The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘philosophy’ Category

Yesterday, legislators in the US state of California took the first real step towards a fully legalised, regulated and taxed cannabis market. Earlier this week, the US state of New Jersey legalised cannabis for medical use.

All over America, attitudes and laws are changing and changing fast.

What are we doing wrong here in the United Kingdom?

Lots, by the look of it. How is it possible that we are falling behind America on this very important issue?

A few years ago, the situation was reversed. The attitude here to weed was relaxing, Tony Blair and David Blunkett downgraded cannabis to Class C, making possession a very minor offence. In America, so much as a seed or a used hash pipe was enough in most states to get you a lengthy, mandatory prison sentence.

Cannabis didn’t remain Class C for long, as Gordon Brown asked the ACMD to review its status. The ACMD did just that, twice and recommended that it remain in Class C. That was unacceptable to our very desperate and weak, make-believe Prime Minister and he pushed ahead with restoring cannabis to to Class B. Class B increased penalties for possession, but had no effect on production or distribution, the penalties are the same for either classification. Gordon wanted to send a “strong message” that cannabis was a “dangerous, deadly drug”.

Now, you can ask any teenager if cannabis is lethal and once they stop laughing, they will set you straight. Cannabis is in no way lethal, but our current government and ruling party don’t have a problem lying to the general public about anything. These are the same shitbags that invaded Iraq on the basis of utter fabrication, so a little white lie about weed won’t cause any issues with their consciences.

Well, I can tell you right now, its causing major issues with mine!

America is moving apace to legalise weed. This is a huge shift in attitude and approach from their previous policy of “just say no” and the war on drugs. Its seismic!

America is the most litigious country in the world, if there were any risks to cannabis, someone would be getting sued for damages, whether its the government for allowing it or the people who provide it. America has accepted that cannabis is not a bad thing, but a beneficial product that can help millions medically.

C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General of the United States declared that cannabis was the “most therapeutically beneficial substance known to man” years ago, but it is only now that America is accepting his assessment. At least they got there in the end.

We are still so far away from taking a common sense approach that I’m not sure what to do. Gordon Brown, in his ignorance and desire to appear strong on drugs, has set the cause back at least a decade. Its time we regain some of our lost ground.

Its not just America, many countries have relaxed their drug policies to reflect common sense, the most recent being the Czech Republic. How could the UK be lagging behind them?

We’re lagging behind almost everyone.

I want to change that. I am going to change that.

I just don’t know how yet.

Every journey starts with a first step and this is mine. My goal for 2010 is to combat the ignorance and stupidity that is UK drug policy. Its time for all decent, upstanding, otherwise law abiding residents of this fine country to stand up and demand that they are not criminalised for enjoying a smoke.

We can fight the lies, we can fight the ignorance. We can fight, fight fight until we get what we want, which is a legalised, regulated and taxed cannabis market. The time is now!

A year from now, we will be closer to our goal.You have my word on it.

Martin Luther King, the famous and revered American civil rights activist once said, “…there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that, “an unjust law is no law at all.””

As part of my never-ending quest to seek nothing but the truth, I’ve decided to provide the only genuinely honest review the decade that’s nearly finished.

It fucking sucked. Really, it did. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.

Besides iPods, name one good thing about the noughties? Even its nickname is pathetically lame.

The decade started with the Millennium, which was supposed to be the biggest celebration of all time. I spent the night in central London, on the River Thames, broadcasting live to all over the world. Maybe you saw me there, I was in charge of a broadcast tent near Lambeth Bridge, blocking people’s views of the fireworks and River of Fire.

Ha, the River of Fire was the first major disappointment of many in the noughties, a damp squib rather than spectacular and a giant let down for those who braved the cold to witness it. I’ve never heard such a loud, collective, “is that really it?” in my life.

London crowds can be drunken and angry and the night of the Millennium was no exception. As the clock struck midnight and I was transmitting live on behalf of four different foreign broadcasters, someone unplugged our generator cable and everything went dark.  

Don’t worry, one of the technicians managed to get it reconnected and it all worked, though the cables were covered with human urine, which wasn’t so pleasant for the engineer. On top of that, the crowd attacked us and tried to steal our expensive TV gear. I can remember smacking peoples’ arms and hands away from tripods and lights as the fireworks began.

