debate
debate
28 January 2012 10:26 PM
Heroin in the supermarket... why ever not, Sir Richard?
Sir Richard Branson says he doesn’t want to see drugs sold in supermarkets. Why not? That is the logic of his opinions, and I can’t see why he won’t just say so. Is he afraid it will damage his funky brand? If you don’t believe these substances are immoral, disgusting and dangerous then why not just let rip?
But ‘Sir’ Richard doesn’t seem to disapprove. He freely confesses to having taken several of them, though curiously he only ‘suspects’ he has sampled cocaine.
I have no respect at all for this absurd, overrated person, who in my opinion knows almost nothing about anything, except perhaps getting people to part with their money. Even then the record is patchy.
Hands up who remembers his gormless support for Britain joining the euro on the BBC’s Question Time. He could hardly get the words out, he had so little grasp of the subject. Yet he unerringly knew which was the stupid side on any major question, and equally unerringly supported it. And – which is much worse – people listened with respect.
And so last week he was taken seriously by Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee which is, yet again, investigating the Government’s drug policy.
I have suggested that they ask me along to explain it to them, as I do actually understand it. But so far I haven’t heard back. Somehow I think they’d rather take the advice of the genius behind Virgin Trains. It gets them on TV.
Here's the problem the decriminalisation campaigners face. They claim that a supposed ‘war on drugs’ is causing all kinds of misery. But there is no such war. If there is, how can the alleged singer Pete Doherty walk into court with his pockets actually full of heroin, drop some of it on the floor and walk out again a free man? And why are most cannabis users let off with a meaningless warning, if the police bother them at all?
True, there’s plenty of misery. Think of the poor deluded teenagers risking their sanity because they think cannabis is ‘soft’ and safe when in fact it’s a terrifying, unpredictable brain poison that can make you go mad for life.
But the non-existent ‘war on drugs’ can’t be the cause of it.
For instance, did you notice that as ‘Sir’ Richard was gabbling his modish opinions, the Sentencing Council (and who chooses its members, exactly?) was busy yet again reducing the penalties for drug offences, which have been fading into nothing since 1971?
Cocaine and heroin dealers can be let off if they are ‘immature’ or show ‘remorse’, which as we know means if they are good actors in the dock.
And cannabis dealers can be caught with 13lb of dope – almost a stone – and stay out of jail. So much, by the way, for the stupid, repeated claim that leaving the minnows alone ‘frees up’ police to chase the big sharks. All that happens is that the minnows get bigger and the sharks remain uncaught.
How long before the groovy guys and girls of the Sentencing Council rule that anyone with a van-load of weed or a ten-acre cannabis farm isn’t worth prosecuting? Not long, according to my old adversary Peter Reynolds, the leader of the cannabis legalisation party CLEAR. He wrote to his supporters last week to say: ‘Effectively, growing your own [cannabis] has been decriminalised. We are free.’
He explained: ‘The important point about these sentencing guidelines is that penalties have been reduced to such a level that I doubt whether the CPS will be interested in pursuing such cases.’
For once, I agree with him.
Bored to death in black and white
Yes, I knew perfectly well that the film The Artist was silent and black-and-white.
And no, I didn’t walk out. But gosh, I was bored. And the plot was silly and rather nasty. Is it because they have to watch so many really horrible movies that critics go wild with praise when presented with something that doesn’t actually make them throw up?
Seven-month mystery of the Awkward Question
David Cameron is famously said to have pretended he was the cleaner to dodge awkward phone calls and unwelcome questions in the days when he was public relations chief at Carlton TV.
This sort of thing may have been acceptable in the hurly-burly of broadcasting PR, but is it excusable in Downing Street?
I ask because it is now seven months since I asked the Prime Minister’s office a very simple, small question. At first, they flatly refused to answer it.
Then – by this time the matter had been switched to the Cabinet Office – they gave me a useless non-answer. Then, when I pursued them under the Freedom of Information Act, they failed to meet the legal deadline. This week a Cabinet Office spokesman gave me an excuse for the delay which turned out within hours to be flatly, demonstrably untrue. I am now told that last Monday, 237 days after my first query, an official finally took actual measurable steps to answer it.
I thought, when I first asked, that this was a small matter. Now, given the Government’s extraordinary reluctance to reply, I am not so sure. I will let you know what happens and what this mysteriously awkward question is, as soon as I have the answer. I would have expected this sort of thing from the Azerbaijani Interior Ministry, but not from Downing Street. Maybe Downing Street, too, has joined the Third World. Or is it the cleaner’s fault?
