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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The political role of the purples: As a stalking horse

SystemSystem Posts: 12,213
edited March 2014 in General

imagepoliticalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The political role of the purples: As a stalking horse

It’s reasonably common, in these cynical times that we live in, to hear someone dismissively remark that politicians are mainly interested in power. It’s a comment that is both often true and also the basic point of politicians.

Read the full story here


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Comments

  • AnorakAnorak Posts: 6,621
    edited March 2014
    Nice post, but perhaps a long-winded way of saying UKIP have repolarised the Conservative party, and have shifted the centre-point rightwards across all parties.

    Sort of like a political black hole, with the Tories closest to the event horizon.

    [Also first, and aren't you glad I got in before our resident frotting frother]
  • MikeKMikeK Posts: 9,053

    In or out of the EU? Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage debate the issue live on LBC http://t.co/7OS84upViT #LBCdebate pic.twitter.com/watgOSOzPT

    — LBC (@LBC) March 24, 2014
  • MikeKMikeK Posts: 9,053
    UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP

    IS GROWING
  • AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340
    This article is a week late. The full moon was on 16 March.
  • TGOHFTGOHF Posts: 21,633
    MikeK said:

    UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP

    IS GROWING

    You forgot a few LIBLABCON s
  • AveryLPAveryLP Posts: 7,815
    'UKIP U'KIP UK'IP UKI'P UKIP' UK'sIP 'UKIP 'UKIP U'KIP UK'IP UKI'P UKIP' UK'sIP 'UKIP 'UKIP U'KIP UK'IP UKI'P UKIP' UK'sIP 'UKIP 'UKIP U'KIP UK'IP UKI'P UKIP' UK'sIP 'UKIP 'UKIP U'KIP UK'IP UKI'P UKIP' UK'sIP 'UKIP 'UKIP U'KIP UK'IP UKI'P UKIP' UK'sIP 'UKIP 'UKIP U'KIP UK'IP UKI'P UKIP' UK'sIP 'UKIP 'UKIP U'KIP UK'IP UKI'P UKIP' UK'sIP 'UKIP

    IS FINDING ITS APOSTROPHE
  • MonikerDiCanioMonikerDiCanio Posts: 5,792
    Politics is the art of the possible is one of Bismarck's many acute sayings.
  • taffystaffys Posts: 9,753
    As the tide of recovery lifts more and more boats, its the left behind labour heartlands that UKIP will increasingly be targeting.
  • AnorakAnorak Posts: 6,621
    TGOHF said:

    MikeK said:

    UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP

    IS GROWING

    You forgot a few LIBLABCON s
    Plus several EUSSR's
  • corporealcorporeal Posts: 2,549

    Politics is the art of the possible is one of Bismarck's many acute sayings.

    I didn't go looking for the original, I've seen it attributed to several places (like so many good quotes). But if it's verified as Bismarck I'll have a sneaky edit.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,459
    edited March 2014
    MikeK said:

    UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP

    IS GROWING

    UKIP PUKI IPUK KIPU

    I quite like the second one.

    The party for stupid sloganeers... PUKI! We're named after what we make the electorate do! ;-)
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    Tonight on Radio 4, 8pm.

    I would have thought this program offers some explanations or ideas as to why there is room for a socially conservative party to gain traction

    "Journalist Peter Hitchens examines the social and cultural revolution that has taken place in Britain over the last four decades. How did many of the old stigmas, particularly those surrounding the family, simply disappear? Peter argues that, while many of the old taboos have been done away with, all we've done is replace them with another set.

    As the sociologist Patricia Morgan suggests, "nature abhors a vacuum", if you remove stigma from one thing it attaches itself to something else.

    Peter challenges "the Godfather of the sociology of the swinging sixties", Laurie Taylor and the former editor of the Archers, Vanessa Whitburn, to explain how the enormous social changes of the 1960s and ensuing years happened, and he questions left wing author Owen Jones and former Conservative cabinet minister John Redwood on whether, as a society, we should be satisfied with the outcome.

    Peter pays a visit to St Mellons in Cardiff, the estate made famous in a speech by John Redwood in 1993. Mr Redwood thought he'd focused on the duties of fathers, but the wider world saw it as an attack on single mothers. Peter asks why there was such a fuss and whether it would be possible to make that speech today. He suggests that we have got to a stage where there is such pressure to conform that no-one dares express views that are outside accepted mainstream thinking.

    In throwing off the chains of the past, have we saddled ourselves with a form of liberal bigotry? "

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yn83q
  • JackWJackW Posts: 14,787
    SL win by 9wkts after 5 overs.
  • compouter2compouter2 Posts: 2,371
    **** Opens up another bag of popcorn and views from afar *****
  • AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340
    On topic, UKIP exercises soft power, particularly over the Conservatives, but only because so many Conservatives secretly share many of UKIP's desires and can't get them satisfied in their current home. It's the love that dare not speak its name.

    The budget shows how the Conservative leadership are (correctly) looking to square that circle. Rather than pandering to the wishes of the UKIP leadership, they're looking to address the concerns of potential UKIP voters. That can be done without alienating other swing voters and without throwing money around, as the budget showed.

    If the Conservatives are to succeed in this approach, they need to realise that the budget was just a start. They will need more policies of the same type, designed to appeal to moderately paid Hardworking Families (TM) - particularly those where the days of Hard Work are now behind them.

    But I expect that the Conservatives think that was job done. They have no stickability.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,578
    Anorak said:

    Nice post, but perhaps a long-winded way of saying UKIP have repolarised the Conservative party, and have shifted the centre-point rightwards across all parties.

    A reasonable summation I think. Will UKIP's more enthusiastic cheerleaders be able to prevent themselves imploding if they don't destroy (rather than rattle) the political establishment as they sometimes appear to think they will, given they demonstrably have had plenty of influence indirectly, I wonder.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 39,054
    TGOHF said:
    Rubbish question because the first option is not available on the ballot paper. It should be a Con/Lab/Lib question not a ConLib/Lab question.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    On topic, good analysis, but I wonder how/whether the UKIP!!!!!/Ukip coalition will hold together.....


    OT FPT:

    Worth a listen - Today went to Berwick and Suffolk to ask them both what they thought about Scottish independence - with very different responses:

    https://audioboo.fm/boos/2014129-the-english-view-on-the-scottish-independence-debate
  • Scrap's trading update...

    Heading towards a paper loss of near £5,000.

    Crikey, I'm good.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,950
    Mr. Scrapheap, can't recall where I read it, but I did read today that the actual impact of the pension reform regarding annuities taking out will be far less than many people imagine. Hopefully that'll help your position, if it turns out to be true.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 39,054

    Scrap's trading update...

    Heading towards a paper loss of near £5,000.

    Crikey, I'm good.

    I hope for your sake that there is a recovery for specialist providers, but I don't see it coming. The government is resolved to get rid of the annuities sector.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,459
    The BBC has an interesting article on the 49 people who get to know the official inflation stats before us plebs.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-26666191

    They're due out tomorrow morning.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    isam said:

    Tonight on Radio 4, 8pm.

