Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 168

Why is There No Balance or Impartiality in TV Drama or Soap Operas?

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

If you want to change someone���s mind, don���t bother arguing with him. Get control of a major TV or radio soap opera and you are halfway there. I would love to infiltrate the scriptwriters of Coronation Street and insert a storyline about a bright young teenager who starts smoking cannabis and ends up hopelessly mentally ill, stuck on a locked ward as his weeping parents wonder why nobody did anything to enforce the drug laws.

Or EastEnders might feature the misery and disappointment of a bright child from a poor home, who was bullied and neglected in a vast state comprehensive and so had her hopes ruined by egalitarian dogma.

Or the BBC Radio 4 series, The Archers, might tell the story of an innocent couple targeted by social workers claiming falsely that they had abused their child, and snatching that child away forever in secret and deeply unfair court hearings.

If you want to change someone���s mind, don���t bother arguing with him. Get control of a major TV or radio soap opera and you are halfway there

All these things happen in real life. But, of course, the broadcasting organisations, being in the hands of the Left, would not do this.

They are too busy re-educating us into right-on citizenship of our new people���s republic, with lesbian kisses to approve of, incest to be understanding about, a male- to-female transsexual (played by a real woman) and other heroes and heroines of Left-wing mythology to admire.

One recent drama, for instance, managed to make a sympathetic heroine out of an asylum seeker who broke the laws against taking paid work.

The Archers is currently harrowing its listeners with a heavy-handed melodrama about a bullied woman who eventually stabs her overbearing husband. I am not a regular listener, but as far as I could see she could have avoided the whole episode by leaving home before he got back from work. Yet the scriptwriters plainly want us to sympathise with the stabber.

It���s no use saying it���s just fiction. These dramas have a huge influence on national thought. Thousands of people actually mix up their own schooldays with the plots of the ill-disciplined fictional comprehensive school Grange Hill, whose pupils were saturated in modern progressive thought. Back in 1998, when a non-existent Deirdre Rachid was sent to a non-existent prison in Coronation Street, the real Prime Minister and the real Leader of the Opposition vied with each other to call for her release.

If I had managed to work my way into the world of TV or radio soap opera, I might actually have got somewhere with all the causes I have failed to advance in years of public debate. How is it that this amazingly influential sector of broadcasting is not in any way covered by the rules on impartiality? Isn���t it time we took it as seriously as it deserves to be taken?

Payback time for the tax zealots

David Cameron has only himself to blame for the fix he is in. He and his Chancellor have ceaselessly blurred the huge difference between criminal tax evasion and legal tax avoidance.

They have repeatedly referred to them as if they were the same. They have absurdly suggested that they can put an end to avoidance, which will continue to exist in any country which has tax laws and skilled lawyers paid lots of money to find ways around them.

They have also started warbling in the Left-wing choir which caterwauls that paying taxes is somehow a moral duty, rather than a legal obligation.

 
It���s not true. Taxes are in many cases squandered on servicing foolish debts incurred by bungling Ministers who knew the taxpayer would bail them out. Or they are thrown away on the most appalling school system, or the most useless police force in the advanced world.

I will pay what I owe, because I believe in the rule of law. But if I���m offered a legal way of paying less tax I will take it ��� and so will anyone, including quite a lot of prominent Leftists, especially in the media. Indeed, I believe a prominent Left-wing newspaper (you know who you are) recently managed to avoid a thumping great tax bill by using a tax-exempt shell company in the Cayman Islands.

The Left-wing tax zealots aren���t free to do this because they have publicly embraced this idea that tax is a type of goodness. If Mr Cameron disappears up his own anatomy thanks to his offshore fund, I shall laugh quite a lot.

But this has really happened because he is past the peak of his power. Seven years ago, when I tried to work up some interest about his record as one of Parliament���s greediest claimers of expenses (��1,700 a month on a ��350,000 mortgage, close to the maximum possible, later dropping to ��1,000 a month, plus ��� of course ��� council tax, gas, oil and insurance), nobody cared a bit.

Most people still aren���t aware of how their taxes helped a very rich man and his even richer wife buy a rather nice country home, now worth at least a million pounds. What���s moral about forcing a dinner lady or a hospital cleaner to contribute to Mr Cameron���s mortgage?

But that���s the sort of thing tax does in modern Britain. I wouldn���t blame any normal person for keeping what they can.

