http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/22/melquisedet-angulo-gunmen_n_400846.html
Melquisedet Angulo was the only marine who died in a military operation in which one of Mexico's most notorious drug barons was killed last week. In an apparent revenge attack, his mother, aunt, brother and sister have been slaughtered only hours after his funeral.
This is just the latest chapter in a shocking era of drug-fuelled terror that the Mexican government is clearly failing to contain. We need to ask ourselves what is the best way to help the Mexican people end this war. And from where I'm sitting the answer is fairly simple. The only way to prevent the drug users of the world enriching these savage terrorist cartels is to withdraw our support for the documents that grant them their power. The UN drugs conventions allow us to decriminalise drugs (as Portugal has done to great success), they allow us to prescribe heroin to desperate addicts (a model spreading across Europe following Switzerland's lead), but yet they leave the one step that will deprive the true evil-doers in the trade billions of pounds as unthinkable.
When the Portuguese Commission for a National Anti-Drug Strategy considered their options in tackling their nation's rapidly increasing drugs problem, they "concluded that legalisation was not a viable option due, in large part, to the fact that numerous international treaties impose the "obligation to establish in domestic law a prohibition" on drug use" (Quote from http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/greenwald_whitepaper.pdf). To not consider control and regulation of a legal market for drugs that takes away the billions of pounds of revenue from the cartels that are growing in power and influence in Latin America and West Africa is to offer a shrug of indifference to what remains of Melquisedet Angulo's family and to the families of the 15,000 other victims of the Mexican drug war since 2006. The UN drugs conventions are, in effect, contracts granting opportunistic and phenomenally violent criminals the rights to a drugs market worth hundreds of billions of pounds each year.
This is where the Liberal Democrats come in. As founder of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform, I have prepared a motion for Spring conference calling for the control and regulation of all currently illegal drugs. The current draft makes no reference to the UN drugs conventions, but following concerns raised I have proposed adding the following:
"It is precisely because of the Liberal Democrats full support for the excellent work of the UN in promoting liberty, health, human rights, peace and security across the globe that we should withdraw our support for the drugs conventions which are clearly creating quite opposite effects."
It is out of respect for the true aims of the UN that we should withdraw from the conventions which stand in their way.
If the Liberal Democrats were to adopt control and regulation as policy and achieve an unprecedented electoral boost as a result (and I genuinely believe this would occur), then we could be the instigators of a chain reaction that might spread across the world consigning prohibition to its historical status as the biggest, stupidest elephant to have stood in the world's most venerable debating chambers. And Melquisedet Angulo's family would not have died in vain.
Read the arguments I have prepared in support of my motion at http://lddpr.blogspot.com/ and join the debate on Lib Dem Act http://act.libdems.org.uk/group/liberaldemocratsfordrugpolicyreform
And Merry Christmas to one and all.
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Are overseas call centres making us all a little more racist?
I've spent a fair bit of time on the phone to customer services departments over the last few days having just moved house from Inverness to Glasgow, and my heart sinks every time I hear an Asian accent asking "Mr Howel?" Immediately when I hear them murder my name (which incidentally is Hoyle, and is pronounced as read) I know that they are unlikely to understand what I am asking for, will repeatedly say the same things over and over again no matter my request, and will find me getting ruder and more impatient on the other end of the phone. I just signed off a particularly fruitless conversation with a young man from HSBC with "You're not answering my question! You're idiots! F*** off!" I did intend to hang up before I said the f word in frustration but am not entirely sure I made it in time. I am not the kind of man who is rude to anyone in any circumstances, so I can only imagine the kind of conversations these telephone operators are having with the more impolite of British citizens.
When I'm talking to a call centre in Cumbernauld or Clydebank, I'll cough (bad cold) and they'll say "Oh, have you got the cold that's going about, you're not sounding so good?" and I'll reply "Yeah, sorry for all the disgusting noises." We are able to have a conversation based on shared experience, culture and language which flows naturally based upon a level of empathetic understanding. When someone in India asks "Can I call you Ewan (NOT pronounced as read)" and I say simply "No" then we're immediately cast in my mind as the poorly trained performing monkey and the grumpy old man.
