Okay to ask Cameron about drugs... but not Brown?

The Labour Party is up in arms after the BBC's Andrew Marr had the temerity to ask Gordon Brown if he was on the happy pills.

Former leader Neil Kinnock told Five News: "The BBC is one of the greatest institutions in the world. They demeaned themselves, they cheapened themselves and the judgement of the journalist who asked the question has to be questioned."

So it is okay to ask David Cameron if he has taken drugs (twenty years ago) but not okay to ask the leader of the country if he does?

As usual, one rule for one...

Another nail in education's coffin

The betrayal of our children continues. To add to the dumbing down of education by both parties, we now learn of the teacher who was arrested for possession of crack cocaine but has kept his job because he is apparently an "excellent" role model for children

Michael Swann, 27, who teaches at Maltby Comprehensive in Rotherham was given a caution for possession of the Class A drug after being found with it in a nightclub.

He denies the drugs were his and claims that he found them in the club lavatory. Of course, you did mate, of course you did - that's why you accepted a caution - because you had never seen them before.

What message does this send to children?

Ian Blair should stick to his word

Some time ago Metropolitan Police Force commissioner Sir Ian Blair called for middle-class drug users to be targeted.

There is a drugs problem in this country but for the most part that problem is not exacerbated by middle-class drug users. It isn't middle class drug users who mug or burgle to fund their habit because they can usually afford the price of cocaine. It is the working-class junkies who steal to pay for their drugs who cause misery.

Today the inquest of actress Natasha Collins heard that she died in a scalding hot bath after she and fiancé Mark Speight "partied" at home on drugs and alcohol.

Miss Collins, 31, had 60 per cent burns to her body including her face and tongue and appeared to have died in the bath with the hot tap on after taking almost five times the lethal level of cocaine. She Collins also had a 0.4in diameter hole in the septum of her nose - something pathologist Professor Sebastian Lucas said was associated with cocaine use.

Her body was found the following day, 3 January 2008, by her fiancé. He told police that they had been "partying" on their own and had taken cocaine and sleeping pills as well as drinking wine and vodka.

Speight was initially arrested on suspicion of murder and supplying Class A drugs, but Scotland Yard later said he would not face any charges over the death.

If Sir Ian Blair is serious about targeting middle-class drug users, why has Speight not been arrested and charged with possession of cocaine. If his fiancée had five times the lethal level in her body then they obviously had more than a "personal use" quantity of the drug in their home.

The war on drugs wasn't lost - it was never fought...

Contrast the sentence meted out to someone possessing illegal drugs in Dubai to that over here.

Some Radio 1 DJ who I had never heard of has been jailed for four years in Dubai for possession of cannabis.

We are not talking about supplying cannabis - he had 0.076oz of the drug in a pair of trousers - so that was almost certainly for personal use. The sentencing guidelines in Dubai for drug possession range from four years to death.

Possession of that small an amount would not even result in a caution in the UK where some senior policemen are calling for the decriminalisation of all drugs.

The policemen in question claim that the war on drugs is lost. I would argue that far from being lost, it was never fought. When so-called "leaders" like Brian Paddick - who now wants to be mayor of London - introduce a softly-softly approach to drugs, you know that the authorities are not serious.

Imagine the outcry if someone in Britain was sentenced to four years of porridge for possession of less than a quarter of an ounce of cannabis.

Yet if the police pursued an anti-drugs policy with the zeal they prosecute motorists, we, too, would not have a drugs problem and useless police would not talk about the war on drugs being lost.

Brunstrom is talking balls...

On Wednesday, I suggested (again) that it was time for Richard Brunstrom, the idiot who runs North Wales police force, to resign after his comments that ecstasy was safer than aspirin.

Brunstrom has used his blog to defend his comments. He writes: “As a fact then, and one which deserves to be more widely known, UK government figures from the Office of National Statistics show that between 1993 and 2006, ecstasy was ‘mentioned’ on death certificates in England and Wales 456 times (and mentioned on its own, without other drugs being present, less than half that number of times – 234) , whereas aspirin was mentioned on 504 occasions (on 285 occasions in the absence of other drugs). So in the last 14 years, as a fact, aspirin has been formally associated by the government with the death of more people than has ecstasy. That’s why I said on the radio that ecstasy’s safer than aspirin. The picture is not that simple of course, not least because the word ‘mentioned’ does not mean that ecstasy actually caused the death, merely that a person died who had taken it.”

As Brunstrom admits the picture is not that simple. Put another way: 504 people “died” as a result of aspirin out of perhaps 20 million people who took it (0.00252 per cent); 456 “died” from ecstasy out of perhaps a million that took it (0.0456). Now which is the safer drug?

In addition, his biography (which boasts of his A grade A level in Welsh as if that has anything to do with policing) on the site claims that “under Richard Brunstrom, North Wales Police has become one of the best performing forces in England and Wales”. Hmm, under Brunstrom his officers issued 4,200 speeding tickets but – in stark contrast – solved only 41 out of 693 vehicle crimes in a single month. In the same period it was revealed that his force had solved a mere six per cent of burglaries in their area.

Time for Brunstrom to go...

So the Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taliban has done it again.

Last month, Richard Brunstrom broke into his own headquarters.

Last week, he gave an interview to the BBC saying that he believed all drugs would be decriminalised within ten years and that Ecstasy was safer than aspirin.

Nurse!!!

More rubbish ideas

The government has decided in its infinite dumbness to halve rubbish collections in much of the country.

Unsurprisingly, people have started arranging their own rubbish removals. Until today, I was unaware of the existence of environmental crime officers. But apparently, they exist.

The Environment Agency is setting up a special intelligence unit to tackle the illegal rubbish disposal gangs.

Graham Holdsworth, an environmental crime officer with the agency, said: "This is becoming a key issue. We are experiencing increasing problems and we need more people on the scene. There is a huge difference between local sporadic fly-tipping, which is directly related to the rubbish collection, and organised environmental crime which is similar to drugs trafficking."

Similar to drugs trafficking? No, it isn't. You simply cannot compare someone dumping rubbish illegally to a person who brings illegal drugs into the country.

Once again, a massive overreaction by some buffoon who works for the state.

You can wipe out these illegal dumpers with one easy move (unlike drug trafficking): reinstate weekly rubbish collections.