Westministenders: Another Thread, another Shit Show. Its Trump Week

[RedToothBrush]

That is all.

Piggy - I did say I didn't know what Gove had said his usage was. Personally, I think many MPs (and journalists ) are guilty of chronic substance abuse - but because it's alcohol, that's ok.

But last night one of the press previewers was particularly judgemental of Rory Stewart because he'd been Prisons Minister

Agree Gove's "revelation" that he has done coke singles him out as a posh twat. Literally the most annoying, arrogant and selfish people I have worked with all have regular coke use in common. Trouble with it is they have no shame.

Part of my recent degree focused on drug abuse and the worst for deaths and related costs to society is indeed alcohol. Has a lot to do with UK's high absenteeism, lost productivity, mental health and fear in communities. Also sadly is a large part of our social networking and heavily subsidised and glamorised by the media, unlike any other drug.

BCF
I dont think taking Cocaine on several occasions is minor drug abuse, at all.
Men women and children are murdered by the the drug gangs and serious criminality occurs inc murder/trafficking getting the finished product to the end user.

if he didn't realise this 20 years ago then he is (as we should all know) a useless twat.

Bercows
That 'other' thread seems to have Wakingdeadfangirl as it's main 'fanbase'. If she has more than 1 braincell, they don't communicate.

I presume opium use is a legal 'pastime' in Afghanistan and on the basis it wasn't repeated, could be thought of as 'fact finding' like teenagers do when they experiment and discover 4 bottles of scrumpy on an empty stomach does not make you feel good the following day.
Smoking ordinary cigarettes is also drug abuse.

I think whether drug taking is drug abuse, and the morals of taking drugs given the horrendous issues re the production and transport of drugs are two separate issues, personally.

To be honest the drug thing is a storm in a teacup as far as I'm concerned. I am about the same age as Gove and Doris and grew up in educated middle class circles. Went to uni in London, worked in advertising and design in my early career. Not posh but I knew a lot of academic and media people.

I can honestly say that until I started working for a manufacturing company, and started to meet people who grew up and were educated far from London, I don't think I knew anyone of my age who had never taken some sort of illegal drug.

And yes to everything that has been written about alcohol.

I think the single measure you could take that would have the biggest impact on governance in the U.K. would be to ban alcohol from the Houses of Parliament, and ban public officials from drinking while they are working.

Yes smoking is up there too. Basically the state sanctions drugs it can profit from. UK was also the biggest seller of medicinal cannabis in 2015 (UN report says over 70% of the world's supply came from UK). So it is duplicitous to allow the government to pick and choose but also shows how they demonise those drugs they can't profit from yet have far smaller impact on the health and wealth of the country.

Drug trade is a bit like ethics of where you buy your clothes. Yet the people who can afford coke regularly can hold down a job, whereas those on heroin for any period of time are usually out of the social loop and pointed at as being useless - which is a cycle. Spice is cheap and is rife in prisons and hard to ban due to the chemical nature and changing formulas. No cartels but worse in many respects than heroin for damage. Main thing is drugs are used in different spheres as escapism. There's a reason UK and US have a high demand...

they demonise those drugs they can't profit from yet have far smaller impact on the health and wealth of the country.

I don't think this is correct. The demonisation of drugs is a sociopolitical phenomenon not an economic one. Look at the tax raised from cannabis sales in US states where it has been legalised.

Why is this 'cocaine story' leading today?

Matthew Parris in The Times is fascinating here on methods employed to ensure enough backers were 'encouraged' to declare for the (£53m lost public funds) Garden Bridge candidate.

Same candidate responded with 'get stuffed' when requests for adequate funding for fire service were made, pre Grenfell. He closed 10 fire stations.
www.indy100.com/article/boris-johnson-london-tower-fire-grenfell-assembly-cuts-fire-service-7790971

But the "war on drugs" is still going strong - see Nixon and the links to racism.

Some drugs are deemed socially acceptable and others not. It's no coincidence most of those deemed acceptable give income to the govt.

Yes to sociopolotical roots - see UK profit from 'medicinal' cannabis, yet still happy to imprison users of cannabis (at a cost to the tax payer) as public opinion isn't deemed to be fully behind legalisation. It will be a vote winner in my opinion, but while they can the UK govt are still profiting from it by selling it abroad.

If you look at deaths from alcohol/nicotine/pharma combined they blow all of the others out of the water.

It was another shameful MN saga, mother

A couple of awkward sods decided to stalk TiP and kept rporting every post that could pssibly be twisted
She's American, hence the occasionally different vocabulary helped the twisting

The main claim was that she was racist - she showed me some of her deleted posts and it was ludicrous to evven be offended by them, let alone delete them

You know I'm mixed race and would never be pals with a racist
It was a blatant hit job; the stalkers conned MNHQ
Very worrying for us all, if 1-2 sufficienly persistent stalkers can get someone banned

I concur with BigChoc - it was a personal vendetta and MNHQ were hoodwinked: at best, manipulated, at worst, complicit

I'd like to say more but don't want to be deleted or banned myself

There is an mn thread atm

Has a mnetter changed your life?

Well. Yes. 2 actually.

Tip and a poster from years ago on the sn board.

Both hounded by a band of mnetrers with an agenda and both banned.

Mn ain't what it used to be.

Mnhq surely should be a bit more clued up on these tactics by certain posters!???

@Mnhq - care to comment?

{Very worrying for us all, if 1-2 sufficiently persistent stalkers can get someone banned}
I was banned over a year ago while asking questions as open as possible and not putting my 'take' forward at all.
I was reinstated after others in the MNHQ 'team' had looked again.
We have to remember that MN is a commercial enterprise run by women for profit.

Yet some blatantly racist/xenophobic posters are allowed to continue.

Is anyone in touch with TiP?

I see Raab seems to be JRM's mouthpiece (?). He is still insisting that suspending parliament is a viable option- in order to bypass elected MPs and achieve a no-deal disaster capitalist windfall...

Why aren't Leavers up in arms about this? To be fair the Sovereignty word seems to be mentioned less lately. Nevertheless there was a hugely influential (and very misplaced) fuss about ' taking back' sovereignty which was in reality about shared health and safety, food and environment regs.

Now a possible future PM is quite happy that overall sovereignty be taken away from Parliament and given to an unelected PM and his chosen few? How is that a proper exercise of sovereignty?

Agree with the racist and xenophobic posters being allowed to continue to post, the same people were also up in arms about smallfox using a "disabilist" term, disingenuously so

Was that Fanjo, @Iambuffy? I've not seen her around for ages.

Well, there were several sn board posters who were treated dreadfully...
Fanjo, riven, indigo....

Do I get to close the thread?