Happy now, Mr Dawkins?
Well, why not advertise abortions on prime-time TV? That’s the kind of country we are. So why be coy about it?
Richard Dawkins and his anti-God friends have finally won the moral battle. Growing numbers of people are taking them seriously. The world’s a meaningless accident. We have no purpose in life, right and wrong change with time and you can make them up as you go along.
So abort that baby, let the elderly starve to death in hospital, dodge your train and bus fares, buy stolen goods at car boot sales, take the bonus, maximise those expenses, drop that litter, drink until you’re sick.
The Centre for the Study of Integrity finds that we’re all more relaxed about lying, adultery, handling stolen goods and – naturally – drugs. Well, of course we are. Why wouldn’t we be? It was the Victorian Sunday schools that made us civilised, and now they’re all gone, what did you think would happen? I hope Richard Dawkins and his allies are pleased with their success.
Cold War Nostalgia, and a few responses
It is one of my greatest regrets that in my long-ago days as Defence Correspondent of Another Newspaper, I was abruptly pulled off a visit to the old Inner German Border by a silly executive. The British Army had happily agreed to conduct me along the extraordinary frontier which then ran between the two Germanies. I think that, with a bit of luck, I might also have secured a ride on the British Military Train which used to run daily between Helmstedt and Berlin to assert our right of passage between the British Zone of Occupation and the British Zone of Berlin. It was said that its dining car still sold meals and drinks at the prices of the 1940s, as its whole legal status was based on agreements from the time of Stalin and the Berlin airlift. For the same reason, flights from West Germany to Berlin in those days had to drop to 10,000 feet, because that was the height of air corridor agreed at that time. Of course, having put my kind hosts out by suddenly departing for what they regarded as no good reason, and so making them abandon elaborate arrangements they’d made for me, I could never revive the visit.
So I have always had a special affection for Anthony Bailey’s account of his own long ramble down the border, ‘Along the Edge of the Forest’, published back in 1983 and now a museum piece. Bailey is a very interesting writer anyway, and this is – if you are moved or diverted at all by such things - an unusually fascinating subject.
I read Bailey’s book hungrily when it first came out, and then turned to it again (for a long time it had been more or less lost in an obscure corner of my not-very-orderly bookshelves), a few weeks ago. It was so long since I had read it that I had even remembered the colour of the cover wrongly, as brown (the colour, after all, of almost everything in the Soviet zone of influence) when it was in fact green. My brother had recently given me , by complete coincidence, another of Bailey’s books, a reminiscence of his upbringing, and this made me all the more anxious to retrieve ‘Along the Edge’.
I saw the border from trains and from the air, and I saw, close to, its rather different equivalent in Berlin itself, but the actual demarcation was quiet different. In Berlin, for instance, the traveller in the East could approach quite close to the famous Wall, because it was impossible to hide it at the Brandenburg Gate. In most parts of the city you couldn’t do so, as there were internal barriers, but there was still this astonishing sight, a few hundred yards from the Soviet Embassy and the heart of ceremonial East Germany (which was quite grand, as the East had inherited the Unter den Linden, two Cathedrals, several superb museums and a lot of fine Schinkel architecture) there was this unmistakable thing, lower and broader than elsewhere, curving temptingly towards the Tiergarten in the West. I never saw it from the East without having a ludicrous urge to run towards it and leap over. I had the same daft impulse at the Panmunjom crossing between the Koreas, where there isn’t even a wall, just a line that looks absurdly easy to cross.
In East Germany itself, hardly anyone except border troops ever saw the inside of the great fence, with its mines (there were no landmines in Berlin) and its tripwire-triggered automatic guns. There was a three-mile-deep forbidden zone that most people could never enter.
Bailey applied for permission to see it from the East, and did eventually receive it, after he’d already finished his journey. He didn’t go, which I think was a great shame. Even the obstruction he’d undoubtedly have received would have made an interesting account, and my experience of travelling in East Germany itself was always very rewarding indeed. Not specially comfortable, though the first-class carriages of the old Deutsche Reichsbahn could be quite comfy, the hotel restaurants could be quite fun once you had got used to the compulsory communal tables, if (like me) you actually quite like heavy overcooked German dishes, and East German sparkling wine, Rotkaeppchen Sekt, was more bearable than you might have thought. And at night it was very, very dark and wonderfully silent, as Pyongyang is today.