    "Journalist Peter Hitchens examines the social and cultural revolution that has taken place in Britain over the last four decades. How did many of the old stigmas, particularly those surrounding the family, simply disappear? Peter argues that, while many of the old taboos have been done away with, all we've done is replace them with another set.

    It's a very interesting question - that of the problems of the 'permissive society'. Essentially, if you allow people more latitude, to have sex outside the confines of marriage, to take drugs or alcohol, etc., then there will undoubtedly be casualties.

    You see it in terms of alcoholism, drug abuse, single parent families and the like.

    But most people are able to have a few drinks without turning into an alcoholic, or to have pre-marital sex, without it becoming a problem.

    It Peter Hitchen's world, as in the world of hardline Muslims, the flexibility for individuals to choose their own path is more proscribed: because 'permissiveness' causes problems (and it does), we should shy away from it.

    But prescriptive conservatism is not without its problems.

    Who wants to live in a world where homosexuality is still illegal? And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    We - and I include Peter Hitchens in this - need to accept that there are risks and costs associated with both permissiveness and conservative prescription.

    Personally, I veer towards the libertarian - or what you might describe as the old UKIP party of freedom view. Peter Hitchens is the new UKIP, the UKIP of social conservatism; where there may be more votes, but which would be a miserable place for many people with minor vices to live in.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624

    The BBC has an interesting article on the 49 people who get to know the official inflation stats before us plebs.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-26666191

    They're due out tomorrow morning.

    Are they out on day release?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,459
    rcs1000 said:

    The BBC has an interesting article on the 49 people who get to know the official inflation stats before us plebs.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-26666191

    They're due out tomorrow morning.

    Are they out on day release?
    But is it on good behaviour?
  • Mr. Scrapheap, can't recall where I read it, but I did read today that the actual impact of the pension reform regarding annuities taking out will be far less than many people imagine. Hopefully that'll help your position, if it turns out to be true.

    Everyone I speak to thinks that will be the case, providers, fellow advisers, pensions/technical people in the industry.. and crucially my clients too so far.... but the stockmarket prices say we're all wrong so far.... Only time will tell so best get back to work and ignore the markets day to day foibles.
  • TGOHFTGOHF Posts: 21,633

    Scrap's trading update...

    Heading towards a paper loss of near £5,000.

    Crikey, I'm good.

    time to double the bet surely ? Then you only need half the recovery to break even.
  • taffystaffys Posts: 9,753
    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.
  • SimonStClareSimonStClare Posts: 7,976
    MikeK said:

    UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP UKIP

    Nurse ! another one's escaped again.

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,534
    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    Tonight

    Personally, I veer towards the libertarian - or what you might describe as the old UKIP party of freedom view. Peter Hitchens is the new UKIP, the UKIP of social conservatism; where there may be more votes, but which would be a miserable place for many people with minor vices to live in.

    A paradox for UKIP is that much of their support comes from working-class communities in which marriage has ceased to be typical.
  • Blue_rogBlue_rog Posts: 2,019

    Scrap's trading update...

    Heading towards a paper loss of near £5,000.

    Crikey, I'm good.

    Don't be too downhearted :-)

    I think the worries over China and Ukraine are dragging things down rather than specifically the annuity providers woes. I have seen a couple of articles about overselling in this market so you may have been right and you just need to wait for global things to stabilise.
  • David_EvershedDavid_Evershed Posts: 6,506
    Before getting into power at national level, the Lib Dems exercised power in very many local governments, including in coalition with Labour in Scotland.

    As UKIP wins more Council seats it can achieve local power. What is forgotten is how well UKIP may (or may not) poll in the May local elections. In the last Council elections UKIP achieved 25% of the votes and won 147 council seats.

    With the problems of the first past the post election system at Westminster, UKIP are following the Lib Dem approach of first winning local seats. Then building on this to target the areas they have had most local success for electing UKIP MPs.

    The test of UKIP momentum in the May elections will be how well they do in local elections not how well they do in the EU elections.





  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited March 2014
    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Actually Peter Hitchens never said he thought homosexuality should be illegal. I have heard him say many times that he supported the act that legalised it.

    There never has been a war on drugs, that's the point. People don't get nicked for taking or possessing drugs. I, and all my mates, grew up taking drugs, getting caught with them,Going to places where they were openly taken, and the only people that ever got arrested were two massive international dealers/smugglers.

    One friend got caught with 10k of coke and scales etc in his house and got let off saying he was depressed and paranoid about getting raw deals!

    Every bar in the city of London has people sniffing coke in it on a Friday night. Do the police know this? yes. Would they dream of raiding and searching? No

    That's the point. There never has been a war on drugs, it's why Hitchens wrote a book called 'The War We Never Fought'

  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    G8 summit 'won't be held in Russia'
    Breaking news
    The G8 summit will not take place in Russia this year, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

    Speaking in the Netherlands, Mr Cameron said it was "absolutely clear" the planned June meeting of world leaders in the Russian resort of Sochi would not happen due to events in Ukraine.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26722668#"
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,821
    edited March 2014
    On topic: The difference, though, is that success by the LibDems wasn't at the expense of their most cherished goals, whereas success by UKIP (if they take votes disproportionately from the Conservatives at the GE) will unerringly torpedo the one thing which they claim is their goal.
  • SocratesSocrates Posts: 10,322

    G8 summit 'won't be held in Russia'
    Breaking news
    The G8 summit will not take place in Russia this year, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

    Speaking in the Netherlands, Mr Cameron said it was "absolutely clear" the planned June meeting of world leaders in the Russian resort of Sochi would not happen due to events in Ukraine.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26722668#"

    No one will dare annex parts of a foreign country again if the response is that an international summit gets cancelled. Putin must be filled with regret.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Personally, I veer towards the libertarian - or what you might describe as the old UKIP party of freedom view. Peter Hitchens is the new UKIP, the UKIP of social conservatism; where there may be more votes, but which would be a miserable place for many people with minor vices to live in.

    A paradox for UKIP is that much of their support comes from working-class communities in which marriage has ceased to be typical.
    I am tempted to ask if that is the fault of Polish immigrants :-)

    Generally, I think the right question to ask is: have we set up poor economic incentives? That is, have we set up a tax and benefit system that encourages outcomes we know to be poor for people's physical and mental health, and for the long-term success of the country?

    And I would argue that we have. I would suggest that by adding length of residence (or, ideally years of NI contribution) requirements to get housing benefit, child support, and an "NHS Card", one could discourage people from living lives that are clearly bad for them, while preserving my general desires for freedom (to work where they want or imbibe what they want or to sleep with whomever they want), and discouraging economic freeloading.
  • SocratesSocrates Posts: 10,322
    isam said:

    Tonight on Radio 4, 8pm.

