Quick election debate blog

Ok, last time round I discussed the possibility (nay, the likelihood) of a Conservative minority Government. Nick Clegg's performance last week in the TV debate would appear to opened up the election debate. Oft-used phrase, but never truer than in this case; it really is ALL to play for.

What has been most interesting is that the UK newspapers have tried their best to be relevant in this election by attacking Nick Clegg. How very predictable. It is this blog's opinion that their effect will be minimal. The broadcast media, if any will have the greatest influence. Plus, it has been clear to the British public for decades that Newspapers have ceased to report the news anymore. Rather they are opinion pieces with an agenda to push.

For them therefore, Nick Clegg is seen as a threat to the right-wing press. Nick Clegg clearly has to go.

If this works, remains to be seen. I doubt it will. I certainly wouldn't advise either Cameron or Brown to pursue the point. Dirty tricks and negative campaigning have not resonated with the British people this time as it may have in previous elections.

Entering the UK

The election campaign continues. Yet, each night the headlines in the media have focussed on the Ash cloud from Iceland. Getting back to the UK seems to have been remarkably difficult for thousands of tourists.

The philosopher Alain de Botton has made an interesting point about taking this as an opportunity to enjoy travelling a continent by means other than sanitised air travel.

This has clearly been lost on some of the returning public, relieved to be home and wanting to jump in the shower as soon as possible. Unpleasant as some of the stories may seem, it has left one to wonder – if UK nationals have found it hard to get back into the UK – isn’t this also proof the UK is not the easiest country to enter for immigrants and asylum seekers too?

Drugs - a bad news story and loop holes

A small town on the east coast of England, better known for containing a profanity within its name, recently became famous for something even more sinister. Scunthorpe was seen to be on the front line of a campaign against 'deadly legal highs.' In March, Louis Wainwright and Nicholas Smith were reported to have taken the then loop-hole drug Mephedrone.

The 'legal' part of the description of Mephedrone has always been misleading. More accurate would be to describe them as 'loop-hole' highs. But this would take some explaining, whereas most commentators are more comfortable with the moniker 'so-called legal highs.' Which, you have to agree has the advantage of communicating the commentators self righteous disgust on the subject of drugs.

Be that as it may, there is also something Orwellian in the terms used about the War on Drugs. One of them, 'control' automatically springs to mind. Mephedrone is said to have become a 'controlled' drug, as of the 16th April, because it is now illegal. Though the Home Secretary and the chair of the ACMD are unable to explain how they, as our representatives, now have control of this drug, rather than criminal gangs that now sell Mephedrone.

All of this ignores that the drug, marketed as a plant food with properties close to Ecstasy if consumed by humans, was never really legal. And here our 'loop-hole' comes in handy. The producers and distributors had found a loop-hole in the Medicines Act 1968. Slap on a label 'not for human consumption' and hey presto - you now have a 'high' which allows you to trade the substance over the counter.

All of which means - we and our government, did not ever have 'control' of Mephedrone. More regulations were required to sell and produce a tin of baked beans than Mephedrone. Or indeed, a packet of cigarettes or a bottle of wine.

Politically it was all too easy for our politicians to just simply make the drug illegal, and claim they now 'controlled' the drug, because its possession and supply is now a criminal offence.

Good politics, but bad, bad policy.

At the time of writing, results of the toxicology tests of Louis Wainwright and Nicholas Smith have not been published. Over a month after there deaths, we still do not know what killed them.

"On Beauty" by Zadie Smith

Influneced by her undergraduate and postgraduate experiences in Cambridge and Harvard, this is a well written satire on the world of the Academy which explores the themes of ethnicity and love. Politics is left mostly hovering in the background, surfacing explicitly on occasion. Which makes this a much more subtle book than Smith's debut 'White Teeth.'

But like that debut, this is a wide ranging and ambitous book. In fact, the greatest compliment one can make about this book, is to demonstrate that Smith is no one-hit wonder and may encourage this reviewer to revisit the most disappointing of Smith's novels, 'The Autograph Man,' to see if it can be improved on a second reading.