But Mr Cameron himself, a self-righteous taxation zealot who has personally done very well out of the public purse, deserves everything he now gets. I did try to tell you.

The 'rebels' without a cause

What is it about The Rolling Stones? How is it that they have become one of the most lucrative business enterprises of modern times, and yet still manage to portray themselves as dangerous rebels?

Thanks to the opening of an exhibition about them, we can once again enjoy this picture of the original group (that���s what we called them then) in 1963, wearing��� uniform. This was before they discovered that looking a bit dangerous and scruffy was better for trade. It���s evidence of a remarkable flexibility.

There���s also the little matter of a catchy little song called Under My Thumb, in which Mick Jagger exults over how he���s forced a girl who ���once pushed me around��� into changing her clothes and doing just what she���s told. The ���squirming dog who���s just had her day��� now ���keeps her eyes to herself��� while he ���can still look at someone else���.

This is the sort of attitude that can get you liked by the Taliban or stabbed on The Archers. It certainly doesn���t fit with the feminism of his modern fans. Does he sing it any more? As for rebellion, if the Stones made any gesture towards human freedom during their recent visit to the Cuban tyranny, I haven���t seen it reported. The brand isn���t always the same as the reality.

 

****

I am sure Justin Welby thought there was 'no reason to doubt' that his mother's husband was his father. But he wasn't. I hope this revelation also helps the Archbishop realise that there is 'reason to doubt' his unfair condemnation of Bishop George Bell.

That Sussex Debate - the Full Version

A member of the audience has kindly sent me a link to the complete recording of the Sussex University Debate on marijuana legalisation. 

 

Here it is

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V89gLhFAc1M

I've discovered who's secretly controlling us...Eastenders!

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

If you want to change someone���s mind, don���t bother arguing with him. Get control of a major TV or radio soap opera and you are halfway there. I would love to infiltrate the scriptwriters of Coronation Street and insert a storyline about a bright young teenager who starts smoking cannabis and ends up hopelessly mentally ill, stuck on a locked ward as his weeping parents wonder why nobody did anything to enforce the drug laws.

Or EastEnders might feature the misery and disappointment of a bright child from a poor home, who was bullied and neglected in a vast state comprehensive and so had her hopes ruined by egalitarian dogma.

Or the BBC Radio 4 series, The Archers, might tell the story of an innocent couple targeted by social workers claiming falsely that they had abused their child, and snatching that child away forever in secret and deeply unfair court hearings.

If you want to change someone���s mind, don���t bother arguing with him. Get control of a major TV or radio soap opera and you are halfway there

All these things happen in real life. But, of course, the broadcasting organisations, being in the hands of the Left, would not do this.

They are too busy re-educating us into right-on citizenship of our new people���s republic, with lesbian kisses to approve of, incest to be understanding about, a male- to-female transsexual (played by a real woman) and other heroes and heroines of Left-wing mythology to admire.

One recent drama, for instance, managed to make a sympathetic heroine out of an asylum seeker who broke the laws against taking paid work.

The Archers is currently harrowing its listeners with a heavy-handed melodrama about a bullied woman who eventually stabs her overbearing husband. I am not a regular listener, but as far as I could see she could have avoided the whole episode by leaving home before he got back from work. Yet the scriptwriters plainly want us to sympathise with the stabber.

It���s no use saying it���s just fiction. These dramas have a huge influence on national thought. Thousands of people actually mix up their own schooldays with the plots of the ill-disciplined fictional comprehensive school Grange Hill, whose pupils were saturated in modern progressive thought. Back in 1998, when a non-existent Deirdre Rachid was sent to a non-existent prison in Coronation Street, the real Prime Minister and the real Leader of the Opposition vied with each other to call for her release.

If I had managed to work my way into the world of TV or radio soap opera, I might actually have got somewhere with all the causes I have failed to advance in years of public debate. How is it that this amazingly influential sector of broadcasting is not in any way covered by the rules on impartiality? Isn���t it time we took it as seriously as it deserves to be taken?

Payback time for the tax zealots

David Cameron has only himself to blame for the fix he is in. He and his Chancellor have ceaselessly blurred the huge difference between criminal tax evasion and legal tax avoidance.

They have repeatedly referred to them as if they were the same. They have absurdly suggested that they can put an end to avoidance, which will continue to exist in any country which has tax laws and skilled lawyers paid lots of money to find ways around them.

