Peter Reynolds

It’s said that when Gordon Brown offered Alan Johnson the Home Office he rejected it as a poisoned chalice.  He’s probably right.  It seems to be destroying his reputation just as it has so many others.

Abandoned

Nevertheless, the shameful and deeply treacherous conduct of this disgraced government towards Gary McKinnon cannot be excused.  There is no greater duty on any government than to protect its citizens, particularly those who are vulnerable.  There can be no basis in any system of justice for allowing a foreign power to abduct an accused person away from the scene of their alleged crime.  This is not extradition.  It is illegal rendition, as extraordinary as any.  It is kidnapping.

Alan Johnson, Gordon Brown and the rest are kowtowing to big bully USA.  British justice is in tatters as they offer up another sacrifice to America.  Believe me, they’d do the same to any of us: you, me, your grandmother, your starving babies and our injured soldiers if it suited them.  If they wanted to take Gary Mckinnon to Guantanamo Bay I don’t believe our government would have the courage to stop them.

Spineless Cowards

I call for the entire cabinet to be indicted on charges of dereliction of duty.  Will not even one of these excuses for men or women have the courage and decency to resign over this issue?

These people who call themselves our leaders are a disgrace to each and every one of us.  They are cowardly and spineless charlatans who are dragging our great country through the mire of ignominy and shame.  Gary Mckinnon is a victim of their cowardice.  Nothing can excuse what they have already put him through, let alone what is to come.

Sir David Nutt

"I'm so stoned...I don't know what I'm doing..."

Nothing more clearly demonstrates the complete absence of integrity in this inane, corrupt government than the sacking of Sir David Nutt.   I had always admired Alan Johnson.  Now he shows himself to be just as stupid and dumb as any of Gordon’s cronies.

Cannabis is a benign, natural herb that has been used as a medicine and recreational relaxant for over 4,000 years until politicians took a dislike to it just over 100 years ago.  Since then, despite dozens of “studies” across the world, each one of which has been specifically tasked to condemn it as dangerous, no harm has been proven.  Nevertheless, from Richard Nixon to Gordon Brown, myopic, paranoid, self-serving, tabloid-worshipping politicians have imposed more and more severe penalties for its use.

In the 50s the argument was that it made white women promiscuous with black men.  The standard of discussion has barely improved since.  The recent government sponsored hysteria over psychosis in adolescents is now revealed as utter nonsense in the face of the facts.

So why do politicians continue to persecute those who use cannabis?  What’s in it for them?  After all there is overwhelming evidence to show that a properly regulated cannabis supply could be a huge source of new taxation revenue for government and that regulation would drastically reduce all the harm that is caused by prohibition.

Off His Head

It’s more difficult to accept this argument in respect of  heroin and cocaine because these are harmful substances but look at the evidence from Holland, Switzerland, Portugal and many other places.  There can be little doubt that if the supply and distribution of drugs was regulated rather than prohibited then the harm caused would be reduced enormously.  Furthermore, decriminalisation would drastically – and I mean DRASTICALLY – reduce crime at all levels.  Street crime is all about theft and robbery in order to fund the purchase of drugs.  International organised crime and terrorism is all about the drugs trade.  End prohibition, start regulation and you pull the rug from under criminals at all levels.  It would transform our society and save thousands of lives.

So I ask again – why?  What do politicians gain from such a fundamentally stupid policy?  At a stroke they could cut out the majority of both street and serious crime  and  massively reduce the funding of terrorism.

Cannabis was first demonised because hemp was an early rival to the oil industry.  Before diesel came biodiesel.  Rudolph Diesel designed his engine to run on peanut or hemp oil.  Henry Ford designed his Model T to run on bioethanol produced from hemp and planted hundreds of acres on his own farms for that purpose – then along came oil.  More importantly along came the early investors in the oil industry, specifically Randolph Hearst, owner and controller of the biggest propaganda and disinformation machine ever known to man.  He started the the “Reefer Madness” campaign and promoted the lie against cannabis.  Hemp was outlawed in favour of oil and we have since spent 100 years burning oil, becoming more and more reliant on its byproducts, destroying our planet and persecuting those who use cannabis.

Politicans are cowards.  They were bribed and cajoled by big money to turn against cannabis in the first place.  They do not have the vision or the common sense to see past the mess they have got themselves in over drugs policy.  In a very real way they are more responsible than anyone else for the misery, death and chaos casued by the drugs trade which they actually support through their stupidity.

