Another Whiskey, Humpy?

The New Scientist reports that a landmark case which pushed through laws banning the drug mephedrone - popularly known as 'Miaow Miaow' - has come under strong criticism after a toxicology report of the two teenagers thought to have died from the drug showed neither had actually taken it.

"Legal high kills two teens," cried the Daily Express earlier this year. There followed a steady stream of stories in the UK media of the dangers of the then little known "legal high".

The government subsequently rushed through an emergency ban on the drug and related compounds that became law in early April. Although implicated in 27 deaths, a report by the International Centre for Drug Policy at University College London found it to be a contributing factor in just one.

Today, this knee jerk reaction came under further criticism following the negative toxicology tests. Reacting to this finding, David Nutt, chair of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, said: "If these reports are true, the previous government's rush to ban mephedrone never had any serious scientific credibility."

"This shocking news should be a salutary lesson to the tabloid journalists and prejudiced politicians who held a gun to the heads of the ACMD [Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs] and demanded that this drug should be banned, before a single autopsy had been completed," adds Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford. "The only good that might emerge from this fiasco is a long-overdue review of drug control policy."

When are our politicians gong to start thinking from themselves and not merely pandering to the berserk and vested interests of a heavily biased media?

A shot too far

The news that a customer fired a gun at two McDonalds' drive-through staff makes you wonder briefly if customer satisfaction in McDonalds has reached new lows.  The truth, as always, is slightly different.

Andrew Robert Hallows produced a black gun, which turned out to be an imitation bb firearm, and shot twice at the restaurant workers.
In court yesterday it was described by defending solicitor Bethan Jones as "a prank which went horribly wrong".
Hallows said that he would see how they would react when he fired at the hatch. He did not believe it would hurt anyone because it was not a powerful gun.

It's inconceivable that anyone could think that firing a replica weapon at someone in a public place could be regarded as a 'prank', but it seems there's no beginning to some people's talent.

All Stand

It's a quintessential axiom that committees both aspire to epitomise democratic procedure, whilst simultaneously impeding progress and decision-making. That's why private industry endows an executive with power to take decisions on the spot, and then face their board, where the quality of their decisions will be examined. 

In small groups, vesting power in the Executive also helps things happen quickly.  But the most significant committees for most people in Llandudno and Conwy are the town and county councils, neither of which - it seems - can take meaningful decisions rapidly, and the larger of which is still without a CEO, the newly appointed one still suspended on full pay. That in itself is a bad state of affairs, since he's entitled to either be charged or exonerated with a great deal more alacrity than shown thus far.

Town councils, however, are notorious, and Llandudno is no exception.  It was revealed today on the Llandudno local forum that significant amounts of time were expended in October last year as they deliberated over the momentous matter of when the tea break should be.

It's easy to see this sort of thing as typical small-town lunacy, but the reality is that there's no great competition for council places. Young, committed, intelligent and resourceful individuals don't want anything to do with it, and individuals like John Oddy and Jason Weyman are the exception. We need more like them, but that will only happen if the right people can be persuaded to stand.

Time to say something fast

You will no doubt have heard of the recent cases where pharmacists have refused to dispense drugs because the drugs are contrary to their religious belief. The General Pharmaceutical Council, which is replacing the existing Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, is consulting on its code of ethics.

The proposed code of ethics enshrines such discrimination as the official ethical policy. If this offends your sense of justice, you have until 28th May to object, this coming Friday in other  words.

This is the proposed code of ethics; clause 3.4 is the offending one, although I also draw clause 3.3 to your attention.

http://tinyurl.com/234g6ub

Remember that just because a patient is referred to another provider, they may not be able to act on that advice. Not everyone has access to private transport and there may be other considerations. Further, a patient may be so embarrassed or confused that they do not attempt to find another provider. This clause dismisses the welfare of patients and panders to the abstract whims of the pharmacist.

There is an on-line consultation form

http://tinyurl.com/288n6xp

Weight there for a moment

OVER half the adult population of North Wales is overweight or obese, according to latest figures.  The Executive Director of Public Health, Andrew Jones, says "Throughout Wales 57% of the adult population is categorised as overweight or obese, with the lowest North Wales percentage  – 53% – being in Conwy and Wrexham.

The report also highlights serious drug problems in north west Wales. In 2008 in Anglesey there were 331 men admitted to hospital due to drugs, with Gwynedd second in the table on 197 and Flintshire lowest on 105.