They have also started warbling in the Left-wing choir which caterwauls that paying taxes is somehow a moral duty, rather than a legal obligation.

David Cameron has only himself to blame for the fix he is in for ceaselessly blurred the difference between tax evasion and legal tax avoidance

It���s not true. Taxes are in many cases squandered on servicing foolish debts incurred by bungling Ministers who knew the taxpayer would bail them out. Or they are thrown away on the most appalling school system, or the most useless police force in the advanced world.

I will pay what I owe, because I believe in the rule of law. But if I���m offered a legal way of paying less tax I will take it ��� and so will anyone, including quite a lot of prominent Leftists, especially in the media. Indeed, I believe a prominent Left-wing newspaper (you know who you are) recently managed to avoid a thumping great tax bill by using a tax-exempt shell company in the Cayman Islands.

The Left-wing tax zealots aren���t free to do this because they have publicly embraced this idea that tax is a type of goodness. If Mr Cameron disappears up his own anatomy thanks to his offshore fund, I shall laugh quite a lot.

But this has really happened because he is past the peak of his power. Seven years ago, when I tried to work up some interest about his record as one of Parliament���s greediest claimers of expenses (��1,700 a month on a ��350,000 mortgage, close to the maximum possible, later dropping to ��1,000 a month, plus ��� of course ��� council tax, gas, oil and insurance), nobody cared a bit.

Most people still aren���t aware of how their taxes helped a very rich man and his even richer wife buy a rather nice country home, now worth at least a million pounds. What���s moral about forcing a dinner lady or a hospital cleaner to contribute to Mr Cameron���s mortgage?

But that���s the sort of thing tax does in modern Britain. I wouldn���t blame any normal person for keeping what they can.

But Mr Cameron himself, a self-righteous taxation zealot who has personally done very well out of the public purse, deserves everything he now gets. I did try to tell you.

The 'rebels' without cause

What is it about The Rolling Stones? How is it that they have become one of the most lucrative business enterprises of modern times, and yet still manage to portray themselves as dangerous rebels?

Thanks to the opening of an exhibition about them, we can once again enjoy this picture of the original group (that���s what we called them then) in 1963, wearing��� uniform. This was before they discovered that looking a bit dangerous and scruffy was better for trade. It���s evidence of a remarkable flexibility.

There���s also the little matter of a catchy little song called Under My Thumb, in which Mick Jagger exults over how he���s forced a girl who ���once pushed me around��� into changing her clothes and doing just what she���s told. The ���squirming dog who���s just had her day��� now ���keeps her eyes to herself��� while he ���can still look at someone else���.

This is the sort of attitude that can get you liked by the Taliban or stabbed on The Archers. It certainly doesn���t fit with the feminism of his modern fans. Does he sing it any more? As for rebellion, if the Stones made any gesture towards human freedom during their recent visit to the Cuban tyranny, I haven���t seen it reported. The brand isn���t always the same as the reality.

What is it about The Rolling Stones? How is it that they have become one of the most lucrative business enterprises of modern times, and yet still manage to portray themselves as dangerous rebels?

That list in full - Violent major criminals who have used cannabis

Last night I took part in a debate on cannabis legalisation at the University of Sussex, a place I last visited (in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a place there, which in those days involved an interview) in 1969. 

The result was as usual. I won the debate, and lost the vote. I expect there'll be a Youtube version in time, as it was recorded. It wasa  reasonably lively and combative occasion.  

My main concern as always is to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of my opponents, which may bear fruit many years from now. It takes courage to vote for me in public at such a place, and I'm grateful to those who did.  

Anyway, expecting the inevitable claim that marijuana is a peaceful drug, I drew up a list of the major crimes, some political, some not, whose perpetrators or alleged perpetrators have been found, either through police records or the testimony of their acquaintances, to be cannabis users. 

I thought I'd reproduce it here. The order is random. The usual caveat applies. All I am saying here it that ultra-violent crime is a subset of crime as a whole, which is distinguished by being thoroughly covered by the media. This information is available about the criminals which is not available about most criminals.  

I would like to see the police and courts compelled by law to investigate and record the drug use of all persons convicted of violent crime, and for the results of this recording to be the subject of an inquiry into an apparent correlation. That is all. Anyone who says I have said anything else is making it up. They will. Please disregard it.