    I would have thought this program offers some explanations or ideas as to why there is room for a socially conservative party to gain traction

    "Journalist Peter Hitchens examines the social and cultural revolution that has taken place in Britain over the last four decades. How did many of the old stigmas, particularly those surrounding the family, simply disappear? Peter argues that, while many of the old taboos have been done away with, all we've done is replace them with another set.

    As the sociologist Patricia Morgan suggests, "nature abhors a vacuum", if you remove stigma from one thing it attaches itself to something else.

    Peter challenges "the Godfather of the sociology of the swinging sixties", Laurie Taylor and the former editor of the Archers, Vanessa Whitburn, to explain how the enormous social changes of the 1960s and ensuing years happened, and he questions left wing author Owen Jones and former Conservative cabinet minister John Redwood on whether, as a society, we should be satisfied with the outcome.

    Peter pays a visit to St Mellons in Cardiff, the estate made famous in a speech by John Redwood in 1993. Mr Redwood thought he'd focused on the duties of fathers, but the wider world saw it as an attack on single mothers. Peter asks why there was such a fuss and whether it would be possible to make that speech today. He suggests that we have got to a stage where there is such pressure to conform that no-one dares express views that are outside accepted mainstream thinking.

    In throwing off the chains of the past, have we saddled ourselves with a form of liberal bigotry? "

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yn83q

    It's always sad when the BBC pretends to correct for its liberal bias by giving a megaphone to the most obnoxious, hard right winger it can find. Fox News does the same thing in reverse.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,534
    rcs1000 said:

    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Personally, I veer towards the libertarian - or what you might describe as the old UKIP party of freedom view. Peter Hitchens is the new UKIP, the UKIP of social conservatism; where there may be more votes, but which would be a miserable place for many people with minor vices to live in.

    A paradox for UKIP is that much of their support comes from working-class communities in which marriage has ceased to be typical.
    I am tempted to ask if that is the fault of Polish immigrants :-)

    Generally, I think the right question to ask is: have we set up poor economic incentives? That is, have we set up a tax and benefit system that encourages outcomes we know to be poor for people's physical and mental health, and for the long-term success of the country?

    And I would argue that we have. I would suggest that by adding length of residence (or, ideally years of NI contribution) requirements to get housing benefit, child support, and an "NHS Card", one could discourage people from living lives that are clearly bad for them, while preserving my general desires for freedom (to work where they want or imbibe what they want or to sleep with whomever they want), and discouraging economic freeloading.
    I think that our tax and benefits system does create a series of perverse incentives.

  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,821
    edited March 2014
    Socrates said:

    No one will dare annex parts of a foreign country again if the response is that an international summit gets cancelled. Putin must be filled with regret.

    Since there was no substantive response by the West to the invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or Afghanistan by the Soviets, or indeed by the Russians to the invasions of Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq, Suez by western countries, or to the destabilisation of the elected government of Iran in 1953 - to name just a few of many examples since 1945 - it's pretty absurd to claim that realpolitik is something new or that a precedent is being set.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Actually Peter Hitchens never said he thought homosexuality should be illegal. I have heard him say many times that he supported the act that legalised it.

    There never has been a war on drugs, that's the point. People don't get nicked for taking or possessing drugs. I, and all my mates, grew up taking drugs, getting caught with them,Going to places where they were openly taken, and the only people that ever got arrested were two massive international dealers/smugglers.

    One friend got caught with 10k of coke and scales etc in his house and got let off saying he was depressed and paranoid about getting raw deals!

    Every bar in the city of London has people sniffing coke in it on a Friday night. Do the police know this? yes. Would they dream of raiding and searching? No

    That's the point. There never has been a war on drugs, it's why Hitchens wrote a book called 'The War We Never Fought'

    Yet more than half of people in US federal prisons are there fore drug offences. And according to our own government more than a third of the increase in the prison population in the last 25 years has come from drug offences.

  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    Socrates said:

    isam said:

    Tonight on Radio 4, 8pm.

    I would have thought this program offers some explanations or ideas as to why there is room for a socially conservative party to gain traction

    "Journalist Peter Hitchens examines the social and cultural revolution that has taken place in Britain over the last four decades. How did many of the old stigmas, particularly those surrounding the family, simply disappear? Peter argues that, while many of the old taboos have been done away with, all we've done is replace them with another set.

    As the sociologist Patricia Morgan suggests, "nature abhors a vacuum", if you remove stigma from one thing it attaches itself to something else.

    Peter challenges "the Godfather of the sociology of the swinging sixties", Laurie Taylor and the former editor of the Archers, Vanessa Whitburn, to explain how the enormous social changes of the 1960s and ensuing years happened, and he questions left wing author Owen Jones and former Conservative cabinet minister John Redwood on whether, as a society, we should be satisfied with the outcome.

    Peter pays a visit to St Mellons in Cardiff, the estate made famous in a speech by John Redwood in 1993. Mr Redwood thought he'd focused on the duties of fathers, but the wider world saw it as an attack on single mothers. Peter asks why there was such a fuss and whether it would be possible to make that speech today. He suggests that we have got to a stage where there is such pressure to conform that no-one dares express views that are outside accepted mainstream thinking.

    In throwing off the chains of the past, have we saddled ourselves with a form of liberal bigotry? "

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yn83q

    It's always sad when the BBC pretends to correct for its liberal bias by giving a megaphone to the most obnoxious, hard right winger it can find. Fox News does the same thing in reverse.
    Like him or not, Hitchens is not a hard right winger


  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Personally, I veer towards the libertarian - or what you might describe as the old UKIP party of freedom view. Peter Hitchens is the new UKIP, the UKIP of social conservatism; where there may be more votes, but which would be a miserable place for many people with minor vices to live in.

    A paradox for UKIP is that much of their support comes from working-class communities in which marriage has ceased to be typical.
    I am tempted to ask if that is the fault of Polish immigrants :-)

    Generally, I think the right question to ask is: have we set up poor economic incentives? That is, have we set up a tax and benefit system that encourages outcomes we know to be poor for people's physical and mental health, and for the long-term success of the country?

    And I would argue that we have. I would suggest that by adding length of residence (or, ideally years of NI contribution) requirements to get housing benefit, child support, and an "NHS Card", one could discourage people from living lives that are clearly bad for them, while preserving my general desires for freedom (to work where they want or imbibe what they want or to sleep with whomever they want), and discouraging economic freeloading.
    I think that our tax and benefits system does create a series of perverse incentives.

    I think many of our problems could be solved by thinking rationally about what the behaviour we wish to promote is, and changing our tax and benefit structure accordingly.

    IDS, Frank Field and a few others have made this realisation. But they are in the minority.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    isam said:

    Socrates said:

    isam said:

    Tonight on Radio 4, 8pm.

    I would have thought this program offers some explanations or ideas as to why there is room for a socially conservative party to gain traction

    "Journalist Peter Hitchens examines the social and cultural revolution that has taken place in Britain over the last four decades. How did many of the old stigmas, particularly those surrounding the family, simply disappear? Peter argues that, while many of the old taboos have been done away with, all we've done is replace them with another set.