This government might as well have a committee of tabloid newspaper editors advising it on drugs rather than scientists.  All over the world politicans have let us all down over drugs policy.  Why?  Because they are cowardly, self-serving and only interested in short term political expediency.

That’s you and me.  We’re the one’s who’ve been conned and cheated.  Gordon, Alistair, the FSA – they’re all either criminally negligent incompetents or co-conspirators.

Absolutely nothing has changed in the world of banking.  Is any more proof needed that the people running banks are liars, cheats and thieves?  Aside from the systematic extortion of the taxpayer, none of the promises about lending to the real ecomony or reining in their depraved “culture” have been kept.

Spineless assurances will not do anymore.  The government must radically overhaul the terms of the licences under which banks operate.   Real leadership and responsibility is needed now to ensure that this happens  before the end of the year – not after months or years of consultation and behind the scenes corruption.

Businesses that want to enjoy the huge privilege of serving UK consumers as bankers must be held to a strict and rigidly enforced rulebook.   No participation in casino banking, minimum levels of lending, maximum levels of interest rates and charges, a “right to borrow” for those businesses and consumers who meet straightforward criteria.

These steps are essential to re-establish the operation of an effective market economy.  In a world which has become entirely monetised we can no longer be subject to the rapacious and avaricious behaviour of those who run the money business.

So are we supposed to be surprised that Gordon Brown is still clinging by his fingernails to the architrave at the door of number 10?  They couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, an orgy in an whorehouse or a coup in the Labour Party.  Why?  Because they all have nothing  but their own interests at heart.  Their last year in office, their pensions, their resettlement grants.  These are not men.  They are manipulative, morally microscopic mice.

Phwooaar! Gerrumorrf darlin'!

Plod PR, the go-getting communications agency, wholly owned by the police with exclusively the police as clients summoned all its collective intelligence and wisdom to determine that last Friday, the day after the European and local elections would be a busy news day, a perfect occasion to bury their cowardly, disgraceful announcement that MPs will not be prosecuted.

In fact, the expenses scandal has now morphed into an excuse for poor performance in the elections.  This is a triumph of misinformation over truth.  Over the weekend, we were asked to sympathise over the “assault on MPs about their expenses”.  If what has happened has constitued assault then my feeling is that it’s time for some GBH with intent.

Everything has now been re-geared to enable them all to get away with it.  Perhaps even more worrying is that this marks a new development in the politicisation of the police.  Increasingly the police are being used to support and enforce the whim of government,  irrespective of the law or justice.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance is still chasing down MPs (see here) but what has happened to the Telegraph?  Have they had a visit in the middle of the night from the police or have big, fat, brown envelopes been distributed around Telegraph Towers – or both?

I could almost feel sorry for Gordon on this one because as much as he wriggles, he isn’t going to get away.  He has said that Hazel Blears’ conduct in flipping her second home to save £13,000 CGT was unacceptable.  She has to go.

She Has To Go

Talking about the “rules” isn’t good enough when they are clearly inadequate.  The guidelines say that expenses may only be charged when incurred “wholly, exclusively and necessarily in the course of parliamentary duties”.   That standard should now be applied as the rule.  So, Gordon, your Sky subscription including sports channels, fails that test.  A reasonable claim would be for half of the cost.

In your own interests, as well as that of Parliament and the country, there are cabinet ministers and senior Labour MPs who have to go.

David Cameron

A magnificent, politically astute and very clever move by David Cameron to seize the initiative from every other party leader.  See here.  Nobody’s perfect but this is the sort of man we want running the country.  Someone who’s smart, understands the public and isn’t frightened of taking action – everything that Gordon Brown isn’t.

What shambolic, cowardly, civil servant-jobsworth, treacherous nonsense has come out of the Home Office today?

See here for the full story.

The disgusting conduct of Jacqui Smith’s department shames Britain and everyone of us who enjoys freedom won at the cost of Gurkha lives.  While she fritters away her expenses and her downtrodden, frustrated husband amuses himself with porn (who can blame him?), these brave, honourable men who have already won their case in the High Court have been knocked back again after months of unnecessary delay.