We were all ready for the Y2K bug, a peculiar glitch in some older computers that prevented it for handling 4-digit years, meaning some unpatched computers would think it was 1900, not the year 2000. We expected the telephone network to collapse, the power grid to crash, along with all the jumbo jets flying overhead.

It didn’t happen, nothing happened, crisis averted.

But that didn’t mean the noughties were crisis free, because less than a year later, George W. (for What the fuck?) Bush stole the election and became the most powerful sub-normally intelligent person in history. His presidency dominated the decade and his policies made the world a much shittier place.

Think for a second, if Al Gore had claimed the presidency instead. He should have won it, he did win it, but the Supreme Court had other ideas.

Do you think we’d be in Iraq if Gore had two terms in the White House? Probably not, but then we most likely wouldn’t have Barack Obama now.

Who’s to say?

The Bush presidency was built on the foundation of the Neo-Conservative moment and the Project for a New American Century. How’d all that turn out?

Let’s see, the entire economy melted down to near collapse and we seem to be engaged in George Orwell’s never-ending war while his Big Brother keeps track of our every thought and action.

Cool.

Bush was stupid, his advisors no smarter. They dug one stupid hole after another, each a little deeper than the last.

When the attacks of 11th September 2001 took place, you couldn’t imagine a worse commander and chief to have at the helm, unless you enjoy children’s books about pet goats, in which case he would be your number one choice.

9/11 changed everything, but the real shock and awe was how we felt as we watched the twin towers come crashing to the ground.

I’m old enough to remember when the World Trade Centre was built. I’d been lucky enough to visit the observation deck more than once, its a view you wouldn’t be able to duplicate again today without a helicopter.

We were devastated by those attacks, fiendishly simple, yet executed to maximum effect. I remember thinking that this was the beginning of the end of western civilisation and soon we would all be crawling through nothing but rubble, drinking brackish water from puddles in the streets.

How wrong I was!

9/11 was a blip, a lucky shot, a once in a lifetime terror strike from a group whose success exceeded even their own expectations. I’m sure they didn’t think the entire world would change so radically as a result of their actions, but change it did.

Keeping us secure became the number one priority, the cost being a dramatic reduction in our liberty and personal freedoms. Any extreme, radical action taken by a government could and would be justified by tagging it with an anti-terror bent.

Do you want to monitor all telephone calls and email messages? No problem.

Do you need my banking and credit history before I get on a plane? Sure thing!

How about my shoes, should I take them off too? Gosh, hope I don’t have holes in my socks!

Think how quickly we all simply adapted to these new realities, we made hardly a peep as our civil liberties were systematically stripped away.

Its become such a farce now, here in London you practically can’t even take a photograph in a public place without the police swooping down on you like you’re Mohammed Atta, scoping out another attack.

Think that’s good for business and tourism? Think again?

Terror is not the only thing that’s been scaring us in the last ten years, as the environment’s been on our minds too. You won’t see any government declaring war on climate change, even though its probably more of a threat to more people than terrorism could ever be.

The effects of climate change are apparent to anyone who can be bothered to look, yet there are people out there in the world who try to deny this inevitability. If you tried to deny the threat of terror, you would be labelled a traitor, but being a climate-change doubter will not earn you the same label.

Its probably too late to slow down climate change because we pissed away the last decade arguing about it. It would be funny, if it weren’t so damn tragic as the recent Copenhagen Climate Summit heartily illustrated.

The wars in the last ten years have been quite tragic too, especially the two major conflicts instigated by the West, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The war in Iraq was justified with false pretences and blatant, pre-meditated lies. I knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and I had no access to any of the intelligence available to our leaders. They knew it too, but made up a bunch of nonsense any way.

I can remember being the only idiot in the world who thought that America and Britain wouldn’t go to war in Iraq. I genuinely believed they had no grounds to initiate a conflict and that they would back down at the last minute. I don’t think I’ve ever been more wrong, but not as wrong as launching that illegal and pointless war.

George W (for War Criminal) Bush and Tony Blair should both be sitting in prison cells in The Hague, awaiting their trials for crimes against humanity, but no one has the fucking balls to send them both there. The International Court should have charged them already, even if extradition would never happen. They both should pay for their crimes and sins.

But they won’t.