    As the sociologist Patricia Morgan suggests, "nature abhors a vacuum", if you remove stigma from one thing it attaches itself to something else.

    Peter challenges "the Godfather of the sociology of the swinging sixties", Laurie Taylor and the former editor of the Archers, Vanessa Whitburn, to explain how the enormous social changes of the 1960s and ensuing years happened, and he questions left wing author Owen Jones and former Conservative cabinet minister John Redwood on whether, as a society, we should be satisfied with the outcome.

    Peter pays a visit to St Mellons in Cardiff, the estate made famous in a speech by John Redwood in 1993. Mr Redwood thought he'd focused on the duties of fathers, but the wider world saw it as an attack on single mothers. Peter asks why there was such a fuss and whether it would be possible to make that speech today. He suggests that we have got to a stage where there is such pressure to conform that no-one dares express views that are outside accepted mainstream thinking.

    In throwing off the chains of the past, have we saddled ourselves with a form of liberal bigotry? "

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yn83q

    It's always sad when the BBC pretends to correct for its liberal bias by giving a megaphone to the most obnoxious, hard right winger it can find. Fox News does the same thing in reverse.
    Like him or not, Hitchens is not a hard right winger


    I always feel you need to have the right mix of conservatives and radicals (for want of a better word). Many (perhaps most) innovations will fail. But if we were run only by conservatives, we would have a stratified and static society. And if we were run only by radicals, we'd soon realise that the reason things are as they are is because 'the old ways, generally, work'.

    But to come back to my earlier point: if Mr Hitchens advocated changing the tax and benefits system to 'nudge' people in the right direction (tax subsidies for marriage, for example), then I would find him rather easier to swallow. As it is, he seems to fail to realise that his conservatism is a fundamentally negative force: one that seems to embrace slow declinism.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Actually Peter Hitchens never said he thought homosexuality should be illegal. I have heard him say many times that he supported the act that legalised it.

    There never has been a war on drugs, that's the point. People don't get nicked for taking or possessing drugs. I, and all my mates, grew up taking drugs, getting caught with them,Going to places where they were openly taken, and the only people that ever got arrested were two massive international dealers/smugglers.

    One friend got caught with 10k of coke and scales etc in his house and got let off saying he was depressed and paranoid about getting raw deals!

    Every bar in the city of London has people sniffing coke in it on a Friday night. Do the police know this? yes. Would they dream of raiding and searching? No

    That's the point. There never has been a war on drugs, it's why Hitchens wrote a book called 'The War We Never Fought'

    Yet more than half of people in US federal prisons are there fore drug offences. And according to our own government more than a third of the increase in the prison population in the last 25 years has come from drug offences.

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
  • saddenedsaddened Posts: 2,245
    I've said before but it bears saying again. UKIP requires many more Richard Tyndalls and far fewer MikeK' s if they are to be taken seriously. The fruitcake ratio, is far too high to gain mainstream support.
  • taffystaffys Posts: 9,753
    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,586
    isam said:



    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    They may not be put in prison for taking drugs. But many are there as a consequence of taking drugs or crimes to get money to pay for their next hit of drugs.....
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Actually Peter Hitchens never said he thought homosexuality should be illegal. I have heard him say many times that he supported the act that legalised it.

    There never has been a war on drugs, that's the point. People don't get nicked for taking or possessing drugs. I, and all my mates, grew up taking drugs, getting caught with them,Going to places where they were openly taken, and the only people that ever got arrested were two massive international dealers/smugglers.

    One friend got caught with 10k of coke and scales etc in his house and got let off saying he was depressed and paranoid about getting raw deals!

    Every bar in the city of London has people sniffing coke in it on a Friday night. Do the police know this? yes. Would they dream of raiding and searching? No

    That's the point. There never has been a war on drugs, it's why Hitchens wrote a book called 'The War We Never Fought'

    Yet more than half of people in US federal prisons are there fore drug offences. And according to our own government more than a third of the increase in the prison population in the last 25 years has come from drug offences.

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
    No: people get put in prison for dealing drugs. And people get put in prison for the crime that goes alongside the illegal nature of drugs - prostitution, gangs, and the like.

    The reason that people don't get put in jail for taking drugs is because if you take a normal person, and put him in Wormwood Scrubs for 18 months for being caught with heroin or the like, then when he comes out he will struggle to find a regular job, and will probably end up doing illegal stuff, like all the guys he's just spent the last 18 months in prison with. (I actually know a guy who spent time in Bedford jail for drug offences, who is now an incredibly successful software developer. He is one of the lucky ones.)

    We learnt from the prohibition of alcohol in America that if you make something illegal which there is demand for, then you will create crime around the supply of that substance.

    Make it legal, expensive, and controlled.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Actually Peter Hitchens never said he thought homosexuality should be illegal. I have heard him say many times that he supported the act that legalised it.

    deals!


    Yet more than half of people in US federal prisons are there fore drug offences. And according to our own government more than a third of the increase in the prison population in the last 25 years has come from drug offences.

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
    No: people get put in prison for dealing drugs. And people get put in prison for the crime that goes alongside the illegal nature of drugs - prostitution, gangs, and the like.

    The reason that people don't get put in jail for taking drugs is because if you take a normal person, and put him in Wormwood Scrubs for 18 months for being caught with heroin or the like, then when he comes out he will struggle to find a regular job, and will probably end up doing illegal stuff, like all the guys he's just spent the last 18 months in prison with. (I actually know a guy who spent time in Bedford jail for drug offences, who is now an incredibly successful software developer. He is one of the lucky ones.)

    We learnt from the prohibition of alcohol in America that if you make something illegal which there is demand for, then you will create crime around the supply of that substance.

    Make it legal, expensive, and controlled.
    So we agree that taking drugs is illegal, but the law isn't enforced

    That's the point. That's why there never has been a war in drugs, and a book has been written called 'The War We Never Fought'

    Yet people say this 'war' has failed!

  • taffystaffys Posts: 9,753
    ''We learnt from the prohibition of alcohol in America that if you make something illegal which there is demand for, then you will create crime around the supply of that substance. ''

    In a way we stimulated the demand ourselves, by making drugs illegal. That made them cool and mysterious to young people wanting to test the boundaries.

    When heroin was available on prescription, it was a drug for losers.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Actually Peter Hitchens never said he thought homosexuality should be illegal. I have heard him say many times that he supported the act that legalised it.

    There never has been a war on drugs, that's the point. People don't get nicked for taking or possessing drugs. I, and all my mates, grew up taking drugs, getting caught with them,Going to places where they were openly taken, and the only people that ever got arrested were two massive international dealers/smugglers.

    One friend got caught with 10k of coke and scales etc in his house and got let off saying he was depressed and paranoid about getting raw deals!