Having to have these conversations over the phone further establishes our alienation. They can't pick up the look of dismay on my face as they get my name wrong, I can't pick up the blank affect that they have learned to adopt as protection against British bile. What is worse is the fact that the relationship is likely to be creating considerable prejudice in both nations. We think they're idiots, they think we're angry, impolite racists. I wouldn't be surprised if tourism from India has taken a nosedive since the foreign call centre became commonplace. Anyone thinking of a visit will be told by all call-centre staff "Oh no, don't go there, they're all arseholes. I was just doing my job today, telling this guy "Ewan" - what kind of stupid name is that? - what he asked (yeah right) and he says "You're idiots, f*** off" No manners"
As soon as I've paid off my overdraft I'm finding a bank with no overseas call centres to do my bit for British-Indian relations. I never again want to tell a call-centre worker who I'm sure was trying his hardest to "f*** off".
When I'm talking to a call centre in Cumbernauld or Clydebank, I'll cough (bad cold) and they'll say "Oh, have you got the cold that's going about, you're not sounding so good?" and I'll reply "Yeah, sorry for all the disgusting noises." We are able to have a conversation based on shared experience, culture and language which flows naturally based upon a level of empathetic understanding. When someone in India asks "Can I call you Ewan (NOT pronounced as read)" and I say simply "No" then we're immediately cast in my mind as the poorly trained performing monkey and the grumpy old man.
Having to have these conversations over the phone further establishes our alienation. They can't pick up the look of dismay on my face as they get my name wrong, I can't pick up the blank affect that they have learned to adopt as protection against British bile. What is worse is the fact that the relationship is likely to be creating considerable prejudice in both nations. We think they're idiots, they think we're angry, impolite racists. I wouldn't be surprised if tourism from India has taken a nosedive since the foreign call centre became commonplace. Anyone thinking of a visit will be told by all call-centre staff "Oh no, don't go there, they're all arseholes. I was just doing my job today, telling this guy "Ewan" - what kind of stupid name is that? - what he asked (yeah right) and he says "You're idiots, f*** off" No manners"
As soon as I've paid off my overdraft I'm finding a bank with no overseas call centres to do my bit for British-Indian relations. I never again want to tell a call-centre worker who I'm sure was trying his hardest to "f*** off".
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Police spending cuts don't have to hurt
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8389844.stm
The government have just asked police forces to find more than £500 million in savings each year up until 2014. Suggested solutions include cutting overtime and making officers patrol alone "to make them more accessible"
There is another option for saving money, a policy that could reduce acquisitive crime by over 50% and domestic burglaries by around 80%, thus freeing up tens of thousands of police for joint patrols or other priorities. Bringing drugs under the control and strict regulation of government gives us an opportunity to make heroin and crack users able to feed their habit without having to commit crime or prostitute themselves to fund it. The vast majority of addicts arrested for these crimes get released a few months later and then are back inside not long after that. The whole debacle reminds me of the You've Been Framed classic in which a small child keeps picking up a fish and putting it in a bucket of water only for it to jump right out again seconds later.
Surely the police force will be far better placed to keep communities safe while enduring these cuts if we removed the burden created by stubborn, cowardly and utterly self-defeating drugs policy.
The government have just asked police forces to find more than £500 million in savings each year up until 2014. Suggested solutions include cutting overtime and making officers patrol alone "to make them more accessible"
There is another option for saving money, a policy that could reduce acquisitive crime by over 50% and domestic burglaries by around 80%, thus freeing up tens of thousands of police for joint patrols or other priorities. Bringing drugs under the control and strict regulation of government gives us an opportunity to make heroin and crack users able to feed their habit without having to commit crime or prostitute themselves to fund it. The vast majority of addicts arrested for these crimes get released a few months later and then are back inside not long after that. The whole debacle reminds me of the You've Been Framed classic in which a small child keeps picking up a fish and putting it in a bucket of water only for it to jump right out again seconds later.
Surely the police force will be far better placed to keep communities safe while enduring these cuts if we removed the burden created by stubborn, cowardly and utterly self-defeating drugs policy.
Friday, 13 November 2009
Is this the book to save us from the Tory Menace?
Transform yesterday launched "After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation" at the House of Commons. Having read most of it, I am confident it can be employed to great effect in backing up a Liberal Democrat policy of strictly regulating a legal trade in drugs.
