is nothing. As I am reminded ad nauseam, First Great Western operates a strict no smoking policy and the someone like me would simply not consider smoking a Marlboro Light on one of its trains. I am used to the pompous H&S message repeated after every station as I try to sleep or write saying that if you see anything suspicious report it to a First Great Western train manager or a Policeman. But in reality there is no-one on board that train to stop folks not only breaking train bye-laws but the actual law of the land. It is all a pretence.
Law abiding nice people like me put up with all the silly rules. The trash at the bottom of society does not give a damn and do what they like and get away with it.
Perhaps it is time that First Great Western recognised this and changed the oft-repeated announcement to “First Great Western operates a strict no smoking of tobacco policy on all its trains but if you are a tattooed monster who wishes to take drugs (and probably has not even got a ticket) go ahead and do what you like because no-one dares stand up to you.”
4315 days ago
We love cycling at Real Man Pizza Company. Sitting in our quirkly Celtic Italian restaurant in Clerkenwell I am at this very moment staring at a framed, signed Mark Cavendish jersey from a couple of years ( and teams) ago. Cav is a real man…he wouldn’t cry on a talk show. And that brings us to Lance.
Now that I have officially won exactly the same number of Tour De France yellow jerseys as Lance Armstrong, I bring you a quiick review of the best Lance Armstrong tweeted jokes. Twitter is not ALL rubbish.
@BouwerBosch
Lance Armstrong’s darkest legacy will be that he convinced millions of men it was okay to wear cycling shorts – Andre Botha
@funnyordie
Lance Armstrong sends a powerful message to the kids of America: don’t do drugs and cheat unless you want to be rich and go on Oprah.
4338 days ago
Britain is getting fatter. The strain of treating a stack of lardbuckets like myself for diabetes (my issue), heart attacks, etc is a very real financial burden. All of that is a given. But calls to ban Frosties ( Labour health spokesman Andy Burnham) and Fried Chicken shops ( general lefty fruitcake and a bit of a lardbucket herself, Dianne Abbot) do not address the problem. Prohibition never works. It fails with drugs, it failed with alcohol in 1920s Chicago and it will fail with Frosties.
4352 days ago
In the wake of the dreadful slaughter of the innocents at Newtown Connecticut the response of the liberal left has been to argue for tighter controls on gun ownership. In bankrupt Britain the usual suspects at the Guardian and BBC say “is it not time that America caught up with us and banned gun ownership as we did after Dunblane?” In the US, Obama and the other liberals want to go down the British route. They are all wrong. Guns save lives.
One can play whatever games you want with statistics. But here are a few.
4356 days ago
This article first appeared in my Tomogrraph Newsletter a couple of weeks ago but prompted my an angry response or two to my article of yesterday (Being on Welfare is NOT a Job) I am goaded into republishing the piece to a wider audience. One chap thinks I am “ bitter and twisted” and a “sad man” for arguing that taxpayers have no obligation to support a life of Sky, fags and booze on welfare. Whatever…folks need to face up to the problem.
This piece deals with those deficit deniers who cannot accept that Britain is heading for bankruptcy and offers up a 13 point plan to deal with the issue – needless to say I do not expect the cowardly Conservatives to adopt even one of my suggestions.
The Autumn statement came and went. George Osborne laughed and smiled. Ed Balls stammered. The left bleated on about wicked Tories and even more wicked cuts. The Tories claimed to be satisfied with the job being in hand. But we are as a nation kidding ourselves. We are all deficit deniers.
Two and a half years into this Parliament, Osborne has missed his forecasts again. Government spending has, in absolute terms risen year on year since the election.
4435 days ago
Thanks to the Ambush Predator blog for this tale of utter hopelessness which shows why our current drugs policy is such a disaster. The blog recounts:
A Liverpool shoplifter snubbed the help that had been given her by travelling to Blackburn and stealing just six days after completing a residential drug rehabilitation programme.The chairman of the magistrates, Vanessa Pickup, said residential rehabilitation places were like “gold dust.”
“You were given a chance many people would give their right arm for,” said Mrs Pickup. “Your response was to come out, and six days later travel to Blackburn to steal.”
And so a custodial sentence was imposed.
She was jailed for 12 weeks.