    Every bar in the city of London has people sniffing coke in it on a Friday night. Do the police know this? yes. Would they dream of raiding and searching? No

    That's the point. There never has been a war on drugs, it's why Hitchens wrote a book called 'The War We Never Fought'

    Yet more than half of people in US federal prisons are there fore drug offences. And according to our own government more than a third of the increase in the prison population in the last 25 years has come from drug offences.

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
    We learnt from the prohibition of alcohol in America that if you make something illegal which there is demand for, then you will create crime around the supply of that substance.

    Make it legal, expensive, and controlled.
    It really is remarkably simple, isn't it.....yet legal drugs, alcohol and nicotine, do much more damage, but are regulated (heavily) taxed and the supply controlled.......and 'drug addicts' like 'alcoholics' should be treated as a medical problem.....
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    How about banning 'gateway' drugs, like alcohol or nicotine?

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    What would an acceptable cpst/benefit be for that?

    If it caused policing costs to double, prison costs to triple (assuming about a 90% reduction in drug taking), and 100,000 otherwise productive members of society to end up in prison, would that be an acceptable price?
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    What would an acceptable cpst/benefit be for that?

    If it caused policing costs to double, prison costs to triple (assuming about a 90% reduction in drug taking), and 100,000 otherwise productive members of society to end up in prison, would that be an acceptable price?
    Why would policing costs double just because an existing law was enforced rather than ignored?

    If you think drugs should be legal, that's your business. I see young children who have never taken them, and would like the law to be so strict that they would never risk experimenting with them. I've sent too many people become messed up by them to gamble with soft approaches
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    edited March 2014
    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    What would an acceptable cpst/benefit be for that?

    If it caused policing costs to double, prison costs to triple (assuming about a 90% reduction in drug taking), and 100,000 otherwise productive members of society to end up in prison, would that be an acceptable price?
    Why would policing costs double just because an existing law was enforced rather than ignored?

    If you think drugs should be legal, that's your business. I see young children who have never taken them, and would like the law to be so strict that they would never risk experimenting with them. I've sent too many people become messed up by them to gamble with soft approaches
    The US has much tougher laws on drug use than we do in the UK. Until the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, there was a five year minimum for possession of crack cocaine. Yet, usage of crack cocaine was much higher in the US than in the UK.

    If you had a child, and they were caught at 17 for possession of an eighth of an ounce of grass, would you like him to go to prison pour encourangement les autres?

    Policing and prison costs would increase because the paperwork associated with booking an prosecuting criminals would rise proportionate with offences. Even assuming a 90+% reduction in drug usage, you would be assuming that the number of active criminals being pursued by the police would rise from 50,000 to 150,000.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,586
    edited March 2014
    isam said:



    Why would policing costs double just because an existing law was enforced rather than ignored?

    If you think drugs should be legal, that's your business. I see young children who have never taken them, and would like the law to be so strict that they would never risk experimenting with them. I've sent too many people become messed up by them to gamble with soft approaches

    Any idea on what best practice for drug offender treatment is nowadays (if you don't you will be very surprised as to what they do). You clearly will also be surprised how much other crime falls when treatment is introduced so drug dealer's demand disappears.....

    And as someone commented in the Sunday Times as a Heroin addict he remained functional for 15 years. Only after he started drinking did his life fall apart.......

  • SocratesSocrates Posts: 10,322
    @isam

    You can't really get a more effective model of a draconian police state than what exists in prisons. Considering we have been unable to prevent drug use even when people are locked up in cells most of the day, with their bedrooms regularly searched, why on Earth do you think it would be possible to do in broader society? The best way to reduce drug use is to (a) separate the supply of different drugs from each other, so you do not get drug dealers pushing low scale users into harder drugs and (b) to get the supply of drugs in a place where you can mandate health warnings on all purchases.
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,779
    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Yet more than half of people in US federal prisons are there fore drug offences. And according to our own government more than a third of the increase in the prison population in the last 25 years has come from drug offences.

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
    No: people get put in prison for dealing drugs. And people get put in prison for the crime that goes alongside the illegal nature of drugs - prostitution, gangs, and the like.

    The reason that people don't get put in jail for taking drugs is because if you take a normal person, and put him in Wormwood Scrubs for 18 months for being caught with heroin or the like, then when he comes out he will struggle to find a regular job, and will probably end up doing illegal stuff, like all the guys he's just spent the last 18 months in prison with. (I actually know a guy who spent time in Bedford jail for drug offences, who is now an incredibly successful software developer. He is one of the lucky ones.)

    We learnt from the prohibition of alcohol in America that if you make something illegal which there is demand for, then you will create crime around the supply of that substance.

    Make it legal, expensive, and controlled.
    We already have a black market in cheap booze and fags though, if drugs were decriminalised, then the market would still exist.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,534

    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    How about banning 'gateway' drugs, like alcohol or nicotine?

    I wouldn't be surprised if the use of tobacco was banned in my lifetime. It seems to provoke disgust among a large number of people.

  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,779
    Sean_F said:

    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    How about banning 'gateway' drugs, like alcohol or nicotine?

    I wouldn't be surprised if the use of tobacco was banned in my lifetime. It seems to provoke disgust among a large number of people.

    It's certainly being salami sliced out. I can imagine the same thing happening with booze, but at a much slower level given it's higher level of acceptance.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Sean_F said:

    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    How about banning 'gateway' drugs, like alcohol or nicotine?

    I wouldn't be surprised if the use of tobacco was banned in my lifetime. It seems to provoke disgust among a large number of people.

    I suspect it will be replaced by less harmful Nicotine delivery methods (which don't have the same side effects for non-consumers) .....the drug will carry on......

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Yet more than half of people in US federal prisons are there fore drug offences. And according to our own government more than a third of the increase in the prison population in the last 25 years has come from drug offences.

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
    No: people get put in prison for dealing drugs. And people get put in prison for the crime that goes alongside the illegal nature of drugs - prostitution, gangs, and the like.

    The reason that people don't get put in jail for taking drugs is because if you take a normal person, and put him in Wormwood Scrubs for 18 months for being caught with heroin or the like, then when he comes out he will struggle to find a regular job, and will probably end up doing illegal stuff, like all the guys he's just spent the last 18 months in prison with. (I actually know a guy who spent time in Bedford jail for drug offences, who is now an incredibly successful software developer. He is one of the lucky ones.)

    We learnt from the prohibition of alcohol in America that if you make something illegal which there is demand for, then you will create crime around the supply of that substance.

    Make it legal, expensive, and controlled.
    We already have a black market in cheap booze and fags though, if drugs were decriminalised, then the market would still exist.
    ALthough that is simple tax arbitrage, right? People buy fags (legally) in places where they are legal and cheap and import them to the UK. The customer gets a quality controlled product (a Marlboro Light is the same anywhere, right?) at a slightly lower cost.

    That's not true with illegal drugs. It's be the choice between Makers Mark at a dispensary or Dave's moonshine out the back of a van.
  • SocratesSocrates Posts: 10,322
    isam said:

    Socrates said:

    isam said:

    Tonight on Radio 4, 8pm.