How many innocent lives have been lost in that pointless war? Iraq was far from perfect before the “allies” invaded, but the electricity flowed, the streets were safe and Iraq still had an educated, functional middle class.

I’m not a Saddam Hussein apologist, the guy was a nasty piece of work, repressive, iron fisted, unpleasant and vicious. But so what? Lots of countries are lead by shitbags, we don’t invade them and impose regime change just because we feel like it.

Regime change on its own is not a valid reason for war. In the case of Iraq, it turns out it was the only reason.

Saddam Hussein got strung up in a hastily organised hanging. There’s mobile phone video of it on the internet, that I’m sure you’ve seen by now. It was a very undignified end for an odious, horrible man. Though back in the 1970s, Saddam was friendly with America and funded by them, because he opposed Iran.

Things change, shit happens.

Afghanistan is a different shade of grey.

After 9/11, there was some sense in going into Afghanistan since that’s where the terror bases and training camps were. That’s also where the leader of the bad guys lived, oh what’s his name again?

Osama something or other.

They had the chance to capture or kill him in Tora Bora and blew it. He’s still allegedly alive and on the run in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The problem with Afghanistan is after they chased Al Qaeda out, they were left fighting the Taliban. Big countries like America are crappy at fighting insurgencies and guerrilla wars, see Vietnam for proof. They’ve been dragged deeper into a civil conflict than they need to be.

Today, Afghanistan is a lawless basket-case of a nation, with a corrupt, ineffectual government at its centre and powerful war lords scattered throughout the country.

President Obama seems to think more troops will help and the decade is ending with him announcing further deployments.

When will they ever learn?

How’s never sound?

And speaking of America’s first black president, Barack Obama is one of the good things to come out of the noughties, but he wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for George W. (Where’d he go?) Bush. Bush paved the way for Obama, with his stupidity, mistakes and far right ideals.

Whether you agree with Obama’s policies or not, having a mixed race president in America is good for the entire world. I never thought I would see it in my lifetime, and like most people I was moved deeply by his election.

Do I think he’s doing a good job? Its way too early to tell. He hasn’t even been in office for an entire year yet. We should give the guy a chance. Ask me again in 3-7 years, when he’s finished and I’ll have enough information to form an opinion. Clearly, I wasn’t a voting member of the Nobel panel, because I never would have given the prize to Barack, at least not yet, anyway.

Personally, it wasn’t such a hot decade for me either. Both of my parents passed away, my father in 2004 and my mother in 2008. I miss them both every day.

This was the decade I well and truly entered middle age. I’m going to be forty-fucking-seven next month. The last decade saw me diagnosed with a stupid illness and I had a sustained period of unemployment while I was between jobs.

The illness, Hashimoto’s Disease, is allegedly under control and I did manage to secure gainful employment, for which I am very thankful, but neither period was particularly pleasant for me.

The progress of technology is one good thing to come from the last decade, I’ve got the some of the coolest toys I’ve ever owned currently in my possession.

I’m on my 3rd iMac, the latest a 27” beast with a quad-core processor that is lightening fast, its like having a stylish supercomputer parked on my desk.

By far, the most amazing thing I own is my iPhone 3GS, it is a gadget of unrivalled beauty, power and usefulness. If I had to choose one piece of kit that’s revolutionised my life, its my iPhone. It does more than I could have ever imagined and its abilities just keep growing with every app I install.

Citizen journalism came of age in the noughties, with websites similar to this one springing up at a rapid rate. The word “blog” didn’t even exist ten years ago and now there are millions of them.

Blogging came along when I needed it most, I started this one nearly 6 years ago during my dark and depressing period of unemployment.

Blogging gave me something to do, something to focus on, something to make me feel like I was still a functioning member of society. I had a way to contribute, a way to participate. Somehow, I still mattered, even if I felt like I didn’t.

Blogging may have saved my life. I would have continued to sink deeper had I not discovered Blogspot back in 2004. 

And that’s where you all come in.

Without an audience, blogging is a bit pointless and while I am still not and will probably never be mainstream, I’ve had a level of support and interest that still astounds me. I’m thankful for every visitor I’ve ever had who has dropped by and hung out with me virtually.

Without all of you, I’d just be some guy writing longwinded essays for my own amusement. Ok, even with you all around, that statement is true, but its still better for having you all here.

Thanks very much for stopping by, you’ll always find a warm welcome here and I always put out on the first date.