All the following are known cannabis users:

The mass killer on the beach in Sousse, Tunisia, Seifeddine Rezgui. Jared Loughner, culprit of the 2008 Tucson massacre in which six died and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was terribly wounded.

Deyan Deyanov, killer (by beheading) of Jennifer Mills-Westley in Tenerife, Nicholas Salavador, killer, by decapitation, of Mrs Palmira Silva in London, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale  killers of Lee Rigby, Cherif and Said Kouachi, and Ahmedy Coulibaly,  culprits of the Charlie Hebdo Killings. Ibrahim and Saleh Abdeslam, and Omar Ismail Mostefai, culprits of the Bataclan killings in Paris last November, Martin Rouleau, killer of of an unnamed Canadian soldier in St Jean-sur-Richelieu in October 2014,  Michael Zehaf Bibeau, killer of another Canadian soldier, Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa,  also in October 2014, Jonathan Bowling and Ashley Foster , killers of the Sheffield church organist Alan Greaves, beaten to death for no reason, Ayoub el-Khazzani  who attempted a terrorist outrage on the Thalys train between Amsterdam and Paris. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Youtube recording of my speech on Drugs at Sussex, 7th April 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pkKmqT7edc

Does Messing Around with Clocks Mess Around With Our Health?

This website claims it does. Comments are welcome

 

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/03/04/health-effects-daylight-savings-time.aspx

 

 

I Got Those Louisiana Execution Blues

In some bafflement, I watched on Sunday night the opening episode of a new BBC-TV series ���Undercover���. I had been looking forward to it, as I am most interested in its theme. This is the terrible error of infiltrating undercover police officers into protest movements. Several of these men have actually lived with and fathered children by the people they were spying on.

I find this inexcusable in a free society, and cannot begin to imagine the betrayal felt by those involved, when (as must always happen) the treachery is uncovered.  

It is an excellent subject for a drama.

So I was puzzled to find the action beginning on Highway 110, so-called, in Louisiana. I wondered if I was watching the wrong programme, as it seemed to be about the US death penalty, not British undercover police officers.  I also think highway 110  may have been the wrong road, mistaken for a similarly-numbered route that leads from the state capital, Baton Rouge,  to the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known until recently as Angola).

 

This prison was made famous in a tendentious Hollywood propaganda film, 'Dead Man Walking��� starring Susan Sarandon as a dedicated nun opposed to the death penalty, and Sean Penn playing an unquestionably guilty rapist and murderer.

Following the good Sister���s intervention, Penn has a character transplant and becomes regretful, after many years of denying his crime.

Both murderer and nun are based on real people. You can look it all up. No doubt some readers will think the nun is doing good. I think she may have misunderstood the gospels.

As I recall, heavenly choirs warble as a (finally repentant) Penn is melodramatically lifted on high in a semi-crucified position, strapped to a gurney,  during his lethal injection (a largely fictional depiction of what is in fact a surprisingly dull and totally horizontal event, as I can testify, having witnessed one such in Huntsville, Texas).

Anyway, back to the BBC: The series heroine, played by Sophie Okoneda, was obviously in some way connected to an execution, which was being gloated about in a hateable Southern-fried voice on her car radio .

Then her phone, on the empty front passenger seat, started to trill.

If I were on death row in Louisiana I am not sure I would want a lawyer who responds to this by accidentally dropping the phone on the car floor, groping for it, then slamming on the brakes and taking the call while her car stands askew in the middle of a main road ( a giant truck bears down on her as this happens).

Nor would I want a lawyer whose phone battery starts to go flat (as it later does) during a crucial last-minute appeal to the State Attorney General. Didn���t she know it was going to be a busy day? Now would I want an advocate who leaves her car in a field with the door open. Is it still there? We weren't ever shown her going back to find out. 

If I were the State of Louisiana (which is clearly identified in this programme) I would��� well, I���ll come on that later.

But first, here are some interesting extracts from the unpopular newspaper reviews of the programme:

Daily Telegraph: ���We first met Maya fighting desperately to get a stay of execution in Louisiana for a falsely convicted Death Row client about to die.���

Guardian:��� In two hours' time, Rudy Jones, who has been on death row for 20 years for a murder he did not commit, is about to be executed. The woman behind the wheel is his lawyer Maya ��� an impassioned and embattled London barrister on her way to make a last-ditch attempt to save him.���

Times : ���She was introduced as a John Grisham hero, racing to rescue, then console, her Louisiana death-row client, Rudy��� as the seconds ticked away to his execution.