 Anglesey also has the highest number of alcohol-related admissions to hospital among males, whilst the highest figure for hospital admission and deaths among females is in Conwy.

Now here's a thought; in their bid to reduce costs and the impressively large deficit with which the mismanagement of the banking world has landed us, might the new coalition government start to think about criteria for hospital admissions?  What would be the validity of creating categories of patients which were then ranked in order of treatment priority?

Superficially, this idea has some attractions. Making the drunk who'd fallen down the stairs wait longer than the elderly grandmother who slipped on the ice seems to have some merit.  And should the drug abuser be made to wait for their treatment until the cancer patient had finished?  And what about the habitual violent offenders, who often attack the very people trying to treat them? Should they even be given access to A & E? But there's also the obese, the smoker, the McDonalds' addict...

At a time when the new government is seeking cuts, some of these ideas may seem tempting - but at what cost?

The world's mine oyster

The news that fake bank notes with a face value of £350,000 were found stashed at converted farm buildings near Connah’s Quay makes you wonder if we should be jailing the forgers or putting them up for a Queen's award for industry.

Crime takes many forms, of course, and the temptation for the right to mutter about sentences not being long enough and throwing away keys doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, when you realise that the UK already imprisons a greater percentage of its population than any other EU country (139 per 100,000 of the national population), a statistic which places it above the mid- point in the World List - itself more than a little interesting.  The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 686 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by the Cayman Islands (664), Russia (638), Belarus (554), Kazakhstan (522), Turkmenistan (489), Belize (459), Bahamas (447), Suriname (437) and Dominica (420).

But we digress. Forgery - like the audacious theft from the Paris Museum of Modern Art - isn't the easiest way to make money, although the irony isn't lost in the case of forgery. 

But perhaps what really ought to concern us is that these forgers almost certainly worked long and hard, had significant overheads, high risk factors and their only 'crime' (banknotes themselves have no intrinsic worth - they're simply promissory notes) was to dilute the overall money supply slightly.  To have a really significant effect, cause untold misery for millions, wreck entire economies and achieve lasting fame they would have had to been making perfect forgeries on a massive scale.

 Or perhaps they should simply have got themselves into banking.

Get a life

The big news today is that several Americans have managed to create a self-replicating form of life from synthetic DNA. As news goes, this event is perhaps more significant than most, but at the moment the chance of you creating your favourite pet out of a box of supermarket cleaning fluids and cornflakes is still a fair distance away.

Creating life is nothing new, of course; would-be parents do it all the time, but what's interesting about this achievement is that people weren't used and part of the DNA is synthetic. And it joins a list of discoveries and advances in Biology which include cloning, human genome mapping and freeze-dried spam to compete for the best theory of abiogenesis.

Of course, the media will soon start muttering about scientists 'playing God' and those who don't really understand what's happened (that's most of them) will start painting dark pictures of what might happen if this synthetic life escapes the confines of the laboratory. And, as with genetically modified crops and insects, or recombinant DNA experiments, the consequences of getting it wrong don't really bear thinking about. As one worrying example, imagine a virus being created that attacked grass.

But we've always pushed the boundaries of what's possible, and scientists have always tried to comprehend why things happen. And, if creating life synthetically becomes routinely practicable, then perhaps we could introduce some into the next CCBC meeting.

The new Government in video

No news is Purdah

If you were wondering why news seemed to stop during the last days of the general election, it's because of a little-known convention known as 'Election Purdah'. Applied by and to the civil service, it states:

"It is customary for Ministers to observe discretion in initiating any new action of a continuing or long-term character. Decisions on matters of policy and other issues such as large and/or contentious procurement contracts on which a new Government might be expected to want the opportunity to take a different view from the present Government should be postponed until after the Election, provided that postponement would not be detrimental to the national interest or wasteful of public money."

Essentially,  there's a news blackout about on-going issues and potential initiatives, which is why the Afghan war received little mention in the final week. It carries no force in law,  but is widely viewed as having a moral imperative.

Of great import

As we forge towards a bright new political world, it's encouraging to know that CCBC has its mind firmly focussed on the things that matter.

Their attention has been caught by ‘Happy Birthday’ banners and other signs which the public put up without permission.

