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...their knee at the same time, do you think it might catapult them all off to Poland or similar where they'd no doubt find their authoritarian meddling in other peoples' lives more acceptable and satisfying?

Haroon Siddique and Matthew Tempest
Wednesday July 18, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Gordon Brown today announced the second review in two years into whether cannabis should be reclassified, in response to concerns that its current status does not reflect the drug's dangers.

Mr Brown announced the review, which will look at whether cannabis should be reclassified as class B again - rather than its present class C - at prime minister's questions.

Of course a "review" is also an opportunity to persuade of the opposite case, though anyone who received the government's reply to a pro-legalization petition the other day will know just how prejudiced they are heading into this latest review.

In 2005, 10,000 11- to 17-year-olds were treated for cannabis use - 10 times the number a decade ago.

Yeah - you know what - reclassifying will not make any difference in a black market where pushers don't really care about the age of their customers. Decriminalizing and penalizing people extremely harshly who sell to minors would.

But I'd love to know where this 10,000 figure comes from - before it becomes a matter of popular "fact" created by a political spin doctor. Officially there were just 946 mental health admissions related to cannabis in total in the UK in all age groups in 2005-6. So it seems extraordinary that, given the most common juxtaposition is between mental health and cannabis, that ten times the total number of mental health admissions can be attributed to youngsters suffering other problems as a result of the drug. By contrast, there were 5700+ hospital admissions of under 16 year olds due to alcohol abuse in the same year.

Plants are increasingly cultivated to include high levels of the active ingredient of cannabis, THC, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which encourages addiction and can cause a range of symptoms, from short-term memory loss, anxiety and panic attacks to triggering schizophrenia.

They are so cultivated because of the illegal market in which they operate. Where pushers and growers want to get the maximum value they can out of as little as possible to minimize their chances of being caught. It's not that difficult to measure the THC in any one strain or plant. So decriminalizing and forcing people to sell only with a statement of how strong it was would solve that one too. You don't expect people to be drinking pints of full strength Whisky when they go out for small beer do you? That's what the criminal nature of the market is forcing on cannabis consumers.

Prohibition has not worked and never will work. However unlikely, every review of the situation is an opportunity to persuade of the better course. Jacqui - read this first. On the other hand, given that most of us are criminals anyway, maybe if you stick to the paper clips and I'll stick to unwinding after work with a joint we'll all get along fine.

Technorati Tags: drugs laws, gordon brown, liberty, prohibition

This is from a month ago or so, but "Buckie" is back in the news as Scottish health minister seems to be blaming all society's ills on it. In a previous story the BBC wrote:

Binge drinking - the Benedictine connection

Buckfast Tonic Wine originates from Roman Catholic monks - not a group traditionally associated with the drunken masses

Interesting choice of words there methinks.

Have they not heard the joke:

Q: How many English Benedictines does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Two - one to call the electrician while the other mixes the drinks.

You'd have thought that a city in which the Green Party regularly polls up to 20% of the vote, holds a quarter of the county council seats and a sixth of the city council seats (and the latter in a minority administration to boot where their vote in council can effectively make or break a policy) and where they have been in a joint administration even, would be one of the most sustainable cities in the country.

You'd be wrong:

OXFORD people are among the greediest in the country in consuming the Earth's resources, according to a new league table.

A report by the Worldwide Fund for Nature ranked the 60 cities in England, Scotland and Wales by their residents' average ecological footprints - and discovered each Oxford person consumes more than three times the resources the planet can sustain.

It used data from local authorities to calculate the area each city's residents needed for food, energy and resources and to absorb waste and pollution.

Oxford ranked joint 55th out of the 60 cities, with its residents having among the five largest footprints for housing, consumer items and private services.

I'm sure they would tell us it's all because we don't carry out enough of their policies. My hunch is that in fact voting Green is for most people a substitute for taking personal action. That voting Green is "doing my bit for the environment".

I suspect Oxford's bad showing is nothing to do with local politics, but partly that in the big picture we are a city with a global reach. That we probably have a greater proportion of residents who are visiting from overseas and travel back regularly - at university vacations and so on - certainly judging by the success of the multitude of Heathrow & Gatwick bus services. That we are a magnet for London commuters so have a higher proportion than other cities of people who commute 120 miles a day. And that the city ballooned in the rapid growth of the motor industry resulting in hundreds of acres of relatively inefficient inter-war housing making up the bulk of our built environment.

These are structural issues that are too big for what is seen often as a crusty, crypto-communist, community politics organisation to address purely locally. It needs real devolution of power that can only be granted by the Westminster players so we can have real control of our own development as a city, changes to the way we tax people for environmentally damaging habits and so on.