Independent: ���Only it opened in the US, where she was defending death row convict Rudy Jones ���, a man falsely imprisoned for murder.���

Very interestingly, the reviewer for the ���Independent��� went on to note: ���If I hadn't read the episode synopsis before I watched the programme, I think I would still be clueless about 90 per cent of what happened���.

I���m not sure what synopsis she means, but could it be a special one, given to TV reviewers when they preview programmes? Because I hadn���t seen any such synopsis and, while not wholly clueless, it did take me some time to grasp what was going on. I could have done with a synopsis myself.

And how else were we supposed to know that the convict was wrongly-convicted? We were told nothing of the alleged crime, the trial or the case. Anti-death-penalty campaigners (as I have observed for myself) are quite ready to use all available means (including the sobbiest of sob stories) to prevent the executions of convicted killers they know or at least strongly suspect to be guilty.

I think we were supposed to assume he was innocent, to assume that the American justice system (which is undoubtedly flawed) is a seething mixture of redneck prejudice and insouciant racist callousness (the condemned man was portrayed as Black), against which civilised and enlightened multicultural Brits struggle in vain with the feeble tools of justice.

Is this so?

In New Orleans alone, the biggest city in Louisiana, there were 200 murders in 2011. I think there are about 500 killings a year in the whole state.

So presumably, if the BBC���s idea of reality is true,  the execution chamber at Angola is busy day and night prejudicially killing unjustly convicted Black citizens in defiance of the evidence.

Well, not exactly:

Louisiana has executed 28 murderers in the last 40 years. But it has something in the region of 500 murders a year, around twice the murder rate in New York. Yet it hasn���t held an execution of anybody, just or unjust, botched or unbotched, Black or White, since January 2010.

 On 10th January 2010, the major local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, reported ���State���s death penalty becoming a rarity ; Bordelon���s execution was first since 2002���

���Thursday's execution of Gerald Bordelon, happened only because the convicted killer waived his appeals, hastening his death by many years. His was the first execution since 2002, when Leslie Dale Martin was executed for the rape and murder of a Lake Charles woman in 1981.

'The dramatic decline in Louisiana executions since 1987, when the state briefly led the nation in that statistic, comes at a time when, nationally, both executions and the imposition of new death sentences have waned significantly.���

Bordelon, by the way, had strangled his 12-year-old stepdaughter, after kidnapping her at knifepoint and forcing her to, well, I won���t go on, it���s too distressing, look it up if you must.  There was no doubt of his guilt. He showed police where he���d put her poor defiled body. But the crime was committed in 2002, and he was convicted in 2006. And he waived his right to appeal. And in the period during which his was the sole execution, approximately 5,000 murders were committed in that state. Call that a death penalty?  Call it a deterrent?���

Since others appear to wish to make skin-colour an issue, I will note here that photographs of Bordelon, easily viewable on the Internet,  show him as not being black.

There have, as far as I can discover, been no executions in Louisiana since Bordelon���s despatch. I can find no record of any botched execution by lethal injection there, either.

Before Bordelon,  the last to be executed had been Leslie Dale Martin (also white, or pinko-grey, if photographs are anything to go by). He was executed in May 2002 for the rape and murder of Christina Burgin. The details of this crime (which took place in 1991) are too revolting for me to record them here.

Since the introduction of lethal injection by the state in 1991, 25 years ago, eight persons have been executed.  Not such a  good story, I know, but is it right or responsible  for the BBC to portray the USA as it did on Sunday night? People take its dramas seriously, especially when they are based on real life events.

Now Spain Considers Rebellion Against Berlin Time

Smug persons who lecture me about how time zones don���t matter (and then infest the comment threads with incessant arguments about the subject they say doesn���t interest them) might have been discombobulated by a report and leading article in the Times today (both, alas, behind a pay wall) in which it was disclosed that Spain is thinking of returning to Greenwich Time, instead of following the distant Berlin meridian which it adopted in obeisance to Franco���s ally Hitler, in 1942.