    I would have thought this program offers some explanations or ideas as to why there is room for a socially conservative party to gain traction

    "Journalist Peter Hitchens examines the social and cultural revolution that has taken place in Britain over the last four decades. How did many of the old stigmas, particularly those surrounding the family, simply disappear? Peter argues that, while many of the old taboos have been done away with, all we've done is replace them with another set.

    As the sociologist Patricia Morgan suggests, "nature abhors a vacuum", if you remove stigma from one thing it attaches itself to something else.

    Peter challenges "the Godfather of the sociology of the swinging sixties", Laurie Taylor and the former editor of the Archers, Vanessa Whitburn, to explain how the enormous social changes of the 1960s and ensuing years happened, and he questions left wing author Owen Jones and former Conservative cabinet minister John Redwood on whether, as a society, we should be satisfied with the outcome.

    Peter pays a visit to St Mellons in Cardiff, the estate made famous in a speech by John Redwood in 1993. Mr Redwood thought he'd focused on the duties of fathers, but the wider world saw it as an attack on single mothers. Peter asks why there was such a fuss and whether it would be possible to make that speech today. He suggests that we have got to a stage where there is such pressure to conform that no-one dares express views that are outside accepted mainstream thinking.

    In throwing off the chains of the past, have we saddled ourselves with a form of liberal bigotry? "

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yn83q

    It's always sad when the BBC pretends to correct for its liberal bias by giving a megaphone to the most obnoxious, hard right winger it can find. Fox News does the same thing in reverse.
    Like him or not, Hitchens is not a hard right winger


    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.
  • taffystaffys Posts: 9,753
    We already have a black market in cheap booze and fags though.

    That is only because taxation is very high on both. Recently I read its now more profitable for gangs to smuggle cigarettes than cocaine because of the tax differentials.

    And that is before we've even mentioned the trade in fake cigarettes, which have all kinds of horrible stuff in them and are incredibly dangerous.
  • NeilNeil Posts: 7,983

    I can imagine the same thing happening with booze

    Over my dead body!
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    Socrates said:

    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    It is worth remembering that in the days before pre-marital sex was generally accepted, as many as three quarters of men admitted to visiting prostitutes. People remember the good things about "the old days" and choose to forget the bad.
  • taffystaffys Posts: 9,753
    He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    Those opinions aren't right wing they are just bonkers.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    What would an acceptable cpst/benefit be for that?

    If it caused policing costs to double, prison costs to triple (assuming about a 90% reduction in drug taking), and 100,000 otherwise productive members of society to end up in prison, would that be an acceptable price?
    Why would policing costs double just because an existing law was enforced rather than ignored?

    If you think drugs should be legal, that's your business. I see young children who have never taken them, and would like the law to be so strict that they would never risk experimenting with them. I've sent too many people become messed up by them to gamble with soft approaches
    The US has much tougher laws on drug use than we do in the UK. Until the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, there was a five year minimum for possession of crack cocaine. Yet, usage of crack cocaine was much higher in the US than in the UK.

    If you had a child, and they were caught at 17 for possession of an eighth of an ounce of grass, would you like him to go to prison pour encourangement les autres?

    Policing and prison costs would increase because the paperwork associated with booking an prosecuting criminals would rise proportionate with offences. Even assuming a 90+% reduction in drug usage, you would be assuming that the number of active criminals being pursued by the police would rise from 50,000 to 150,000.
    There's plenty of wasteage in public money, I'm on my phone at my folks I can't get into a long debate

    I would encourage very harsh deterrents for possession of drugs. Maybe A week if hard labour for tirst time offenders or national service. They don't exist at the moment and haven't in my lifetime. yet people say a war on drugs has failed. We can dance around it and say Russell Brands got the right idea by legalising them and then showing compassion when kids get messed up. I'd rather do whatever stops them taking them in the first place
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,779
    But you said it yourself, illegal booze is often cut with god knows what, and that happens when it's legal. If drugs became legal, there would still be an illegal cheaper alternative.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,534

    Sean_F said:

    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    How about banning 'gateway' drugs, like alcohol or nicotine?

    I wouldn't be surprised if the use of tobacco was banned in my lifetime. It seems to provoke disgust among a large number of people.

    It's certainly being salami sliced out. I can imagine the same thing happening with booze, but at a much slower level given it's higher level of acceptance.
    Drinking is still more socially acceptable than smoking (curiously, as a good deal of crime is fuelled by alcohol, but very little by tobacco use).

    But, I suspect the direction of travel will be the same. Sweden is a good example of a dismal, authoritarian, nanny state that many politicians wish to emulate.

  • surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549
    Socrates said:

    G8 summit 'won't be held in Russia'
    Breaking news
    The G8 summit will not take place in Russia this year, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

    Speaking in the Netherlands, Mr Cameron said it was "absolutely clear" the planned June meeting of world leaders in the Russian resort of Sochi would not happen due to events in Ukraine.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26722668#"

    No one will dare annex parts of a foreign country again if the response is that an international summit gets cancelled. Putin must be filled with regret.
    I think Putin's reaction so far has been: since you have slapped my right wrist, here is the left one !

    Yeah, he is really regreting it !?!?!?
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,779
    taffys said:

    We already have a black market in cheap booze and fags though.

    That is only because taxation is very high on both. Recently I read its now more profitable for gangs to smuggle cigarettes than cocaine because of the tax differentials.

    And that is before we've even mentioned the trade in fake cigarettes, which have all kinds of horrible stuff in them and are incredibly dangerous.

    Exactly..so the notion that if drugs were legal, then the drug dealers would vanish is nonsense.

    In fact the state would be in competition with them, so would have to set the price at a level which meant that people would buy it legally as opposed it illegally.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    taffys said:

    He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    Those opinions aren't right wing they are just bonkers.

    +1
  • SocratesSocrates Posts: 10,322
    rcs1000 said:

    Socrates said:

    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    It is worth remembering that in the days before pre-marital sex was generally accepted, as many as three quarters of men admitted to visiting prostitutes. People remember the good things about "the old days" and choose to forget the bad.
    The disapproval of pre-marital sex wasn't to police men, it was to provide them with virgin wives that they didn't need to feel insecure about.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    Socrates said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Socrates said:

    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    It is worth remembering that in the days before pre-marital sex was generally accepted, as many as three quarters of men admitted to visiting prostitutes. People remember the good things about "the old days" and choose to forget the bad.
    The disapproval of pre-marital sex wasn't to police men, it was to provide them with virgin wives that they didn't need to feel insecure about.
    you learn something every day. thank you
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,564
    Sean_F said:

    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    How about banning 'gateway' drugs, like alcohol or nicotine?

    I wouldn't be surprised if the use of tobacco was banned in my lifetime. It seems to provoke disgust among a large number of people.