One thing the Greens could do locally, as some have in the past with the Oxfordshire Land Value Tax study, is to support my calls for Oxford to be allowed to trial LVT as a replacement for the Council Tax, city wide - see if we can't persuade a majority of the city council and city representative county councillors to support such a move. That's part of the bigger picture that we can try to address, and it's their party policy. Efficient use of land is key to reducing our footprint, to getting people able to commute less, to use more local suppliers where possible, to remodel the city with an efficient built environment and so on.

...to think that, in a few short weeks , it looks possible that party activists of all political colours will be expected to trudge the streets once again asking people to believe a lot of spin, unachievable promises and heartfelt apologies and vote for for a "change", or maybe that should just be "vote, for a change".

Actually, I tell a lie, it doesn't completely overwhelm me. Sometimes there is a little frisson of excitement at the possibility that the people of Britain might just once collectively call time on this comfy carousel of political clap-trap. Just say no! as the song went...

No, Gordon! No, Dave! No, Jack, Hillary, Harriet or whoever! No, not even you Nick!

We've had quite enough for these past decades, nay centuries, of being shunted up the gary glitter by folk who think they know better than us but whose ambitions so clearly exceed their abilities.

What would happen if we all got up one "Good Morning" Polling Day and simply voted "no"? At what point would the Westminster clique conclude they had completely lost our confidence and call a halt to their corruption and crookery? Or at what point can we refuse, with impunity, to submit to their authority?

And then, how do we create a new, bottom up, rather than up its own arse, democracy? This has much to commend it.

Have a look at the artist's impression below as reproduced in the Oxford Mail story on tonight's planning debate at Oxford City Council over the proposals to extend the Westgate shopping centre:

See how the road, Queen Street, has people milling around in safety and nice surroundings? There's not a bus in sight, is there? That's because we have been led to believe for the last six years and more that any redevelopment of the Westgate Centre would be contingent on finding a route for eastbound buses through the new centre that would finally get them out of this cluttered and frankly downright dangerous street.

Well guess what. The plan, approved tonight, has welched on that. Buses will continue there after all. What is the point of spending thousands of pounds doing up Bonn Square if you can't stand back and marvel it without a No 7 knocking you down - and I don't mean a lady hawking Boots' makeup.

Whilst the original plan which Prescott refused on call-in and the city got through on appeal to the High Court did have its flaws, there are two distinct problems that to my mind make this application inestimably worse. Failure to get the buses out of Queen Street (which the original did) and expansion across Norfolk Street resulting in the demolition of a community of flats and houses built only a couple of decades ago primarily for disabled residents (which the original plan did not).

This latter is a particularly pernicious piece of corporate greed on the part of the Westgate Partnership and the City Council which stands to gain millions from the development, most of which is on their land. I hope the residents are well advised about their rights in holding out for the best price - it seems to me that they have effectively a ransom on this development.

Yes, we all want to see a John Lewis in Oxford I'm sure, but I wonder how that workers' partnership would view the idea of kicking a bunch of vulnerable people out of their homes? If any understand the benefits of personal ownership of capital assets it should be them.

The City Council should look to its other assets. The jewel in its crown is the Covered Market, and although it will remain a unique feature of Oxford's city centre it is now effectively marginalized on the eastern fringe of the main shopping area, together with other vulnerable sites in areas like Broad Street. One might expect that whole area east of Cornmarket to become merely a tourist curiosity, with trinket shops and eateries.

In turn, those businesses, predominantly small local independent shops, that currently just about cling on there and who will, let's face it, be unable to compete for space in and around the new Westgate, will face an uncertain future as our new primary shopping area becomes even more blanded by brands.

I've not been too much involved with this application - I was on the Planning Committee when the last one happened and voted against that one too for all sorts of reasons - but my gut feeling is that this one is wrong on so many levels. I find myself in the extremely odd and slightly uncomfortable position of hoping that Ruth Kelly won't like it either. I normally hate the idea of central government taking local decisions away from local people. But in this case I think the local people have made a mistake, and one that will change significantly the Oxford millions know and love for many years to come. If such can't be dealt with by a local referendum, then someone else has got to be able to take a view outside the obvious conflict of interest involved in a council granting planning permission for its land in which it stands to make a small fortune.

Sorry chaps. But I had to say it! There's one way you can make up for this, since you're in the game of rearranging your significant property assets - let's set up a Community Land Partnership, pooling the freeholds of the area to the east of Cornmarket and St Aldate's and including the Town Hall and the Covered Market, creating a body that can act as one with the financial muscle to counter the effect of the inevitable westward shift of the city centre.

PS - come to think of it, if you really want to do away with Oxford's most brutal piece of architecture (pace Jeremy Dixon's new blot on the mound which I fear is there for a good while yet) the whole thing should wait until we discover whether Oxford will become a Unitary Authority (God forbid!) and knock County Hall down instead of peoples' homes.