This document is undoubtedly tough on drugs and I will be writing to Nick Clegg to inform him of this and to encourage him to act in the strongest possible terms. This book, to be blunt "covers our ass" on the issue with its sober, rational examination of the options for leading the world into a post-prohibition reality. It is now time to take off our gloves and mercilessly attack the prohibitionist policy that sacrifices untold numbers of children at the altar of the UN narcotics conventions and the dangerous, hysterical rantings of wrong-headed Daily Mail columnists. I will not stand by as prohibition pushes our desperate, vulnerable youth into the arms of the pushers, pimps and the vicious criminal profiteers who currently terrorise our communities. Far from creating drug-ridden anarchy, this book allows us to see that a legal drugs market can help create a better, safer world, where children and young people are protected from harm, and ignorance of the risks of drug consumption can no longer ruin lives.
These are genuinely exciting times in British politics. The Lib Dems have an opportunity to restore faith in politics by presenting a policy that will save billions of wasted pounds and create a paradigm shift in society that again casts the police as servants, not persecutors of the people and can allow previously cowering communities to escape the dispiriting influence of drugs and crime.
We now have all the tools necessary to build the Britain we want to live in, and perhaps the most finely crafted can be found here: www.tdpf.org.uk/blueprint%20download.htm
We now have all the tools necessary to build the Britain we want to live in, and perhaps the most finely crafted can be found here: www.tdpf.org.uk/blueprint%20download.htm
Sunday, 8 November 2009
How do we open up a home front against the Taliban?
In World War II it seemed the whole of society was mobilised to support the war effort around the world. As we remember today the men and women who have fallen in all the wars this nation has fought, it is time to ask whether we are doing all we can to support our effort in Afghanistan.
The uncomfortable truth is that there are around 250,000 of us who are actively undermining that effort. People who, when combined with their fellows around the world, provide around 50% of the Taliban's funding. For the vast majority it is not their intention to fund the insurgency of religious fundamentalists, and even if you told them they were funding the Taliban, they would struggle to stop. These people are heroin addicts. 92% of the world's heroin originates in Afghanistan, and the Taliban's taxes on the trade and heroin stockpiles are what accounts for around 50% of their income.
So what is the best way of breaking this link between British heroin addicts and the Taliban?
We have tried eradicating poppies in Afghanistan, an act which unfortunately has much the same impact as disrupting trafficking in and around the UK. Namely, the price for the remaining heroin goes up and the Taliban makes the same amount or more money. Indeed the Taliban themselves suppressed opium growing in Afghanistan in 2000 and apparently reaped great financial reward from their efforts "The total farm-gate value of opium rose from US$56 million in 2001 to US$1,200 million in 2002" (UNODC (2004), ‘Presentation to the International Crisis Group on Afghanistan’, Brussels, 5/VII/2004). http://bit.ly/19OsRn
Efforts to get addicts off heroin have been successful up to a point, but methadone is a more harmful drug to an addict's health, and is often ineffective in reducing demand for street heroin. Prison is an ineffective deterrent, and rehab is expensive and often unsuccessful.
There is one option available to us that we have yet to try on any great scale. Opium poppies are already being grown in Britain to provide medical opiates in the treatment of our sick. If we were to expand the growing of opium poppies and treat our addicts medically with prescribed heroin, and if other countries were to do the same, we could remove the demand for Afghan opium, and so remove half of the Taliban's current funding, reducing their ability to buys guns, explosives and bullets with which to resist democratic reform and attack British soldiers trying to help Afghanistan rebuild after Taliban rule.
It is the government's short-sighted drugs policy that is funding the Taliban, not the hapless drug-addicted wretches in our cities and towns.
The uncomfortable truth is that there are around 250,000 of us who are actively undermining that effort. People who, when combined with their fellows around the world, provide around 50% of the Taliban's funding. For the vast majority it is not their intention to fund the insurgency of religious fundamentalists, and even if you told them they were funding the Taliban, they would struggle to stop. These people are heroin addicts. 92% of the world's heroin originates in Afghanistan, and the Taliban's taxes on the trade and heroin stockpiles are what accounts for around 50% of their income.
So what is the best way of breaking this link between British heroin addicts and the Taliban?
We have tried eradicating poppies in Afghanistan, an act which unfortunately has much the same impact as disrupting trafficking in and around the UK. Namely, the price for the remaining heroin goes up and the Taliban makes the same amount or more money. Indeed the Taliban themselves suppressed opium growing in Afghanistan in 2000 and apparently reaped great financial reward from their efforts "The total farm-gate value of opium rose from US$56 million in 2001 to US$1,200 million in 2002" (UNODC (2004), ‘Presentation to the International Crisis Group on Afghanistan’, Brussels, 5/VII/2004). http://bit.ly/19OsRn
Efforts to get addicts off heroin have been successful up to a point, but methadone is a more harmful drug to an addict's health, and is often ineffective in reducing demand for street heroin. Prison is an ineffective deterrent, and rehab is expensive and often unsuccessful.