I wish each and every one of you the very best of the holiday season. I hope the next decade sees all your hopes and dreams come true.

PS
I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff I left out of my review of the decade, but this short video review from Newsweek Magazine should fill in many of the gaps. Its quite US-centric, but its only 7 minutes long, so enjoy!

This video is extremely cool, it starts in Tibet and zooms out to the furthest reaches of the known universe, putting it all into temporal and spatial relation to Earth.

Play it in HD, play it full screen, sit back and marvel at how small you are and how little we really know about everything.

Have you ever wondered where you come from and how you got here?

I have and continue to do so, constantly. Sometimes it drives me kind of nuts.

And I don’t mean me, personally. I know how I got here. When a man loves a woman, they do the mummy and daddy dance and nine months later there you are, or a little less than eight months in my case.

No, I’m talking about more than just me, or you or all of us or even our little blue planet, but all of existence, the known universe and beyond.

Not that much of the universe is really known, very little in actual fact. Most of what we think we know about what’s out there in deep space is theory accepted as fact.

Did you know that we only found the first planet outside of our solar system in 1995 and to date, only 407 of them have been identified? Wikipedia knows all.

Don’t you find that surprising, when you’ve probably been taught that the universe is full of billions of planets. Again, theory accepted as fact. Remember, its only 15 years ago since we found that first planet, probably about as long as mobile phones have been in wide usage. That’s not very long at all.

The point is, they are using a theory to map out these planets. They aren’t really mapping them so much as predicting and describing what and where they think they are, based on scientific supposition. They haven’t seen a single one of them through a telescope, because one of such power is yet to exist.

I’m not trying to call any of this into question and one day I expect they will prove they’ve found planets outside of our solar system, but I am using it to illustrate something much more fundamental; our knowledge of existence is infinitesimally small and as a race we remain in our infancy.

If you think the universe was created by some all knowing, all powerful god and you’re ok with that, this piece probably isn’t for you.

I wish it was that simple, to just have faith that a high power put me here for some purpose, but I can’t buy into any of that.

If it works for you, great. may your life always be just as free of complexity and curiosity. I certainly wish mine was sometimes.

But its not, and I try to move beyond my questions by accepting that these answers are unobtainable, by me, by you, by every human being who has ever existed or will exist and asked these questions.

Intellectually I understand that these questions won’t ever be answered to my satisfaction, but I can’t help continuing to crave the answers. Our knowledge and experience is far too limited and our brains far too tiny and useless to come up with any plausible explanations for anything that matters.

Its not fair that we can ask these questions, but are unable to ever know the answers. And that’s my prediction, that for as long as our species exists, people will continue to seek answers that will never, ever come.

Think about that, no matter how many generations follow ours, for however many millennia, we won’t get the answers the most fundamental questions concerning the origins and purpose of all of existence.

Now I am trying to move beyond acceptance of these things I know I won’t know, to an even more basic view: All of existence is utterly pointless.

I’ve believed for a long time that life is pointless, but then I see most things in a bleak and dreary light, so this shouldn’t surprise you. We go about our brief, tiny lives, flitting from here to there like insects, but unlike insects we fill our heads with thoughts of grandiose self-importance.

We think because we build, create, destroy, reproduce, kill and dominate our domain that we’re so important, so worthy of everything we take for granted that we’ve missed just how insignificant we are in the scheme of the universe.

And if it turns out we are the most advanced living creatures in the universe, then what does it say about that universe?

That it is just as insignificant as we are.

The universe is bigger and more diverse than anyone can ever imagine. I don’t think I can come up with a fraction small enough to express how much we know about it, but I can try.

We know this much:

1/100000000000000000000000000000000000000000^{100000000000000000000000000}

Even if you don’t understand fractions, or exponential numbers, I’m sure you can see that is an extremely small number. It a chip off a fleck of dust above zero.

That’s how much we know.

We think we know a lot more.

By choosing to believe in the utter pointlessness of all existence and that any deeper understanding of all that exists is impossible without accepting the unproveable, can be quite liberating.

If we let go of the unknowable, then we can concentrate on the things that matter to us personally. Sure, you still have to play ball with society, pay your taxes, eat your vegetables and brush your teeth, but you’re doing all those things for yourself, without wondering why you’re here.