A map of Western Europe���s time zones illustrates just how political Berlin time is. Only the British isles and Portugal decline to follow the Berlin time decree. But about 90% of Spain and about 35% of France are to the West of Greenwich, and Greenwich time would suit all of France better than the zone in which it is compelled to be.. If Spain should be on Berlin time, then so should Turkey and Ukraine, which are equally far away in the opposite direction. But they are not.  It would be an absurdity which an independent country would not tolerate. Even Greece,  Romania and Bulgaria are excused, for the moment (presumably they are thought to have suffered enough for their EU membership). Portugal some years ago broke away from Berlin Time because it simply didn���t fit the real time in that country. Apart from all the usual problems ��� going to school or work in the dark, children saying up late into the night, no measurable savings in energy, people just didn���t like it once it was imposed . This is always the problem with the time maniacs. As almost nobody understands the moving of the clocks, and the most confused are often those who think they do, most people will accept it in theory and then have several years to discover they have made a mistake in practice.

Look back over past debates here and see how many people say they perfectly well understand that changing the clocks doesn���t increase the amount of daylight. Then see how rapidly the same people will come up with further arguments predicated on the idea that it *does* alter the amount of daylight, that length of the evening etc.

Weird. But true

Now Spain���s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is thinking of doing the same , as part of  a proposed general revolution in Spanish working and living habits.

Two things are established by this event. One is that time zones are deeply political, as political as language and borders,  and my contention that Berlin Time is a consequence of EU centralisation is not, as my smug, ill-informed critics jeer, absurd -  but pretty much indisputable. Spain���s adherence to Berlin Time is an acknowledged  result of the Franco regime���s desire to be on good terms with Hitler.

 

The whole global system of time followed a diplomatic struggle between Britain and France for mastery of the meridian, resolved in Britain���s favour at the International Meridian Conference of October 1884. France sulked about this result for a quarter of a century, refusing to adopt the Greenwich meridian till 1911.  And people do care about the measurement of time. I���m only surprised more people don���t admit to being interested by this subject. But almost every intervention I���ve ever made about it has been provoked by other people wanting to mess about with time, not by me.

What 'War on Drugs'? What 'Prohibition?' Will the BBC take any notice of its own research?

Take a look at these figures gathered by the BBC, on an extraordinarily rapid fall in cannabis possession arrests in England and Wales.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35954754

My main question is ���will the BBC now reflect this fact in its coverage of the issue, which currently consists of giving unchallenged platforms to liberalisers, ignoring me, my evidence and my book completely, and accepting their bogus argument that the existing state of affairs is the result of failed prohibition, and that a ruthless and cruel law is ���criminalising��� harmless victimless drug users.

I enjoyed the hilarious bit (which appears in all such accounts) about police being ���freed up��� (why are they never just freed��� or ���freed down���)  for ���more important work���. What is this more important work? Patrolling Twitter? Staging notional arrests of dead Bishops? Can we have research? As my book found, it certainly hasn���t been followed by any especially increased efforts to pursue the so-called ���hard��� drugs, not that there���s anything soft about marijuana, as my regular readers well know.

What���s actually happened is that by the introduction of the ���Cannabis Warning��� by the then Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), since replaced by the National Police Chiefs��� Council, the police declared that this was a law they were no longer prepared to enforce.

This extraordinary example of a law made without reference to Parliament should attract more interest. It is hard to track the exact origin of the ���Warning���; but it appears to have become national police policy in the early years of this century, following the Brixton ���experiment��� along the same lines, and the widely misunderstood 1997-2000 Runciman Report, which pointed out that countries had considerable freedom in enforcing laws which they were bound by treaty to have on the books. This was the successor of even more widely misunderstood 1968-9 Wootton report, which the government of the day appeared to reject but in fact accepted and which began the long, gradual decriminalisation of marijuana in England and Wales.

And after a short period in which the ���Warning��� was actually issued, they now aren���t even bothering with that,  most of the time. You can hardly blame them. It is a waste of their time, even if the time saved is spent twiddling their thumbs or discussing overtime. The ���Warning��� , not sanctioned by Parliament, is not centrally recorded and  has absolutely no consequences for those to whom it is given. It is literally pointless. Simpler to do nothing at all.

This is absolutely no surprise to me, or to the select body of enlightened, properly informed persons who have courageously obtained and read my near-samizdat book ���The War We Never Fought��� , despite the mixture of ignorant abuse, baseless derision, personal fury and silence with which its publication was marked.