There is one option available to us that we have yet to try on any great scale. Opium poppies are already being grown in Britain to provide medical opiates in the treatment of our sick. If we were to expand the growing of opium poppies and treat our addicts medically with prescribed heroin, and if other countries were to do the same, we could remove the demand for Afghan opium, and so remove half of the Taliban's current funding, reducing their ability to buys guns, explosives and bullets with which to resist democratic reform and attack British soldiers trying to help Afghanistan rebuild after Taliban rule.
It is the government's short-sighted drugs policy that is funding the Taliban, not the hapless drug-addicted wretches in our cities and towns.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Good luck to the 500,000 turfed off incapacity
I have just been through a very unpleasant experience. In February of this year I attended a medical assessment in order that a doctor could assess my ability to work. I have chronic fatigue, was feeling particularly unwell at the time and was examined by an unsympathetic doctor who put me through all the physical tests despite my explaining that I would be able to perform them now but they would likely lead to fatigue later. In April, I was surprised by a letter through the door from the DWP explaining that I had not scored enough incapacity points and so my incapacity benefit was being stopped. Thanks a bunch. There followed several phone calls to the DWP and visits to CAB (where I had fortunately been volunteering when in ok health) asking for advice on what to claim. After being told 3 different things by the DWP, I was eventually advised to claim Employment Support Allowance and so had to fill out yet another form (less insensitive to the symptoms of chronic fatigue this time, but that's not saying much) and attend another medical (still haven't got the results of that one after several months). My benefit had dropped from £102.25 to £64.30 a week and I was leaking money fast.
I appealed against the decision with the help of Inverness CAB (Thanks Iain) and was told to expect about a six month wait. My tribunal happened on Monday and lasted all of one minute. The judge (put up in the nicest hotel in Inverness the night before) stated that I should have scored at least 3 extra points in various categories and so was approving my appeal. So off I trot to await the £1200 in arrears that have accumulated over the last 7 months.
I was lucky. Had I been on ESA when I was judged fit for work I would have had to claim Jobseeker's Allowance whilst knowing that I was incapable of work. It can't be fun having to apply for jobs you know you will not be able to carry out adequately.
Labour and the Conservatives both want to get 500,000 supposedly fit IB and ESA claimants onto Jobseeker's Allowance, saving £25 a week. I'm sure there are many people out there who are capable of work, but I would much prefer they used the carrot rather than the stick. Both the personal advisors that have been assigned to me have been lovely people who helped me try permitted work last year for a few months to build my confidence. My health didn't last, but the experience was vital in demonstrating to me that there is a path out of incapacity benefit when the time is right.
Over two fifths of IB claimants in Scotland have mental or behavioural disorders such as depression or anxiety. The volunteering and permitted work options could be vitally reassuring in their return to employment, or an effective way to trial various types of work to gauge their suitability. Removing such people abruptly from Incapacity Benefit risks making these stress-related conditions considerably worse and might place additional burden on the health service.
Forcibly moving people off IB adds to the workload of the DWP in processing appeals, costs about £300 a time for each tribunal (at a rate of £300 a minute for mine), and around 45% of appeals are successful. This rate rises to nearer 60% when the appellant has representation. My representative was a welfare rights worker at the Citizen's Advice Bureau (a service already overstretched by the demands of the recession). If someone could let me know how many incapacity benefit recipients appeal removal of benefit (Table IB1.10 I don't have Excel) http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/ib_sda/ib_sda_nov03.asp I might be able to show that the savings the Tories are projecting are insanely optimistic.
Anyway, my chronic fatigue is back again and I'm wilting and ready for bed so this blog post is just going to fade out with this highly unsatisfactory closing sentence.
I appealed against the decision with the help of Inverness CAB (Thanks Iain) and was told to expect about a six month wait. My tribunal happened on Monday and lasted all of one minute. The judge (put up in the nicest hotel in Inverness the night before) stated that I should have scored at least 3 extra points in various categories and so was approving my appeal. So off I trot to await the £1200 in arrears that have accumulated over the last 7 months.