    As a milder step, what about an EU agreement (or does it need the WTO?) to end the sale of duty-free cigarettes at airports etc? It's a ridiculous officially-sanctioned way of making yourself ill, loading travellers down, giving airports an incentive to make you come early and dodging tax at the same time. Knock a bit off the tax on fags in normal shops in exchange and the backlash will be limited.

    I don't actually mind people smoking around me, personally. But it seems mad to have a public health policy to discourage it and then create a big fat loophole for people who happen to cross a border.

    On drugs, the Swiss system of offering addicts heroin through GPs has worked pretty well in terms of slashing crime rates, and survived a referendum challenge.



  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,779
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    How about banning 'gateway' drugs, like alcohol or nicotine?

    I wouldn't be surprised if the use of tobacco was banned in my lifetime. It seems to provoke disgust among a large number of people.

    It's certainly being salami sliced out. I can imagine the same thing happening with booze, but at a much slower level given it's higher level of acceptance.
    Drinking is still more socially acceptable than smoking (curiously, as a good deal of crime is fuelled by alcohol, but very little by tobacco use).

    But, I suspect the direction of travel will be the same. Sweden is a good example of a dismal, authoritarian, nanny state that many politicians wish to emulate.

    Younger people are already drinking (and taking drugs) less. Things like drink driving, and even lunchtime drinking (when at work) are seen very different then they used to.

    It'll happen. You'll get the health warnings (you already do), and then the control of supply...
  • taffystaffys Posts: 9,753
    Heroin was legal and regularly prescribed by family doctors in the UK until the mid 50s. Anybody could have stumbled across it lying around in medicine cabinets - including children!

    The Times records that at that period there were a grand total of 50 heroin addicts. Most of these were doctors or middle class professionals.

  • SocratesSocrates Posts: 10,322

    But you said it yourself, illegal booze is often cut with god knows what, and that happens when it's legal. If drugs became legal, there would still be an illegal cheaper alternative.

    I don't think that's necessarily true at all. If the mark-up got cut down to normal legal levels, it would be cheaper than the mark-up you currently need to compensate for the risk of prison.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,818

    Sean_F said:

    isam said:

    taffys said:

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

    If you put people in prison for taking drugs you'd have hundreds of thousands of lags. Maybe more.

    Or fewer people would start taking drugs maybe?
    How about banning 'gateway' drugs, like alcohol or nicotine?

    I wouldn't be surprised if the use of tobacco was banned in my lifetime. It seems to provoke disgust among a large number of people.

    As a milder step, what about an EU agreement (or does it need the WTO?) to end the sale of duty-free cigarettes at airports etc? It's a ridiculous officially-sanctioned way of making yourself ill, loading travellers down, giving airports an incentive to make you come early and dodging tax at the same time. Knock a bit off the tax on fags in normal shops in exchange and the backlash will be limited.

    I don't actually mind people smoking around me, personally. But it seems mad to have a public health policy to discourage it and then create a big fat loophole for people who happen to cross a border.

    On drugs, the Swiss system of offering addicts heroin through GPs has worked pretty well in terms of slashing crime rates, and survived a referendum challenge.



    If Labour put abolishing duty free fags (and booze?) in their manifesto that would be err a very 'brave' thing to do!!

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    taffys said:

    Heroin was legal and regularly prescribed by family doctors in the UK until the mid 50s. Anybody could have stumbled across it lying around in medicine cabinets - including children!

    The Times records that at that period there were a grand total of 50 heroin addicts. Most of these were doctors or middle class professionals.

    Where's PB's own in-house ex-heroin addict to give his own views?
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,534
    Socrates said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Socrates said:

    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    It is worth remembering that in the days before pre-marital sex was generally accepted, as many as three quarters of men admitted to visiting prostitutes. People remember the good things about "the old days" and choose to forget the bad.
    The disapproval of pre-marital sex wasn't to police men, it was to provide them with virgin wives that they didn't need to feel insecure about.
    The drive in some countries (Sweden again!) to criminalise the purchase of sex is however, all about "policing men."

  • SocratesSocrates Posts: 10,322
    Sean_F said:

    Socrates said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Socrates said:

    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    It is worth remembering that in the days before pre-marital sex was generally accepted, as many as three quarters of men admitted to visiting prostitutes. People remember the good things about "the old days" and choose to forget the bad.
    The disapproval of pre-marital sex wasn't to police men, it was to provide them with virgin wives that they didn't need to feel insecure about.
    The drive in some countries (Sweden again!) to criminalise the purchase of sex is however, all about "policing men."

    I would agree with that.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    Those opinions aren't right wing they are just bonkers.

    +1
    +2

  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,818
    edited March 2014
    Socrates said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Socrates said:

    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    It is worth remembering that in the days before pre-marital sex was generally accepted, as many as three quarters of men admitted to visiting prostitutes. People remember the good things about "the old days" and choose to forget the bad.
    The disapproval of pre-marital sex wasn't to police men, it was to provide them with virgin wives that they didn't need to feel insecure about.
    Oh c'mon !!
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 52,121
    edited March 2014
    surbiton said:

    Socrates said:

    G8 summit 'won't be held in Russia'
    Breaking news
    The G8 summit will not take place in Russia this year, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

    Speaking in the Netherlands, Mr Cameron said it was "absolutely clear" the planned June meeting of world leaders in the Russian resort of Sochi would not happen due to events in Ukraine.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26722668#"

    No one will dare annex parts of a foreign country again if the response is that an international summit gets cancelled. Putin must be filled with regret.
    I think Putin's reaction so far has been: since you have slapped my right wrist, here is the left one !

    Yeah, he is really regreting it !?!?!?
    Campaign for Yuzovka Donetsk 'to join UK' :)

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26716281
  • MonkeysMonkeys Posts: 758

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Yet more than half of people in US federal prisons are there fore drug offences. And according to our own government more than a third of the increase in the prison population in the last 25 years has come from drug offences.

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
    No: people get put in prison for dealing drugs. And people get put in prison for the crime that goes alongside the illegal nature of drugs - prostitution, gangs, and the like.

    The reason that people don't get put in jail for taking drugs is because if you take a normal person, and put him in Wormwood Scrubs for 18 months for being caught with heroin or the like, then when he comes out he will struggle to find a regular job, and will probably end up doing illegal stuff, like all the guys he's just spent the last 18 months in prison with. (I actually know a guy who spent time in Bedford jail for drug offences, who is now an incredibly successful software developer. He is one of the lucky ones.)

    We learnt from the prohibition of alcohol in America that if you make something illegal which there is demand for, then you will create crime around the supply of that substance.

    Make it legal, expensive, and controlled.
    We already have a black market in cheap booze and fags though, if drugs were decriminalised, then the market would still exist.
    The black market in cheap booze and fags is due to high taxes. To tax drugs would require full legalisation, not decriminalisation.

  • OblitusSumMeOblitusSumMe Posts: 9,143
    rcs1000 said:

    Make it legal, expensive, and controlled.

    You could also tweak the rules for pharmaceutical companies to provide an incentive for them to develop safer alternatives.