Even today, after years of pointing out that cannabis in this country has been, de facto, decriminalised, I am pestered by Big Dope���s comment warriors claiming that there is a ���war on drugs��� which has failed or that there is ���Prohibition��� of cannabis in force. Or I hear people going on and on about the alleged ���success��� of a far smaller, far more recent experiments in  overt drug legalisation in the Netherlands or Portugal.

When will it sink in that England has been engaging in a far longer, far bigger experiment for decades?

Probably never.

The interests which wish to suppress this truth are so powerful that it is almost pointless to challenge them.  They are on the verge of a huge success, the abolition of the international treaties which prevent the open sale, marketing, advertising and taxation of marijuana, without which it cannot reach its full profit potential. Having thought they had won, they are now highly perplexed by the growing correlation between cannabis and mental illness which suggests that their 50-year PR campaign , in which it is portrayed as a soft drug, is false and mistaken.

They exist among the political, chattering and media classes, most of whom have used marijuana in their adult lives, many of whom still do, and many of whom permit their children to do so.

These are the outliers who patrol the frontiers of debate, unleashing spite and misrepresentation, gross unfairness in broadcast discussions and what amounts to censorship, on anyone who challenges the official narrative that cannabis is a) harmless and b) its users are cruelly and needlessly persecuted.

These are strengthened by a selfist, hedonist culture, which regards self-stupefaction as a morally defensible response to the modern world , and in some cases desires a Brave New World type of society in which discontent is dissolved in narcotic sweetness.

Behind them stand that huge, but quieter forces of the Billionaire Big Dope Lobby, one half of which wants profit and the other half of which sees legal marijuana as a huge new source of tax revenue.

Every time you see or hear a spokesman or a dupe of Big Dope, ask yourselves which of these profiles he or she fits.

Now Spain Considers Rebellion Against Berlin Time.

Smug persons who lecture me about how time zones don���t matter( and then infest the comment threads with incessant arguments about the subject they say doesn���t interest them) might have been discombobulated by a report and leading article in the Times today (both, alas, behind a pay wall) in which it was disclosed that Spain is thinking of returning to Greenwich Time, instead of following the distant Berlin meridian which it adopted in obeisance to Franco���s ally Hitler, in 1942.

A map of Europe���s time zones illustrates just how political Berlin time is. Only the British isles and Portugal decline to follow the Berlin time decree. But about 90% of Spain and about 35% of France are to the West of Greenwich, and Greenwich time would suit all of France better than the zone in which it is compelled to be.. If Spain should be on Berlin time, then so should Turkey and Ukraine, which are equally far away in the opposite direction. But they are not.  It would be an absurdity which an indepndent country would not tolerate. Even Greece,  Romania and Bulgaria are excused, for the moment (presumably they are thought to have suffered enough for their EU membership). Portugal some years ago broke away from Berlin Time because it simply didn���t fit the real time in that country. Apart from all the usual problems ��� going to school or work in the dark, children saying up late into the night, no measurable savings in energy, people just didn���t like it once it was imposed . This is always the problem with the time maniacs. As almost nobody understands the moving of the clocks, and the most confused are often those who think they do, most people will accept it in theory and then have several years to discover they m have made a mistake in practice.

Look back over past debates here and see how many people say they perfectly well understand that changing the clocks doesn���t increase the amount of daylight. Then see how rapidly the same people will come up with further arguments predicated on the idea that it *does* alter the amount of daylight, that length of the evening etc.

Weird. But true

Now Spain���s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is thinking of doing the same , as part of  a proposed general revolution in Spanish working and living habits.

Two things are established by this event. One is that time zones are deeply political, as political as language and borders,  and my contention that Berlin Time is a consequence of EU centralisation is not, as my smug, ill-informed critics jeer, absurd -  but pretty much indisputable. Spain���s adherence to Berlin Time is an acknowledged  result of the Franco regime���s desire to be on good terms with Hitler.

 

The whole global system of time followed a diplomatic struggle between Britain and France for mastery of the meridian, resolved in Britain���s favour at the International Meridian Conference of October 1884. France sulked about this result for a quarter of a century, refusing to adopt the Greenwich meridian till 1911.  And people do care about the measurement of time. I���m only surprised more people don���t admit to being interested by this subject. But almost every intervention I���ve ever made about it has been provoked by other people wanting to mess about with time, not by me.