Oh, who am I kidding, I’ll obsess about this crap forever, utter pointlessness or not.

Nearly 5 years ago to this very day, I wrote a little something here on the hippy that is one of my favourite posts ever. Back when I had a top-ten favourite list, this particular post was featured prominently.

Its called ASS BOMBS

Don’t worry if you can’t be bothered to re-read it right now, I’ll summarise it for you: I speculated on the lengths future terrorists would have to go through to sneak explosive devices on to planes and the additional security measures that would have to be put in place to maintain safety. This wasn’t long Richard Reid tried to blow up his shoes.

I theorised that a terrorists’ rectum would become a compartment for hiding plastique and airport security screeners would have to play proctologist to make sure all air travellers were not carrying anything up their bottoms. Instead of “take off your shoes and remove all metal objects”, their instruction would be to “bend over and spread those cheeks.”

It would certainly put flying into a brand new perspective. Making sure you wear clean socks without any holes wouldn’t seem so important any more.

It turns out, I was partially right. An alleged Al Qaeda fanatic tried to blow up officials at a meeting in Saudi Arabia with some TNT shoved up his ass, only the idiot left it stuck up there when it detonated and it only killed the bomber. You’re supposed to take it out of your bottom before it goes off.

You can read the report here in The Sun newspaper, under their clever headline; “Suicide Bummer”. Did you see what they did there?

Its unlikely as fuck that Al Qaeda visit my website, so they probably worked this one out on their own. Now that this frightening and icky technique is out there, how long before airports implement new security procedures? Not long is my guess.

Still, there’s an upside. If you’re going to have to display your ringpiece in airports for all to see, anal bleaching is set to be the next big growth industry. They’ll even have a new slogan: “Anal Bleaching…its not just for porn stars any more!”

The powers that be haven’t really sold us on the coming climate apocalypse.

I’m not denying its happening, I can clearly see its effects regularly on a world wide scale, I just don’t think our politicians and scientists have explained it to us very well.

“Climate change” has a PR problem, but don’t worry, I’m going to attempt to offer a simple solution.

The planet Earth itself is not threatened.

There, I said it.

Climate change is not going to destroy this rock we’re stuck on, regardless of the atmospheric temperature, Earth will keep spinning through space for a very long time, probably until our Sun turns into a Red Giant or Supernova or whatever it is stars do and that’s millions of years away.

Climate change might kill every living thing on the planet, or at least most of them. That should be a strong selling point, only we don’t really care that much about living things other than humans.

And it seems we don’t care that much about all the humans anyway, only some of them. You know, the ones that look like us, dress like us, talk like us, ummmm, us.

Not them.

But most of all, we care about ourselves. Self-preservation is something we all seem to have in common.

Tackling “climate change” has to be about saving one’s self from the coming Armageddon. Fear is always an excellent selling point.

Slowing climate change will save your life and the lives of everyone you care about. Not slowing climate change will probably kill us all.

“All of us” includes you. You might really die from the effects of a warmer planet.

If the global temperature goes up, more people will die from heat-related illnesses. Remember all those old French folks who died in the heatwave in 2003? There’d be a lot more deaths like that.

Got air conditioning? If the energy suppliers can’t keep up with demand, it won’t matter and you’ll still fry.

Large, currently heavily populated areas of the planet will become uninhabitable, potentially displacing millions. All those refugees will have to go somewhere, which will increase crowding in more temperate regions while stretching dwindling resources beyond capacity. Life will become more difficult to sustain.

Tropical diseases without known cures will spread out from the current hot zones to increasingly wider areas and even more people will die.

Food production will be disrupted, prompting starvation on an unimaginable scale.

I’ve read that London has only a 48 hour food supply at any given time, because of the way supermarket stock is managed. Food practically goes from lorry to shelf without sitting long in the back room. Its a deliver-as-required system.

If your local supermarkets ran dry, how would you feed yourself and your family? Even if you stockpile long-life meals, they’ll run out eventually. Think you can get a farm up and running before it does? Assuming there’s still enough water and the sun’s not so hot that it fries your plants and livestock before you have the chance to take the first tasty bite.

Unrestrained climate change means death for you.

Its simple math really, if we don’t do something soon, we’re all gonna end up dead.

It won’t be the end of the planet, or the end of the world, but it will be the end of us.

And that includes you.