I will always be grateful that I managed to see the lovely city of Weimar (and its neighbouring concentration camp at Buchenwald) under Communist rule, not to mention Dresden, Frankfurt and the almost indescribably haunting and beautiful city of Naumburg, with its unique cathedral. Nothing had been painted or much cared for since Stalingrad. The great wave of money which had Americanised west Germany had never arrived there, and so the traveller was able to see a much more German Germany, in which the rise of Hitler and many other things were far more explicable than they were amid the sparkle and luxury of the comfortable West.
Weimar, with the houses of Goethe and Schiller, and the (in those days) grand but shabby Elephant Hotel, now an unaffordable super-luxury palace, was a rare zone of beauty in a country which generally preferred ugliness, as Communists usually do. Its closeness to Buchenwald, which even in its wholly dishonest East German incarnation, a museum which cut out half of history, was enough to freeze the imagination and fill the visitor with a strange shame in being there to see such things.
Naumburg, whose cathedral contains some of the greatest sculptures ever made by human hand, was so melancholic it was enough to make you cry – under the grey sky, echoing with the sonic booms of Soviet MiGs, Red Army lorries ground along the cobbled streets and in the café the cakes were made out of potatoes and glue, and the coffee made of acorns. This is luxury, beyond the dreams of avarice, if your main interest is in finding out how other people live, how different life might be if things had turned out and how the world beyond your own shores is really like.
But back to Bailey. He covers much of the length of the border, which was not only a fence, but a ploughed strip, an anti-tank ditch, and then another fence, watched over by towers which (he observed) had been so badly built that many of them were falling down. He describes the lives of West Germans who lived close to the line, and also reveals a detail which I found particularly fascinating.
The actual East German border ran some way west of the fence. And in the often untended land in front of it, East German special troops (Aufklaerer, or Pioneers) often lurked (he had one or two close brushes with them). It was quite easy, if you weren’t careful, to wander into East Germany, be arrested by these silent, stealthy zealots, and taken against your will through concealed gates, into the dark heart of the DDR. Eventually, they let you go, but how could you be sure? The idea that this was a fence that could bite gave it an added fear, and reminded me a bit of a passage in the Pilgrim’s Progress where, quite close to the celestial city, a foul hole opens up in the hillside and some sinner is dragged off into Hell, just when he was sure he was safe.
Reading the book now, I find it has lost much of its old power because the fence is not just gone, but largely forgotten and unknown. Yet when I first read it, in 1983 or 1984, I could not have imagined that within five or six years the whole thing would have come to an end (and I was convinced even then that German reunification was inevitable eventually). What do we now think is permanent, that will be gone in ten years?
A couple of points. I should have said that the discussion of the renaming of Bombay can be found under the heading ‘Beijing, Mumbai etc’ in the index.
Why precisely is it ‘patronising drivel’ ( as someone calling himself ‘Mick’ says ) to state that children can be happy and healthy even if their parents are poor?
If I say I am not very good at driving I am not saying that I am actively dangerous to others. Nor do I agree with a critic (whose pseudonym is so silly I can’t be bothered to reproduce it) that driving cautiously is in itself dangerous. It may be inconvenient to people in a hurry, but it is by its nature safer than driving without caution. What is more, this person rather misses my implication, that people who do believe they are ‘good at ‘ driving are often in fact just good at being confident. They believe they can brake in time. They believe they can steer through that gap. They believe they can overtake in that gap. They believe they know what is round that corner. They think it will be all right to take that phone call or read that text. They believe that pedestrian will not step out, that cyclist will not wobble. A lot of the time they will turn out to be right ( though in many cases this will be because others see or hear them coming, and slow down, get out of the way or stop to let them by). But I can tell them all (having myself been in a serious road accident more than 40 years ago, though I still recall it in detail now) that in half a second their lives ( and those of several others) can be turned upside down by a tiny miscalculation. A couple of years ago a South Wales police force made an astonishing short film on the dangers of texting while driving, which managed to portray quite eerily the experience of a road accident, including the terrifying silence which falls immediately afterwards, before you dare to look and see what has happened , and before the pain explodes. Everyone should see it. To believe you aren’t very good actually makes you better. It is the only responsible thing to do. But of course it should be made much harder to get, and keep a driving licence. If it were, then we would have better public transport and better provision for bicycles.
Wake up, judge! We've been letting everyone in for years
Actually, it’s lucky for you that you didn’t meet him. One woman who did meet him, in Kent, will never forget the experience, for all the wrong reasons. Akulic not only raped her, but knocked her to the ground and stamped on her head.
After she reported the attack to the police, he went round to her home and threatened her.