Not only is the decision itself a disgrace but the way it has been handled is an example of the very worst of Britain.  What are these fools in government up to?  They really have lost touch with the people and with reality.  Gordon’s YouTube cock-up on expenses – can you think of a more stupid idea? A budget based on fantasy, delusion and deceit.  Crass stupidity is too generous a description.  Gordon, Jacqui, Alistair, you are a laughing stock!  You have demonstrated your incompetence and lack of integrity again and again and again.  Please just go!

Are we no longer allowed to protest in Britain?  What has happened to free speech?  Demonstrations are no longer allowed within the vicinity of Parliament.  Now,  peaceful protestors against the Israeli murderers are stamped on,  snuffed out by fascist police action.

Gordon Brown, you claim to be the leader of our nation but you disgrace yourself and you shame our proud history if you allow this to continue.  Children are dying in their beds in Gaza and you allow the police to stamp out our protest?  Shame on you!  I don’t give two hoots about your pathetic self-aggrandising financial machinations.  What I do care about and what I believe every right-thinking Briton cares about is our right to speak out against this genocide.  You are no longer worthy of any support, not even respect for the office that you have defiled.  We, the British people, do not need  nor deserve  cowardly, disgustingly two-faced, self-serving, political midgets like you.  We deserve much, much better.  Get out now because you are  not up to the job.  You have disgraced yourself and shamed us all.

I have just made a complaint to the Metropolitan Police about the disgusting, repressive and oppressive conduct of the police in connection with the protests outside the Israeli Embassy.  We will not tolerate this sort of behaviour in Britain.  I urge everyone who reads this to telephone the Metropolitan Police on 0300 123 1212 and add your complaint.

So is this to be pattern that our rescue of the w**ker bankers will follow?

Northern Rock is now owned by you and me.  Not by Gordon, Alistair and their cronies but by British taxpayers.  Do we want them throwing people out of their homes onto the streets so that we then have to pick up the bill for re-housing and supporting them?

Now that the “new” management has got its greedy hands back on the tiller they’re heading straight for deep water where they can pillage, plunder and overfish yet again.

I say get rid of all the w**ker bankers and put some real business people in charge.  We don’t want the “experience” of those that have mismanaged banks already.  We want new blood, fresh ideas, people who know the reality of business, not the fantasy world of banking.

I hope and pray that our rescue of these organisations will prove successful based on root and branch reform of the way they do business.  We don’t want a few token sacrifices.  We want all the dead and rotten wood cut out.

Let’s remember that these scoundrels still owe most of us many thousands of pounds in illegal bank charges they have stolen from us.  Perhaps as much as £50 billion over the last six years.  The sooner the OFT gets its finger out and resolves this outstanding matter the better.

I am delighted to see that The Times and now, this morning, Andrew Marr, are joining me in calling for bankers to be brought to account.  The “Thunderer” even said that “heads must roll”.  Roll they must, many of them, until the baskets are full and the streets of the City are running with blood.  The executions should take place in public so that the greedy thieves and scoundrels who have pillaged our economy can be subject to public humiliation and villification as they meet their doom.

I will carry the metaphor no further but the dread and fear that should now be ruining the weekends of the chief executives and chairmen of the banks should be little different from that of the French aristocrats awaiting the guillotine.

We must insist that those individuals who have taken multi million pound bonuses from banks, funds and all forms of financial institutions that are now insolvent must be able to justify the payments in the same way that a director of a small business that had gone bust might have to explain his drawings to a liquidator.  In many instances money will have to be recovered.

Whether guilty of personal wrongdoing or not, the chairmen, chief executives and non-executive directors who have presided over this catastrophe must take responsibility and go!  The same sanction must fall on the heads of the regulators.

Lord Adair Turner, Chairman, and Jon Pain, Managing Director Retail Markets, who both accepted poisoned chalices at the FSA only last month may have some excuse but the rest of the board should be summarily dismissed, not even allowed to resign.

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have been extraordinarily unequivocal in many of their statements this week.  We want to know much, much more detail about the “mechanisms” that will put in place to restrain the banks in future.   If the taxpayer has saved your business then in future you will not be gambling on ludicrously complex financial products that only you understand and for which you set the rules.  We prefer that you lend £100,000 to a small business rather than £10 million to a virtual roulette wheel.

“There a million stories in the Naked City”.  Now is the time for “le dénouement”.