Suddenly, those low energy lightbulbs don’t seem so bad and separating your recyclable goods doesn’t seem like such a chore, does it?

A bunch of world leaders are heading to Copenhagen this December to go through the motions of a Climate Change summit. Perhaps, if they adopted the following slogan, people might finally start paying attention:

Climate Change = Death

And once everyone’s paying attention, perhaps we all can start taking the right steps to slow down climate change. The life you save just might be your own.

The National Health Service (NHS) here in the UK has been in the firing line this week as Americans “debate” overhauling their healthcare system in an attempt to extend access to their 50 million residents who have absolutely no cover or access to care.

Americans are being led to believe that the free healthcare available to all of us in the UK is no good. This is so far from the truth that it would be funny, except for the fact that people’s lives hang in the balance.

The UK has a much higher life expectancy than the USA. Check your statistics and see that I’m not lying. The UK also spends less on healthcare per person than they do in the states, yet they yield better results.

Go figure!

The American healthcare system is run like a for-profit business. Think about that, someone profits from your illness and the percentages of profit are obscenely high.

Insurance companies, drug companies private hospitals, private doctors are all in the game to make money from your misery. That can’t be right, can it? Every test ordered that you don’t really need, every over-prescription is money in the bank for someone.

Just ask Michael Jackson if private healthcare on demand is a good thing. Oh wait, you can’t because it killed him.

In America, healthcare is seen as a privilege, not a basic human right. Should one only be entitled to healthcare on the basis of qualifying for insurance, rather than qualifying for need? Shouldn’t everyone have access to healthcare?

Of course they should!

Some of the scenes I’ve caught on television, of the so-called town-hall meetings have been very amusing, well amusing in as much as the ignorance fuelled anger is simply surreal.

It seems to me, that the loudest voices at these town-hall meetings are coming out of the mouths of people with the least information on the subject. These sad, twisted, ignorant people have an unjustifiable hatred of President Obama that is probably rooted in their inherent racism rather than any actual dislike of a new healthcare system.

All you need to do is listen to what they say, their buzz words, like “socialism” and “this isn’t the America I know” to understand just how misguided and ill-informed these folks are on the subject.

Ok, any subject.

At the heart of all of this is FOX News, the biased and unfair pseudo news network owned by Rupert Murdoch. FOX News provide the stilted talking points and their legions of viewers turn up at town-hall meetings, parroting the same lame shit.

I can’t say I’ve looked into it, but I am guessing a wealthy guy like Murdoch must have business interests outside the media world, say perhaps insurance or drug companies. In other words, he may have a vested financial interest in how this debate plays out. And if not him, then some of his rich robber-baron mates have got investments in the medical field. There’s a lot of profit to be protected.

Its funny how SKY News, the sister station of FOX News, under the NewsCorp corporate umbrella is taking a different tack here, righteously defending the NHS against the FOX News inspired attacks. Does one hand not know what the other is doing? Or is SKY simply pandering to their UK-based subscribers?

I think we both know the answer to that one.

I’m in a fairly unique position, having lived considerable lengths of time under both healthcare systems. Neither the US or UK systems are perfect, both excel at some things and lack in others, but overall, I know which system I would choose, if I had to…

The NHS all the way!

In the UK, I’ve never had any concerns about insurance, access to the medical system or being able to afford the costs. I’ve for the most part, had excellent care of a world class standard courtesy of the NHS.

In America I’ve been charged one hundred bucks for a wooden tongue depresser – you know what I’m talking about, a wide wooden popsicle stick.

Open your mouth and say “ahhh fuck, you just charged me a Benjamin to do that!”

In my world, life is usually quite simple and this unhealthy debate is no different. What it boils down to is this: “I’ve already got mine, so screw you if you don’t have yours!” It all comes down to compassion and America’s apparent lack of it.

The Christian right in America preach something known as “compassionate conservatism”, but sadly they don’t practise it in any meaningful or tangible way. Where’s the compassion? What would that guy Jesus do?

Jesus would move to the UK, sign on to the dole and get those holes in his hands and feet looked at for free, same for that nasty stab wound in his side.

Universal healthcare is an undeniable right, yet 50 million Americans are being denied it. Any compassionate person would recognise the inequality in the current system and want to do all they could to change it.