A Conwy Council spokesman sagely observed: “Unauthorised adverts, such as events’ banners, birthday banners and business signs are becoming more widespread, but many people don’t realise that such displays are a criminal offence. If adverts affect highway safety, and if they’re put on safety railings for example, they can be removed and the matter may result in prosecution.”

However, Sean Martins, from Llandudno Junction said: “It’s a pretty Orwellian thing to do. What about signs for candidates in gardens and fields during the General Election?”, which is a good point.  Presumably, bearing in mind the gravity of the situation, immediate prosecutions will be launched against all the candidates who dared to allow their supporters to erect signs.

Well, at least we know where to make some savings come the inevitable fiscal crunch. In the Conwy Council's planning department might be a good start.

Who reads the papers?

Yes but you don't go...

Sung to the tune of 'When the Foeman Bares his Steel' from the Pirates of Penzance.

Nick Clegg.

When the foeman bares his steel,
The Brown Family.
Tarantara! tarantara!

Nick Clegg.

We uncomfortable feel,
The Brown Family.
Tarantara!
Nick Clegg.
And we find the wisest thing,
The Brown Family.
Tarantara! tarantara!

Nick Clegg.

Is to slap our chests and sing,.
Tarantara! tarantara!
Nick Clegg.
For when threatened with emeutes,
The Brown Family.
Tarantara! tarantara!
Nick Clegg.
And your heart is in your boots,
The Brown Family.
Tarantara!
Nick Clegg.
There is nothing brings it round
Like the trumpet’s martial sound,
Like the trumpet’s martial sound
Nick Clegg & The Brown Family.
Tarantara! tarantara!

Nick Clegg & Vince Cable 

Tarantara! tarantara!
Tarantara! tarantara!
Tarantara! tarantara!
Tarantara! tarantara!
Tarantara! tarantara!
Tarantara, ra, ra,
Tarantara!
Ra, ra, ra, ra,
Ra, ra, ra, ra,
Ra, ra, ra, ra,
Ra, ra, ra, ra,
Ra, ra, ra, ra,
Tarantara, ra, ra,
Tarantara!



David Cameron
Go, ye heroes, go to glory,
Though you die in combat gory,
Ye shall live in song and story.
Go to immortality!
Go to death, and go to slaughter;
Die, and every Cornish daughter
With her tears your grave shall water.
Go, ye heroes, go and die!

Conservative front bench
Go, ye heroes, go and die!Go, ye heroes, go and die!

Nick Clegg.
Though to us it’s evident,
The Brown Family.
Tarantara! tarantara!
Nick Clegg.
These attentions are well meant,
The Brown Family.
Tarantara!
Nick Clegg.
Such expressions don’t appear,
The Brown Family.
Tarantara! tarantara!
Nick Clegg.
Calculated men to cheer,
The Brown Family.
Tarantara!
Nick Clegg.
Who are going to meet their fate
In a highly nervous state.
The Brown Family.
Tarantara! tarantara! tarantara!
Nick Clegg.
Still to us it’s evident
These attentions are well meant.
The Brown Family.
Tarantara! tarantara! tarantara!

The voters
Go and do your best endeavour,
And before all links we sever,
We will say farewell for ever.
Go to glory and the grave!
Conservative front bench
Go to glory and the grave!
For your foes are fierce and ruthless,
False, unmerciful, and truthless;
Young and tender, old and toothless,
All in vain their mercy crave.



Nick Clegg.
We observe too great a stress,
On the risks that on us press,
And of reference a lack
To our chance of coming back.
Still, perhaps it would be wise
Not to carp or criticise,
For it’s very evident
These attentions are well meant.
The Brown Family.
Yes, it’s very evident
These attentions are well meant,
Evident,
Yes, well meant;
Evident,
Nick Clegg & The Brown Family.
Ah, yes, well meant!


Conservative front bench                              The Brown Family.

Go, ye heroes                                                     When the foeman 

                 Go to  glory!                                                   bears his steel, Taranta-
        Ye shall,    live in                                                      ra! tarantara! We un-
               story. Go to death and                                           comfortable feel.    And

go to  slaughter; Die, and                                                  find the wisest thing, every every Cornish Daughter                                               Taranta ra! tarantara! Is to

With her tears your grave shall                                 slap our chests and sing

Tarantara

For when threatened with emutes, Taranta-
ra! tarantara! And your
heart is in your boots,Taranta-

 There is
nothing brings it round, Like the
trumpet's martial sound, Like the
trumpet's martial sound, 

David Cameron
Conservative front bench

Away, away!

