Tories Will Tackle Benefit Fraud …

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Apr 092010
 

If you listen to what the Tories are saying you will be under the impression that one of their radical proposals is to tackle benefit fraud. The money saved from this will go towards reversing the rise in national insurance contributions.

Sounds good doesn’t it ?

Well it would be, but it really isn’t a change at all. Benefit fraud is apparently at the lowest level for 10 years – the current Labour government has been tackling it and somewhat successfully at that. Even the Tory idea of stopping benefits to benefit cheats is hardly a new idea – they are just making the “stoppage” longer.

Mephadrone Deaths ?? Part 2

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Apr 082010
 

Despite being some time since the issue of mephadrone jumped into the consciousness of those who are not familiar with the drugs scene (or the “legal highs” scene), I am still not aware of any genuine deaths that can be solely attributed to mephadrone. There seems to be a number of deaths where multiple drugs were involved including mephadrone and of course the media scaremongers are blaming that drug for the deaths.

It is also clear that there are a number of health risks associated with mephadrone; so the same as paracetamol then ? Well not quite – there has been no extensive testing of mephadrone to assess the risks associated with it whereas paracetamol has had extensive tests. The risks of paracetamol are well understood and the benefits are deemed to outweigh the disadvantages.

Are the apparent risks of mephadrone and the fact that it has not undergone any proper form of testing enough to justify making mephadrone illegal ? Well perhaps …

But some are saying that it should be illegal because people think that because it is legal, it is safe. I am afraid that argument is more than a little ridiculous – after all rat poison is hardly safe but it is still legal. Personally I think that someone who receives a parcel through the post containing a product labelled as “plant food” and still believes that taking it is safe is more than a little foolish.

But of course the true merits of the argument are ignored when the government makes a knee-jerk reaction to make it illegal – as is due to happen on the 16th April 2010.

Professor David Knutt has made an interesting point that people who choose to use recreational drugs may well be better off using the already illegal amphetamines or ecstasy because the risks of these are known whilst mephadrone is an unknown quantity. Whether we approve or not of the use of recreational drugs, it seems that making the drugs illegal is not going to stop their use.

Indeed it may well be that making such drugs illegal not only pushes people who insist on using into the arms of pushers who adulterate their drugs with other harmful substances, but also pushes people into trying “legal highs” as an alternative. These “legal highs” are obvious less understood than drugs that have been around for some time, and may be more or less harmful than the existing choices.

By continually looking to what drug users are using and making everything they use illegal, we are encouraging the development of new drugs with similar effects. These new drugs may be more or less harmful than the ones made illegal – we just do not know.

It is time we re-considered this failed attempt at prohibition which has been going on since (in the UK and in the case of opiates) just after World War I. There are many arguments against the current position on prohibition, but one argument that is of particular relevance in today’s financial climate is the possible tax revenue that could come from a “sin tax” on recreational drugs. Making drugs legal would very likely reduce their cost sufficiently that a tax could be added and the resulting product would still be cheap enough to undercut the illegal drugs – and of course the government could add a big health warning.

Beholden To The Unions Or To The Fat Cats ?

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Apr 082010
 

The Tories have been slowly trotting out a procession of business leaders who think a Tory government would be a good idea. This is supposed to be news ? We know that the Tories are bankrolled by big business, which gives those business leaders a considerable say in what the Tories do – not explicitly, but in terms of influence.

Labour of course is similarly indebted to the unions, which gives the union leaders considerable influence over Labour’s policies.

Given that I am not a fat cat but one of the workers, I am likely to be less unhappy with the union’s unfair advantage with Labour in charge than with the fat cats hotline to a Tory government.

But I’m not happy about either Tories or Labour being beholden to any select group. It doesn’t seem to me to be a healthy situation if some group has an unfair access to the corridors of power because they helped fund the political party who managed to win an election.

There is of course the Liberals who are not funded in the same way, but realistically they are unlikely to win a majority. The best chance for Liberal involvement in the next government is with a “hung parliament” with no overall control – at least until a pact is established.

The real answer is to make party funding independent of private interest groups.

So It’s May 6th For The UK Election

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Apr 062010
 

Now that it has been announced, we can look forward to a very tedious month whilst the politicians try and grab all the headlines with variations on “look at me” (with the hope that their exhibitionism will turn into a vote). At least we know when it will be over at last.

Of course because of the election system we suffer, most of us don’t have much in the way of a say in what the next parliament looks like and who makes up the government. Apparently around half of the current seats in parliament have not changed in terms of what party the MP represents in over 40 years! So much for democracy.

Of course there is a form of democracy at work here – those few of us who live in marginal seats are effectively the ones who decide what bunch of politicians make up the next government. The rest of us are expected to vote according to the usual pattern and return an MP for our constituency no different to the previous one.

Perhaps we should remember the expenses scandal, and vote for independent candidates not affiliated and obligated to the party machines.

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