Akulic filmed the rape while it was taking place. The victim, by this time, had black eyes and bruises on her face and all over her body. The judge in his original trial described him as ‘depraved’.
Akulic, who, like you and me (though I’d much rather not be), is a citizen of the European Union, drifted unhindered into the Euro-region formerly known as Great Britain in 2010.
Nobody cared that he had spent much of his adult life in prison for violence, or that he had once raped a seven-year-old girl.
As Lady Justice Hallett (of course) reduced his prison sentence on appeal last week, she asked in some astonishment: ‘Do we let in just anyone?’ The answer, of course, is: ‘Yes, Judge.’
Her spluttering amazement came after Akulic’s lawyer explained that the Lithuanian rapist was an EU citizen, and so has as much right to be here as you and I – a simple point I have been trying to get across for years.
But if I know this, why doesn’t Heather Hallett know it? To be unaware that this country no longer has any proper borders and is, therefore, no longer a proper country is inexcusable in an educated person. Yet this blank refusal to understand what is going on here is almost universal among our governing classes.
They say they will deport Victor Akulic to a Lithuanian prison. Perhaps they will. But what are the chances that, released in some Baltic amnesty or tagging scheme, he is back here within ten years, living nicely at our expense off generous British benefits, and looking out for a new girlfriend?
Well, what are they?
... and a lesson in crime for the bishop
The rather nice Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, recently interviewed me for a BBC Radio series on the treatment of criminals.
I sought to explain the simple point (to me it’s simple) that a weak justice system means that wrongdoers grow in strength. So if we do not swiftly and severely punish crimes, evil grows in our society. The kind and the good suffer and are forced into retreat. Justice dies.
Though the bishop generously allowed me time to make this case, his three programmes made the classic mistake of seeing crime mainly through the eyes of prisoners. It is time he saw it through the eyes of normal human beings.
I invite the bishop to study this picture of Daniel Chrapkowski emerging from Manchester Crown Court after receiving the typical empty response of our criminal injustice system to oafish cruelty. That is, nothing serious will happen to him. His lawyer, some poor pathetic booby, had just said how remorseful he was.
Chrapkowski and his cronies were scattering rubbish in the road when Joseph O’Reilly bravely challenged them. Chrapkowski punched him in the face and tripped him so that he fell to the pavement. Mr O’Reilly must now live with a metal plate in his face, suffers dizzy spells and numbness, can chew his food only on one side and is worried about going out alone. His life is worse than it should be, for ever.
Now I think it likely that Chrapkowski will one day end up in prison, if he tries hard enough. But by then, he will be a confirmed, thick-skinned horror, full of pity for himself and brilliant at talking to social workers and bishops. What a pity he isn’t breaking rocks in a state of shock, within an austere and disciplined prison, learning at last that he needs to care about other people’s feelings.
The foul truth - discovered in a lovely park
It being January, I suppose it’s fairly inevitable that this column will be, even more than usual, a series of reasons to emigrate, if only I could work out where.
So I may as well share this with you too. The gates of a rather lovely suburban park in my home town are now decorated with notices urging users not to engage in something they delicately call ‘human fouling’. The notices include graphic drawings of this activity, leaving little to the imagination.
Let me just explain, if you’re in any doubt, that if dogs do this, their owners are expected to clear it up.
Ten yards from these notices is a large block of public lavatories – the modern armoured kind which look like cells in a SuperMax Prison, designed with drunk vandals in mind. These, as I recently found when I tried to use one for its proper purpose, are increasingly employed for sexual intercourse of all kinds.
Perhaps the human fouling has started because the lavatories are always full of couples. I don’t know and don’t much care, as that way lies madness. I just wish people would stop telling me that everything is getting better.
* * *
Enough jokes about Italian incompetence, please. Have we all forgotten the Herald of Free Enterprise? Are we so sure we’re as good as we once were?
* * *
One more thing to cheer you up. Silly complacent types are always telling me that British crime statistics show that crime is falling. When I laugh, they accuse me of cynicism. Well, let them please explain official figures for the mass disorders last summer.
Apparently, crime hardly rose during this period. Why? Well, for example, 20 people looting one shop is recorded as one offence.
Oh, and remember what the rioters at Ford Open Prison shouted at the staff before doing £5 million damage that we will pay for. ‘There are 550 of us and only five of you. What are you going to do?’
Luckily, most louts and robbers are quite stupid, and they have not yet realised that this is also the state of affairs on our streets. But how long will it be before they do?
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