Catch a Fire!

Hands up who believes that the government was lying when they said there was no cash for peerages being handed out?
Ok, hands up those who think they are telling the truth?
Only one, ok Mr Rammell, being Harlow’s MP we know where you stand, anything that Blair said was god’s honest truth to you, when your constituents were convinced otherwise.

This government long ago lost the moral high ground, the moment Blair lied about the reasons for Invading Iraq, the moment he went against the majority opinion of the country and sanctioned a war without even involving his cabinet, was the moment we stopped believing them full stop.

We are also going backwards regarding the drugs war, they are now talking about re-classifying cannabis to a class C drug because it is damaging some people’s mental health. At the same time, whilst alcohol does more damage to people in this country, their approach to that is different, they make it easier to get it by allowing pubs to open as long as they wish.
Now I am happy with this liberalisation of the licensing laws but I fail to see how locking people up for wanting to relax and get a little stoned is going to help them or us. We are back to criminalising people who happen to make cannabis their drug of choice and once they have had a spell in one of our overcrowded Victorian rat infested prisons and have lost their job, they become a bigger danger to themselves and society when they get out.

Remember the 'War On Terror'? They don’t call it that anymore because it is a meaningless phrase for a meaningless war. However this wasn’t the first meaningless war, the first one was the 'War On Drugs', one that the United States (and to a smaller degree ourselves) have put billions of dollars and destabilised several countries, and murdered many in it’s epic struggle only to find it had little or no effect what so ever. The invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 liberated the farmers of that country from the ban on opium production the Taliban had enforced and the fields are blooming with billions of poppies again. Where is all this fresh opium heading for? You guessed it, the USA and Britain and that’s why our (British) soldiers are supposed to be over there, to destroy the poppy economy. They're not helping to replace that income for the Afghans with anything else though so it’s likely to have little effect.

Too little, too late!

I think we should be consistent with our approach to drugs, we should legalise the lot, cut out criminal underworld and armed drug gangs, tax them and feed that income, not to helping to fund illegal invasions of other countries but to pay for drug education and properly funded national clinics to help those who could simply not take notice of the warnings.

To believe that our society is not already drenched in drugs is like believing that Guantanamo Bay is a humane interrogation centre. We should grab the means for production and start to take control before it is too late.

Oh, and the Neurotics have got their final rehearsal tomorrow before the first gig in Brighton at the Prince Albert on Friday 27th July.

I thought I’d mention that.

1965

We ran, we really ran.

oh man the buzz, I was so tingling with excitement, relief and bravdo that I was giggling like the very girl I was accused of earlier.
But it didn’t matter now, I was a hero, I was in, I’m in the gang, they’ve never done anything like this.

We didn’t run far, we couldn’t, because we were transfixed.

We ran a little way further into the car park, ducked behind a car and then popped our heads back up to view the lorry.

It seemed so quiet now, either that or I couldn’t hear a thing over my thumping heart. We looked at a thin spiral of smoke winding it’s way out of the open door, it stopped.

It started again, a car passed by on the main road, I absent mindedly noted that it wasn’t a bus, we returned to silence and then BANG.
A split second later, a second Bang. I punched the air, this was as good as it gets, I did it, I am not a sissy I’m daring, I am courageous, I AM IN THE GANG! I am a GIANT!

I looked excitedly at my co-conspirators, they were caught up in it too. I could see by their excited faces that they were dead impressed. Look at them, look how small they seem now. How could I have felt intimidated by these fools, I’m never going to let that happen again, I promised myself.

As, in that frozen moment I savoured my triumph on their faces, the corners of their mouths dropped, dragging their eyebrows with them. They suddenly looked sick, their faces had turned a bright sickly orange.

The penny didn’t so much drop for me, but spun giddily in an hypnotic spiral into the collection of a lost cause.

I turned around to see, and my vision tunnelled into this huge flickering dancing orange like I had a ViewMaster strapped to my face and I was looking at the surface of the sun. I raised my hands as if to click onto another image but just cupped them over my brow to cut out some light.

Fucking hell!