 The Brown Family.
 Yes, yes, we go!

David Cameron
These pirates slay!

 The Brown Family.
 Tarantara!

David Cameron
Then do not stay!

  The Brown Family.
Tarantara!

David Cameron
Then why this delay!

   The Brown Family.
 All right, we go! 
Yes forward
 Yes, forward on the foe,
on the foe, Yes, forward on the foe,

David Cameron
Yes, but you don't go!

   The Brown Family.   

They go, they go! We go, we go!
 Yes forward
Yes, forward on the foe,
on the foe, Yes, forward on the foe,

David Cameron
Yes, but you don't go!


   The Brown Family.  
At last we go,
We go, we go,

David Cameron
At last they go, at last they go!
We go, we go,

At last they really, really go!

The Brown Family.
We go, we go, we go, we go!

91-a Brita Kongreso de Esperanto Llandudno

Thanks to Bill Chapman for letting us know that Llandudno's hosting the 91st British Esperanto conference at the Imperial hotel from 14 - 17th May. Based around the Latin languages Esperanto soon found itself superseded by the ubiquity of English as the international language but it still commands a loyal following of those who like to keep their intellect limber and their vocal skills current.  And they're a welcoming crowd, so both they and the Imperial will welcome visitors.

Bonan tagon al vi!

Chill in the air

This article from the Independent is a good indicator of what we - as a nation face - if the Tories sweep in:

In 2006, a group of rebranded "compassionate Conservatives" beat Labour for control of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, a long stretch of west London. George Osborne says the work they have done since then will be a "model" for a new Conservative government, while Cameron has singled them out as a council he is especially "proud" of.

People who took this at face value were startled by the first act of the Conservatives on assuming power – a crackdown on the homeless. They immediately sold off 12 homeless shelters, handing them to large property developers. The horrified charity Crisis was offered premises by the BBC to house the abandoned in a shelter over the Christmas period at least. The council refused permission. They said the homeless were a "law and order issue", and a shelter would attract undesirables to the area. With this in mind, they changed the rules so that the homeless had to "prove" to a sceptical bureaucracy that they had nowhere else to go – and if they failed, they were turned away.
We know where this ended. A young woman – let's called her Jane Phillips, because she wants to remain anonymous – turned up at the council's emergency housing office one night, sobbing and shaking. She was eight months pregnant. She explained she was being beaten up by her boyfriend and had finally fled because she was frightened for her unborn child. The council said they would "investigate" her situation to find "proof of homelessness" – but she told them she had nowhere to go while they carried it out. By law, they were required to provide her with emergency shelter. They refused. They suggested she try to find a flat on the private market.

For four nights, she slept in the local park, on the floor. She is still traumatised by the memories of lying, pregnant and abandoned, in one of the wealthiest parts of Europe. The Local Government Ombudsman investigated but the council recording of the case was so poor she said it "hindered" her report. After a long study, she found the council's conduct amounted to "maladministration". Since they came to power, the Conservatives are housing half as many homeless people as Labour – even though the recession has caused a surge in homelessness. That's a huge number of Janes lying in parks, or on rotting mattresses by Hammersmith Bridge.

Why would they do this? The Conservative administration was determined to shrink the size of the state and cut taxes as an end in itself. Rather than pay for it by taking more from the people in the borough with the most money, they slashed services for the broke and the broken first. After the homeless, they turned to help for the disabled. In their 2006 manifesto, the local Conservatives had given a cast-iron guarantee: "A Conservative council will not reintroduce home-care charging". It was a totemic symbol of leaving behind Thatcherism: they wouldn't charge the disabled, the mentally ill or the elderly for the care they needed just to survive.

Within three months, the promise was broken. Debbie Domb, 51, is a teacher who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1994. She had to give up work, and now she needs 24/7 care. After being lifted up by a large metal harness and placed in her wheelchair so she can talk to me, she explains: "This was always such a great place to live if you were disabled. You were really treated well. Then this new council was elected and it's been so frightening... The first thing that happened when they came in was that they announced any disabled person they assessed as having 'lower moderate' needs was totally cut off. So people who needed help having a shower, or getting dressed, had that lifeline taken away completely. Then they started sending the rest of us bills."