Gareth Price, defending, had been faced with a large electricity bill and a drug debt and found herself in dire financial straits.
Okay so let’s work this out. Our heroin (or whatever drug it is) addicted scouser friend has to find a very large amount of money each week to buy a commodity (heroin) which costs nothing to produce. Her welfare cheques are not enough. So she steals. Not big amounts but enough to piss off a series of shop owners and homeowners in Liverpool.
4443 days ago
And so I left London on Saturday night. Chocolate pizza with my daughter, a spot of business in Wandsworth and then the 9.30 from Paddington. Is there an Agatha Christie novel with a title a bit like that? Since I am now on the 4.47 AM from Bristol and cannot access the internet I do not know the answer. And feeling a bit tired ahead of a hard day in London I am not sure that I care.
The journey down to Bristol was one that made me feel old (as I was surrounded by young people) and sad (as they were all such morons.)
4446 days ago
This is novel. Uruguay has today announced that it wishes to nationalise the cannabis industry. That is to say all production and distribution of weed will now be handled by the State and thus it will be completely legal to smoke dope. Half way there.
The Government of this country is described as left wing and progressive and argues that the measure is necessary to combat rising drug-related crime, decrease health risks for users, and counter ineffective US policies on drugs.
“We’re putting this forward as international policy,” says Sebastian Sabini, president of the parliamentary commission created to debate the bill. “The war on drugs has failed. There are more consumers and more violence.”
Spot on Seb. Your analysis is bang on the money. But…
4451 days ago
What is it with Tories and flogging dead horses? A policy patently does not work and so… lets just do more of the same. I refer of course to drugs. The Tories are the party of “Law & Order” and so their approach to drugs is always to give more money to the Police to “smash drug rings” even if this never actually works and actually cuases more crime. In their efforts to be seen as “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime” they show themselves to be economically illiterate.
Now that Louise Mensch has sadly disappeared I was waiting for the next Tory to opine on this matter and skimming the London Evening Standard (I found a copy on a train and was bored) I find a letter from London Assembly member Steve O’Connel (Con) in which he opines:
“Drug crime fuels 50% of acquisitive crime
4474 days ago
it has never been proved that cyclist and 7 times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong took drugs. Fellow cyclists accused him of cheating but he never failed any of 200 blood or urine tests. But he is to be stripped of all of his titles and banned for life. Germany’s Jan Ullrich won the tour in 1997 and was a runner up in 2002…to Armstrong.
In February this year Ullrich did fail a doping test and received a two year ban. But he was not stripped of any titles. And so the history book will show that a proven drugs cheat now won two (not one) Tours while a non-proven one now won zero (not seven) Tours. Go figure.
4509 days ago
I see that AIM listed Mission Marketing (TMMG) is screwing its shareholders today but of course it announces it in a way that makes you think that the company is doing you a favour. I am not sure about the fundamentals here (although superficially they look attractive) but any company that is addicted to systematically transferring value from shareholders to senior staff is not one that I would feel compelled to own shares in. Having said that this stock was tipped just 5 months ago at 19.125p on t1ps.com so, we are already 46% ahead on that t1p. Not bad. However, the statement reads:
4516 days ago
The biggest driver of traffic here this week was the article discussing the views of the late Ayatollah Khomeni on bestiality. But it is hard to think of a suitable caption competition which might not offend just too many people. And so, with regret we return to dumb and dumber, drug obsessed and uber-authoritarian, MP Louise Mensch. The picture is below and always tweet your entries to @tomwinnifrith by 4 PM Monday to win one of our Piss off Argentina mugs.
My entry: Kid One: “So where did you put the dope then?” Kid Two – “she’s standing at the back”
Last week’s I asked for a caption for this photo
Our Judge, a man who is shown to have excellent judgement because he says I “look good” decided that the wittiest entry was Yes, I did say that Barclays was number one for fixed rates, which came from your very own travelling correspondent in the Balkans. And so no prize awarded.
Better luck to you all this week
4520 days ago
I have been wanting to write about Louise Mensch MP ever since I pointed out what a daft bint she was (here) a couple of weeks ago. I am delighted that she has presented me with an opportunity so soon. My desire to have another crack is partly driven by just how silly a person this MP is and partly because I was accused of misogyny in having a pop at her and Chloe Smith MP last time around.