Where are all the compassionate folks in America? Don’t they care about their fellow man? Maybe if there are any, they could go to those silly town-hall meetings and shout down all the ignorant idiots that are making America look so stupid.

Oh and while I’m at it, lay off the NHS. Ill-informed opinion does not make a debate, it just makes you look even more like morons to the rest of the (better informed) world.

That’s an actual photo of a London bus advert placed by Release, an organisation committed to reforming UK drug laws.

Here’s Release’s mission statement, from their website:

“Release is the national centre of expertise on drugs and drugs law – providing free and confidential specialist advice to the public and professionals. Release also campaigns for changes to UK drug policy to bring about a fairer and more compassionate legal framework to manage drug use in our society.”

Release have launched this new public awareness campaign, please visit their site for more details. Its sensible, logical and very true.

And click here for the The Guardian’s take on the campaign.

Could this be the first step in the right direction? Let’s hope so!

Update 10th June 2009:
Since posting this a few days ago, the ad campaign has been censored by advertising regulators and taken down. Click here to read more.

Hello. Welcome back. Did ya miss me?

Its ramble time. Woke up too early following too little sleep. Must focus.

On what?

Its a pleasant, relaxing day off, or rather it should be, but I’ve got heaps to do ‘round the house and I might even wander up to my local high street.

Do they call it a “high street” because you have to get high before you go there? No? Well, tough, because I will be high when I go.

It should be a rule that you have to be high before allowed onto your local high street. It would make the entire shopping experience more pleasant for everyone involved. The shop assistants would think all the customers were mellow and pleasant, the shop assistants would be helpful without being overbearing and I wouldn’t nearly get into fist fights with all the rude, surly people knocking into me and blocking my way.

Oh wouldn’t it be grand?

As soon as they start opening cannabis cafes around the country, this is the sort of relaxed Utopia we can expect. Until then it will continue to be no fun.

Did you see a group of former presidents from Latin America are urging the world to adopt a controlled and regulated cannabis market? Did you look here?

Even the UN is working towards this fairly obvious and sensible conclusion. In the good ol’ US of A, they are moving in this direction. President Saviour Obama has even said that federal raids against medical marijuana establishments must end and the federal government needs to start respecting laws passed by individual states.

Many states in America have already decriminalised weed. That means it is considered the lowest possible policing priority, with penalties for possession being the equivalent of a minor traffic or parking offence.

Why can’t we do that here?

We could and we were going to until Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith started mucking around with things. These two nincompoops believe laws should be used to “send a message” to people, rather than reflect the scientific evidence or the truth.

This week the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). the body that advises the government on drug policy stated that ecstasy (E, pills, MDMA), be re-classified from its current A grade, back into Class B, to reflect its relative harm to the user. Sounds sensible enough as E is not in the same league as coke and smack.

The head of the ACMD, Professor. David Nutt went on to say that taking ecstasy is no worse than horseback riding and an equivalent number of people die from both activities annually. You would have thought that he said Jesus was secretly Satan for the drubbing he took over the comments. He was even forced to apologise and his future on the ACMD has been questioned.

Just for telling the truth!

In America, MDMA has been used by mental health professionals to assist in the therapy process. Would medical doctors prescribe something potentially lethal when their first rule is to “do no harm”? What do they know that we don’t know.

Nothing! The difference is our government uses legislation to “send a message” rather than to treat people with respect. Legislating morality never works, because people have their own moral compasses and that counts for something.

The simple fact is that anyone who’s ever smoked a joint or necked an E knows that what the government is saying is bullshit. What do you reckon that does to the government’s credibility?

It knocks it into the toilet. When a government lies about anything, we all suffer.

Drug taking is a health issue, not a moral or legal issue and trying to force it only does a disservice to everyone. If I choose to ingest MDMA, or cannabis or chocolate or even broken glass, its my body and my choice.

Criminalising millions of people serves no one. If you’re having trouble with drugs, you should be able to seek help without worrying about ending up with a criminal record. And if you are enjoying them responsibly, it should be nobody’s business but your own.

Common sense and compassion will eventually rule the day, but for now we’ll have to just keep watching our leaders screw things up more and more. Its frustrating, annoying and unavoidable, for as long as politicians can use the debate over drugs to score points with Middle England, the senseless persecution of people who enjoy something other than booze will continue.