I was lucky. Had I been on ESA when I was judged fit for work I would have had to claim Jobseeker's Allowance whilst knowing that I was incapable of work. It can't be fun having to apply for jobs you know you will not be able to carry out adequately.
Labour and the Conservatives both want to get 500,000 supposedly fit IB and ESA claimants onto Jobseeker's Allowance, saving £25 a week. I'm sure there are many people out there who are capable of work, but I would much prefer they used the carrot rather than the stick. Both the personal advisors that have been assigned to me have been lovely people who helped me try permitted work last year for a few months to build my confidence. My health didn't last, but the experience was vital in demonstrating to me that there is a path out of incapacity benefit when the time is right.
Over two fifths of IB claimants in Scotland have mental or behavioural disorders such as depression or anxiety. The volunteering and permitted work options could be vitally reassuring in their return to employment, or an effective way to trial various types of work to gauge their suitability. Removing such people abruptly from Incapacity Benefit risks making these stress-related conditions considerably worse and might place additional burden on the health service.
Forcibly moving people off IB adds to the workload of the DWP in processing appeals, costs about £300 a time for each tribunal (at a rate of £300 a minute for mine), and around 45% of appeals are successful. This rate rises to nearer 60% when the appellant has representation. My representative was a welfare rights worker at the Citizen's Advice Bureau (a service already overstretched by the demands of the recession). If someone could let me know how many incapacity benefit recipients appeal removal of benefit (Table IB1.10 I don't have Excel) http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/ib_sda/ib_sda_nov03.asp I might be able to show that the savings the Tories are projecting are insanely optimistic.
Anyway, my chronic fatigue is back again and I'm wilting and ready for bed so this blog post is just going to fade out with this highly unsatisfactory closing sentence.
Monday, 2 November 2009
The Liberal Democrats need to position themselves as the party that will listen to scientific advice
Professor David Nutt was a frustrated man whose recommendations (backed up by scientific evidence) were being ignored by a series of non-scientific Labour politicians. He was making statements that undermined government policy and it is understandable that he has irritated Alan Johnson to the point where he has fired him. Professor Nutt was not some loose cannon though. He was the chair of an indepedent advisory council that was almost entirely supportive of his views. They voted 20 to 3 to keep cannabis as class C and now appear to be ready to resign en masse in protest at his dismissal.
I am heartened by the responses coming from prominent Liberal Democrats on this issue but, with the Tories stating they would have sacked him sooner, we have a fantastic opportunity to establish clear water between ourselves and the other parties on this. We can be the party that listens to evidence presented to us by experts, and the party that formulates policy based upon expert advice. Now is the time to ask scientists, sociologists and economists the bigger question in drug policy:
Does prohibition actually work in reducing the harms drugs cause to individuals and society?
On the 12th of November the Transform Drugs Policy Foundation will be in the Grand Committee Room of the House of Commons launching their publication "After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation" I hope to hear the Liberal Democrats welcome these proposals and to see evidence that they are re-examining their rather confused drugs policy as a result. As the founder of the Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform, I will be attending the launch of the Blueprint for Regulation and hope to use it as a starting point from which to push for an examination of current Liberal Democrat policy, the discussion of other policy options and the production of a motion proposing more sensible policy for consideration by party members at Spring conference.
If you wish to join the drug policy debate within the party, please contribute your thoughts at www.lddpr.org .uk
I am heartened by the responses coming from prominent Liberal Democrats on this issue but, with the Tories stating they would have sacked him sooner, we have a fantastic opportunity to establish clear water between ourselves and the other parties on this. We can be the party that listens to evidence presented to us by experts, and the party that formulates policy based upon expert advice. Now is the time to ask scientists, sociologists and economists the bigger question in drug policy:
Does prohibition actually work in reducing the harms drugs cause to individuals and society?
On the 12th of November the Transform Drugs Policy Foundation will be in the Grand Committee Room of the House of Commons launching their publication "After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation" I hope to hear the Liberal Democrats welcome these proposals and to see evidence that they are re-examining their rather confused drugs policy as a result. As the founder of the Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform, I will be attending the launch of the Blueprint for Regulation and hope to use it as a starting point from which to push for an examination of current Liberal Democrat policy, the discussion of other policy options and the production of a motion proposing more sensible policy for consideration by party members at Spring conference.
If you wish to join the drug policy debate within the party, please contribute your thoughts at www.lddpr.org .uk
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