Labour have failed to control binge drinking

Conservative 'news story' on the website.

"Shadow Health Minister, Stephen O'Brien, has attacked Labour for failing to tackle binge drinking, saying:
"It's been low on their priority list, and now we're seeing the consequences, with excessive drinking and associated violent crime still not under control." "

Though in general the whole "government should refect the people and not alter behaviours, however disastrous they are. It seems as though to me this point has gone too far, they already meddle so much so as to result in the binge drinking we have in this county.

I don't really want to go into the details right now, but drinking can but only be seen as a societal response to the despondent nannying culture that controls the thinking from Westminster. If we, as individuals within the UK, are taxed to the hilt, lack any form of real privacy and are loosing rights left right and centre in a world which is made dramatically more gloomy by our own actions (that is the actions of our own elected parliament), then what is there to do but drink?

This is a very sketchy, and underdeveloped point. But honestly. Ask yourself. What does our government do other than dampen your prospects of a brighter future?

"He promised that a Conservative Government would clamp down on binge drinking and alcohol abuse by:
- Taking action to prevent the sale of cut-price alcohol
- And clamping down on shops who sell alcohol to under-age drinkers."

These actions wont solve anything. And I suspect that Stephen O'Brien knows it. But its political expediency to do at least as much as the opposition are doing on a topic. However much that does little or nothing to help. I mean, how many times a year do you hear a politician saying that will 'clamp down on shops who sell alcohol to under-age drinkers'. And who honestly thinks it is those drinkers who are the problem!?

Technorati Tags: British Poltics,Drinking,Conservatives

Prime Minister Brown says, "There is increasing public support for the action that was taken."

...I say, "You did something that everyone hates, and over time people have gotten used to it and begin not to care too much."

The fact that this is connected with the Prime Minister's response to a smoking ban question is inconsequential. This is authoritarian thinking, and is wrong wrong wrong!

What sort of state do you have when government takes action, not for the benefit of the economy, or defence, or indeed anything directly in connection with the remit of government. But in terms of the lives and the society.

Parliament is not meant to change society. Society drives parliament. And to do anything otherwise is to go against all ideas of democracy and the tradition of this country; which everyone (except David Davis it seems) has forgotten.

That being said, maybe this is simply opportunism. Maybe there is no discernable tradition within this country any more on any real sense. That is, multi-cultralism (note not immergration), has succeeded too well. That is not one incomming culture has overcome what was indigenous (even though that is a historically inaccurate comment) within this country, but the ultimate mass of difference has created a societal flux.

Maybe our society is nothing more than a name - The United Kingdom - and a mess. And it is for our labour government to take advantage of this. Fun times!

The most unlikely civil liberties defender of all!

Based around the recent events of David Davis surrendering his position of MP causing a by-election in his constituency. All because the bill to extend pre-charge detention to the ridiculous and horrendous length of 42 days, here is a punk band who have written a (bad-ish) song on the matter.

 

 

Not the best ever, I grant you. But I'm very chuffed that someone has actually done this.

 

Rock on!

The West Lothian Question...?

The 'West Lothian Question' is a great example within English (note not British) politics elephant in the room where the Scottish politicians generally don't care and the English don't know what to do; there is simply no 'right' answer without dramatic institutional and constitutional change.

It is the situation, as we have now, of a scots parliament to which English (or indeed Welsh or Northern Irish) MPs cannot vote in along side a British parliament which Scots (et. al.) can vote in on every topic including only English only legislation.

Ian Dale has word of a leaked conservative proposal to the problem by cross-hatching layers of discussion and decision making within Westminster between English only involvement and Total Involvement. In other words, an appalling mess.

"If this is true, it is simply appalling. The phrases 'half baked' and 'dog's breakfast' come to mind. This is not a long term solution to something which even Scottish politicians recognise is a problem and it's not even a half way house. It reeks of a measure designed to placate rather than solve. And as usual with these things it won't even do that."

One of these days I must have a look through my old politic degree essays, as I have one on this topic. That being said the situation is simple. The solution is simple. The politics involved are disastrously complicated, obfuscated and complex.

And this is the industry (ha!) I am looking to join. Fun times.

Long live the Queen... Until The Lisbon Treaty

I'm not going to look into this in detail... But here is a Libertarian Party blog which comments on the prospect of us losing our monarch with the Lisbon Treaty.

Interesting, if only it is a hypothetical result of that most disagreeable advancement of Europe.

Climate Change

I read the Devil's Kitchen a lot. And as some of you reading this may realise, his understanding of Climate Change is that, a) it is probably not happening, and b) if indeed it is happening it is certainly not man made, or indeed effected by man.

Much of the same comments are made in his frisk of the usual suspects who support the idea of climate change. In doing so he makes this point.

"Indeed and, in Master Hundal's World of the Ad Hominem, the environment is far more important than the high food prices that are causing riots and deaths around the globe: full ahead with biofuels, Jeeves old chap, and bugger the poor and the starving, what what!"

Ok, not the best. But it is a method into my own understanding of the issue.

I think the political sphere is blind to the realities of the world, and indeed there is an argument which says that it has to be, as the arguments for and against Man-made climate change are far from resolved. That being said, the climate matters, our environment matters and we matter.

Thus what are we to do in a situation where there could possibly be a world destroying force of our own unleashing, but to resolve it would be to the detriment of society and kill hundreds of people. Climate change in this sense, if understood as a possibility, can also be understood as a risky hunch. A risky hunch which at the moment is interestingly high on the political arena's list of priorities.

The climate matters, is what I said above. And that is the case, but it is also the case that we (the people of the world) matter, and that our direct environment matters. Climate change is doing the horrendous thing, not of warming the world through greenhouse gasses, but of redirecting the attention of policy makers away from the things which are important to the lives of the individuals they profess to serve.

Climate change is a logo. And one which has been expertly crafted by [insert personal theory of world/state/local ills of choice] into a catchall problem and immediate solution all in one. The equation goes, "Climate change = human activity + carbon dioxide emissions", thus the solution is to drop the emissions. This does nothing to help us understand our world, or to solve the problems it faces.

Simply put my understanding of climate change is that it should be de-politicised again.  And we should concentrate on preserving our environment in the immediacy, supporting anti-littering (though understanding and respect instead of fines and the nannying state) for example. And we should be able to take a reflective look at the society with which we live in and cure its ailments instead of this constant need to find something external with which to fix.

All that is found within climate change is a monster. A monster which may or may not be fictional, but the possibility of it being real is too great to allow for any dissent or complicating of the matter through real hard evidence. The monster must be defended against at all costs. And those costs are grubby streets, a dilapidated countryside, social disintegration, the failure of multi-culturalism, the stability of our economy; the list could go on and on but thats just in Britain!

Video on John McCain

Found here.

At one point he says, in relation to the War in Iraq (fantasy apparently, hence the capitalisation) that he disagrees with the majority of the American people. Make of that what you will. However, bare in mind that this is put out as an attack on McCain and that it is released by Ron Paul's camp.