Gee, that wasn’t as nearly as rambling as I expected it to be. Lucky you, or maybe even lucky me.

There’s was an avalanche of media bullshit this week over a documentary aired on SKY REAL LIVES which showed a man with motor neurone disease taking his own life at a Swiss clinic in 2006.

Switzerland is currently the only country in the world which allows foreigners to visit and partake in a spot of assisted suicide. Go Switzerland!

I say the media was full of bullshit because most outlets concentrated on the issue of whether or not you should show the “moment of death” on television, for fear of “glamourising death”.

WTF?

I haven’t seen the entire documentary, but I have seen some clips and how could showing a man with an absolutely horrible disease ending his life in any way glamourise death? There were no Hollywood films stars or strippers cheering him on, the room he did it in wasn’t kitted out in fur rugs and leather sofas and they didn’t even have a live band.

There was no glamour at all, but then there was absolutely nothing glamourous about it.

Taking your own life is a serious decision, certainly the most serious decision any individual can take and it was clear this poor man deliberated for a very long time before making this final decision.

The debate should not have been about whether or not they should have shown this on television, but why more countries don’t have systems like they do in Switzerland.

Why is it against the law to provide the ultimate relief and end the suffering of another human being? We do it for dogs and cats and horses – do they matter more than people?

There are some rather horrible maladies and afflictions out there which are horrendous and could cause immeasurable suffering and pain to the person affected.

A slow, protracted death is one of my bigger fears, but that fear is exponentially exacerbated by the fact that I know if I wanted to choose to end the suffering, it would not be possible because of our archaic view of euthanasia.

The people most unsurprisingly opposed to euthanasia tend to be religious nuts who believe only god’s will can decide when your life ends.

What a fucking bunch of fucking bullshit. If that’s true, then anyone with a gun is god, because they can choose to end anyone’s life with relative ease.

I have a real problem taking anyone seriously who is deeply religious to the point of it clouding their every thought and opinion, especially when those misguided views increase the suffering and pain of others.

That’s one of religion’s speciality though, causing others to needlessly suffer.

I’ve recently been in touch with a distant relation of mine, who was in charge of dispensing a small stipend to myself and all my cousins following the passing of a beloved aunt of mine.

When she wrote to me, her letter was peppered with all sorts of religious references. I half expected her closing salutation to be “Yours in Christ” and was relieved that it wasn’t.

I had to really reign myself in when I replied to her, by keeping my secular humanist views at bay, though I couldn’t resist wishing her a “happy holidays” in response to her “merry xmas”. Of course, she wrote out the entire word and capitalised it.

I have nothing against my distant relative, the fact is I don’t really know her, having maybe met her twice before the age of 13, but its the way in which religious people think everyone else should be equally religious, and not just that but we should follow their religion, because the other ones, even variations on Christianity, will send you straight to hell.

There is no hell. Hell is other people.

No, hell is being forced to live with a debilitating and terminal condition, needless suffering a long, drawn out death because the law won’t let one be the architect of one’s own fate.

The law is an ass. Or is that asshole?

The idea of my mind, my personality, the internal bits of my brain continuing to function as they do now, while being trapped in my body, wracked with pain, or worse paralysis is a fate worse than death. Compared to any of that, death would be a trip to Disneyland.

And for all you religious nuts out there, let me ask you this: If heaven is so goddamn great, why can’t we let the sick people arrive a little earlier than expected? Surely a just and loving god would welcome them with open arms.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t make us suffer.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t let us die.

If there were a god, there would be no need for heaven, because heaven would be here on earth and we would all already be angels.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if someone chose to end their life because of an intolerable existence.

If there were a god, I wouldn’t get to post all of this on the internet and he’d have a stern word or two for me.

There is no god.

Why not be your own god? Why not determine your own fate?

They say you make your own luck and I believe that’s true. I believe in self-actualisation and the power of an individual to overcome obstacles and succeed in anything.

If the obstacle you’re encountering is insurmountable, then the only path to success is retreat.

If you’re dying a horrible death, the only way to minimise death’s victory over you is to limit the amount of time you spend dying.

I thought about this a lot when I was ill last summer, especially when I could hardly walk and spent over a week trying to sleep sitting up on my sofa.

I imagined quite vividly that my condition could have been permanent and degenerative, and what I would do in that situation.

I think you can work out the answer.