She "panicked" when a bill came through saying she had to pay £12.50 for every hour of care she needed. "I thought, 'Oh my God, how am I going to do this?' The more care you need, the higher your bill, so the most disabled people got the highest charges. Everyone was distraught. I had friends who had to choose between having the heating on in winter and paying for their care ... I know a 90-year-old woman with macular degeneration who can't see, and she had to stop her services. There are lots of people who have been left to rot, with nobody checking any more that they're OK, and I'm sure some of them have ended up in hospital or have died." One of the council's senior social services managers seems to have confirmed this, warning in a leaked memo that the charges could place the vulnerable "at risk".

She added " I know an 82-year-old woman who's never been in debt in her life who is being taken to a debt-collection agency for care she needs just to keep going."

Each year since the Conservative council was elected, the pressure on the housebound has increased. Meals on Wheels brings one good, hot meal a day to people who can't get out. The council jacked up the charges for it by £527 a year – so half of the recipients had to cancel it. A local Labour councillor documented that the council rang up a 79-year-old woman with dementia, and when she seemed to say she didn't need any food, they cut off her meals.

The cost of almost all council services has sky-rocketed, to fund tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. David Cameron says he wants to make Britain "the most family-friendly country in the world" with "childcare as a top priority", but his showcase council has increased charges for childcare by a reported 121 per cent – a fact that makes the warnings about Michael Gove's planned "top-up fees" for nursery places seem even more ominous.

We know cuts are going to be made, and they're going to hurt.  But the stark choice that faces us as voters is deciding where the axe should fall. This council has decided it should cut off the most vulnerable of society - those with dementia, MS, the abused, the homeless.  But most of all, it has made a deliberate choice to protect the wealthy and punish the poor. 

Cameron said: "When I look at the record of what the Conservatives have done here in Hammersmith and Fulham, far from being embarrassed as the Conservative leader, I'm proud of what they're doing."

Going, going...

Gordon Brown didn't 'lose' the debates (despite winning several of the arguments) because he's bad on TV: he lost, to put it bluntly, because some voters dislike him so much that they stop listening when they see him.
So the question for Labour's upper echelons isn't why they got suckered into a debate. It's why they sleepwalked into an election with a leader they knew was unpopular, ducking every chance to replace him.

This comment from the Guardian demonstrates rather neatly why GB won't be walking into No 10 on Friday, and why New Labour have lost the confidence of the electorate. In the new, all-consuming, Endemol-inspired reality show that is the 2010 General election, he's about to be the first housemate given the boot.  

For the past two years, Labour leaders have known Brown was an electoral disaster waiting to happen. From his strange little facial habit, to his unutterably boring drone, the real surprise is why his own party haven't lynched him long ago. Because they knew just how bad he was.

The surprisingly engaging Cameron and the astute Clegg, along with his fearsomely brilliant wing-man, Cable, however, ought to be streets in front.  But they're not. The well-organised and detailed polling being undertaken reveals that more than 40% of voters still haven't decided who they're going to vote for, which means there's everything to fight for.

In the UK, we elect a local, personal representative - not a party - but the reality-TV style of this year's election, coupled with the unparalleled ubiquitousness of broadcast media means we're actually being persuaded that we're voting for one man. And that's working against the least likeable.

There's a reason New Labour slaughtered everyone in sight all those years ago.  Tony Blair.  But that party's failure do do anything about the man who has the same effect on voters as a large dose of Vallium means a lot will be joining the dole queue very shortly.

Unless, of course, someone pulls off a master-stroke and they get rid of GB before Thursday.  Now there's a thought…

Please, let it all end

Probably the most telling comment in the election thus far was made by Nick Clegg when he told a haranguing questioner "You should go into politics!".

A lot of people forget that politicians are simply applicants in a hugely overcrowded labour market.  Unlike normal job applicants they have to apply to us - the general public - for a job, and we decide which candidate gets a five year contact of employment.

And that's where any involvement from their employer ends. Unlike the rest of the working population, once employed they set their own salaries, their own expenses claims, their own hours of work, their own pension schemes, their own perks, their own holidays - the list just goes on and on.

What is perhaps most astonishing is that we happily concur in the scheduling and operation of this most lucrative of gravy trains, which often end with dismissals in five years' time, but retention of pension rights, lucrative positions on boards and utterly hagiographic publications of their cash-driven existences.

Is it any wonder that most people still have no idea what or even whether they're going to vote?