She also has an ability to introduce the reader to concepts, they may never have thought of before. This, her most 'American' novel to date and contains a gentle humour, though not as funny as her first novel, but a vast improvement on the second, this book gets 4/5.

Dr Who in LSD-drugs shocker !

If you dont believe me please click on the link below; but ask yourselves this. Have drugs inspired popular culture, and thereby enhanced all of our lives? Bill Hicks would say yes. Or better still, ask the BBC....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8616911.stm

Mephedrone

Friday the 16th April.
Make a note in your diary.....although you will be forgiven for not bothering. Today Mephedrone is now a Class B drug. Illegal. Prohibited. Against the law to possess, trade or consume.

Not a memorable date; just another day in the already decades long and failed policy of the War on Drugs.

The illegality of this drug will not solve our drug problem. That will continue for as long as the law keeps drugs in the hands of criminal gangs.

UK Election Time

Week One of the Campaign over, and the first election debate has come and gone.
My first impressions so far:
Has the election really started? The manifestos are out, and the first debate has been had. Yet, for such an important election (and it must be, The Economist has said so*) it all seems dreadfully low key. Maybe living in a safe seat in East Yorkshire, has meant the parties are concentrating elsewhere. All thanks to an outdated electoral system no doubt.
Still, here are my initial thoughts;

1 - The polls maybe heading for a hung parliament, but a coalition is NOT what we are likely to end up with. At the moment the Polls suggest a minority Conservative administration. Think Stephen Harper in Canada, and Alex Salmond in Scotland,** and it is possible to imagine how David Cameron can still head the largest party in the Commons, without a majority.
2 - An improvement to the TV Debate: the French presidential debates, between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, had a nice touch we would do well to emulate. For each candidate, the TV audience were able to see a timer to display how long each had been speaking for. That way we could see if they each had equal time, or were speaking for longer than the other candidate. I suspect for long periods, Nick Clegg did not get as much speak time as the other two. The time he did have, he used ever so effectively.




* The Economist "Britain's Choice" 10-04-2010, p13
** The Economist 28-11-2009 p42 “Lessons form a hung parliament”
“But experience shows, in Scotland and other places, that by building a constellation of alliances, minority government can be made to function. It is just hard work.”

Eddie Izzard - Brilliant Britain

Eddie Izzard is brilliant.

"Canal Dreams" by Iain Banks

With his best work being his first book, The Wasp Factory, this is still a good old ripping yarn of modern derring do. Staple stuff from Iain Banks' fiction books.

What is amazing is clearly how much research has gone into a book of only 275 pages. Something Banks clearly takes seriously (who else knew that the normal timing of waves to hit the shore is seven or eight a minute?) This reviewer is also struggling to think of any other novel that can smoothly transfer between Panama and Japan, and this is a welcome edition to his portfolio of work. What Banks sometimes struggles with is coming up with an ending that is to the same standard as the rest of the book.

Shocking in all the right places and well recommended reading. This book gets 3/5

"High Rise" by J. G. Ballard

This book has a double edge. Firstly there are is the recent growth of high rise 'executive' flats built in the UK since the early 2000s (slowed only by the recession). Secondly there are the 1960s and 1970s tower blocks, the then solution to slum clearance, sold to the residents as 'streets in the sky'.

First published in 1975, Ballard was sending out a dystopian warning about the social conditions of the residents that were to live within such tower blocks. Be that as it may, the High Rise, executive or council, is still part of our present and future. For sure, the english dream of a semi-detached, with front and rear garden in the suburbs cannot be accessed by everyone.

Of course Ballard would not have had the foresight of the current trend to build executive flats, and would have had in mind the tower blocks of the 1960 and 1970s, which were mainly imported designs from Europe (yet another indication of how European the UK actually is).

But one criticism of the Tower Blocks during the 1980s, was that the architects that built them, did not have to suffer the conditions in which the residents lived within them. In "High Rise" Ballard turns this on its head, and has his architect living in the Tower Block. Yet this makes little difference, as the conditions deteriorate and the residents turn on each other anyway.

An entertaining short read, and as relevant to todays' modern Britain as when it was written, as our relationship with the Tower Block shows no end in sight. This book gets 3/5.