    The Quakers hoped that cocoa would take people away from alcohol. We could look for a modern alternative to heroin, nicotine, etc.
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,779
    Monkeys said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Yet more than half of people in US federal prisons are there fore drug offences. And according to our own government more than a third of the increase in the prison population in the last 25 years has come from drug offences.

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
    No: people get put in prison for dealing drugs. And people get put in prison for the crime that goes alongside the illegal nature of drugs - prostitution, gangs, and the like.

    The reason that people don't get put in jail for taking drugs is because if you take a normal person, and put him in Wormwood Scrubs for 18 months for being caught with heroin or the like, then when he comes out he will struggle to find a regular job, and will probably end up doing illegal stuff, like all the guys he's just spent the last 18 months in prison with. (I actually know a guy who spent time in Bedford jail for drug offences, who is now an incredibly successful software developer. He is one of the lucky ones.)

    We learnt from the prohibition of alcohol in America that if you make something illegal which there is demand for, then you will create crime around the supply of that substance.

    Make it legal, expensive, and controlled.
    We already have a black market in cheap booze and fags though, if drugs were decriminalised, then the market would still exist.
    The black market in cheap booze and fags is due to high taxes. To tax drugs would require full legalisation, not decriminalisation.

    In which case it's a matter of public health. Would more or less people be taking the drugs if they were fully legal, and what would be the implications for society?
  • SocratesSocrates Posts: 10,322

    Socrates said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Socrates said:

    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    It is worth remembering that in the days before pre-marital sex was generally accepted, as many as three quarters of men admitted to visiting prostitutes. People remember the good things about "the old days" and choose to forget the bad.
    The disapproval of pre-marital sex wasn't to police men, it was to provide them with virgin wives that they didn't need to feel insecure about.
    Oh c'mon !!
    Traditional morality laws have always been about policing women's "innocence" rather than men's. Just look at the laws against interracial sex in the US south or British India. White men had been having relations with dark-skinned women for centuries - Thomas Jefferson sexually abused his own slaves - and no one gave a damn. The scares started due to the fear of white women sleeping with dark-skinned men.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    edited March 2014
    Socrates said:

    Socrates said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Socrates said:

    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    It is worth remembering that in the days before pre-marital sex was generally accepted, as many as three quarters of men admitted to visiting prostitutes. People remember the good things about "the old days" and choose to forget the bad.
    The disapproval of pre-marital sex wasn't to police men, it was to provide them with virgin wives that they didn't need to feel insecure about.
    Oh c'mon !!
    The scares started due to the fear of white women sleeping with dark-skinned men.
    Which relates to white male anxiety about dark skinned male (cough) "equipment"

  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,534
    Socrates said:

    Sean_F said:

    Socrates said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Socrates said:

    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    It is worth remembering that in the days before pre-marital sex was generally accepted, as many as three quarters of men admitted to visiting prostitutes. People remember the good things about "the old days" and choose to forget the bad.
    The disapproval of pre-marital sex wasn't to police men, it was to provide them with virgin wives that they didn't need to feel insecure about.
    The drive in some countries (Sweden again!) to criminalise the purchase of sex is however, all about "policing men."

    I would agree with that.
    I've listened to the arguments for and against on Woman's Hour. What struck me is how old-fashioned the arguments were in favour of the ban. In essence, no decent woman would do something as sordid as prostitution, unless driven by addiction. And, men have brutal sexual appetites, while women generally have nobler instincts.

    None of the advocates of the ban actually seemed to be interested in the views of people who work in that field.

  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,779

    Socrates said:

    Socrates said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Socrates said:

    Of course he is. Not far right, but definitely hard right. He considers the Blair premiership to be a "coup d'etat", believes sex education to be anti-Christian propaganda, thinks there should have been a public debate before we introduced television, and that the presence of American troops during the War damaged British culture.

    It is worth remembering that in the days before pre-marital sex was generally accepted, as many as three quarters of men admitted to visiting prostitutes. People remember the good things about "the old days" and choose to forget the bad.
    The disapproval of pre-marital sex wasn't to police men, it was to provide them with virgin wives that they didn't need to feel insecure about.
    Oh c'mon !!
    The scares started due to the fear of white women sleeping with dark-skinned men.
    Which relates to white male anxiety about dark skinned equipment

    Ask Hatty's husband about that..
  • Monkeys said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    taffys said:

    And the war on drugs has hardly been an enormous success.

    The war on drugs has failed utterly and completely. legalise, tax and regulate.

    Well that's the issue: wahabbi clerics and Peter Hitchen want us to forget the taste of the apple of freedom.
    Yet more than half of people in US federal prisons are there fore drug offences. And according to our own government more than a third of the increase in the prison population in the last 25 years has come from drug offences.

    People don't get put in prison for taking drugs. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
    No: people get put in prison for dealing drugs. And people get put in prison for the crime that goes alongside the illegal nature of drugs - prostitution, gangs, and the like.

    The reason that people don't get put in jail for taking drugs is because if you take a normal person, and put him in Wormwood Scrubs for 18 months for being caught with heroin or the like, then when he comes out he will struggle to find a regular job, and will probably end up doing illegal stuff, like all the guys he's just spent the last 18 months in prison with. (I actually know a guy who spent time in Bedford jail for drug offences, who is now an incredibly successful software developer. He is one of the lucky ones.)

    We learnt from the prohibition of alcohol in America that if you make something illegal which there is demand for, then you will create crime around the supply of that substance.

    Make it legal, expensive, and controlled.
    We already have a black market in cheap booze and fags though, if drugs were decriminalised, then the market would still exist.
    The black market in cheap booze and fags is due to high taxes. To tax drugs would require full legalisation, not decriminalisation.

    In which case it's a matter of public health. Would more or less people be taking the drugs if they were fully legal, and what would be the implications for society?
    To be more precise, the public health question is whether the harms to health caused by drugs would be more or less if drugs were legalised. Given that legal, regulated drugs are virtually certain to be safer for the users than the current situation, there may public health advantages even if usage increased.
  • surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549

    surbiton said:

    Socrates said:

    G8 summit 'won't be held in Russia'
    Breaking news
    The G8 summit will not take place in Russia this year, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

    Speaking in the Netherlands, Mr Cameron said it was "absolutely clear" the planned June meeting of world leaders in the Russian resort of Sochi would not happen due to events in Ukraine.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26722668#"

    No one will dare annex parts of a foreign country again if the response is that an international summit gets cancelled. Putin must be filled with regret.
    I think Putin's reaction so far has been: since you have slapped my right wrist, here is the left one !

    Yeah, he is really regreting it !?!?!?
    Campaign for Yuzovka Donetsk 'to join UK' :)

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26716281
    Good one. I think Khruschev spent a lot of time in Donetsk. He was the local Party chief even though his birthplace is just across the border. His wife definitely came from Donetsk.

    The irony is that most these "transfers" of Russian speaking areas to Ukraine was intended to boost the "Russian content" of Ukraine !!
This discussion has been closed.