mockney piers

I know what you're getting at Mou? but I think it's off the mark to say legality has nothing to do with it. As muh as there is lamentable exploitation of labour in countries less inclined to care (though no worsethan here a century ago) you don't find sweatshops bombing each other in turf wars or so rich due to artificaly inflated prices that they can take on the government. Mexico have just committed more troops to one border town that is effectvely a war zone, than the uk have to Afghanistan and there have been 20000 deaths in the multifacted drug wars there in the last two years alone. International decriminilisation would go along way to ending that sort of violence, suffering and the accompanying corruption.

VeI've had a couple of nice meals and the odd drinkypoo on expenses but I don't think I've ever abused expenses. I think the company I worked for was insane to fly me out to an office in another country on premium price tickets every week when there were locals perfectly capable of doing the job but that was somebody elses problem. Plus the taxpayer wasn't paying as that was before that Dutch bank got nationalised by the err...UK government;)

Well I'm with you there. Iguess we need to differentiate the difference with drug use ground on social ills and purely recreational use (assuming just for a moment that there's no grey area). The former requires social help and attention from outreach trams to urban regeneration, the latter needs decriminalisation. We know we can't halt supply or demand and education will only achieve so much. I knw plenty of folks who will buy organic bacause of the thought of suffering chickens but will do a guilty shrug at the thought of the suffering the cocaine trade causes before tucking into a line.

Indeed, but it's those symptoms thy affect the quality of life for everyone, whether in the spirAlmof poverty an violence on the streets or whether you have your tires nicked or get scammed for cash in Barry rd. No ne has cone up with a cure in the half a century we've been fighting this 'war on drugs' if you have any suggestions I'd like to hear them. Diamonds are a much much smaller Market and more easily legislated for, not least because the product itself isn't illegal.

Very fair point ratty, I noticed I kept using the word solution when in reality there is none, perhaps improvement was the word I was looking for.

If we're talking decriminilisation then we' re on the same page (god I hate that expression). Is that libertarian or just plain liberal. That was rhetorical btw ;)

Count yourselves lucky your mice are earthbound, I went up to the landing last night to find a bat swooping around the house. Quite freaked me out I must say. I basically opened every window in the house and hoped for the best. Watching the little fella his famed echo location seemed rubbish at finding the open bits of windows. I still have no idea if he's hiding, exhausted in some nook or cranny or whethe he found a way out. It made watching V for Vendetta very difficult against the noise of the rain

He's a forumite? Brilliant! Ooh can I guess which one? I'm going to have to go Tony

We got dance music in 1997?!? What on earth we bopping to in those Cambridgeshire fields in '89, what were gurning to like loons in Shelley's in '91? You know nothing existed before you were born ;-P

Study after study has shown that the only way to reduce levels of use os to plough to e and effort (hance obviously money) onto the social side of social care, treat addiction and education. Sadly it's a nn starter politically hence we carry on pouring resources into customs and policing which has consistently done little more than paper over the cracks. But as with all solutions that are difficult, long term, hard to quantify and downright unsexy (leaving alone the soft on crime inference among daily mail readers) it's unpopular politically. Leave alone that the police have been saying this for years, leave alone that nabbing some teenage dealer achieves little but to put another kid in the incredibly damaging juvenile secure estate system. ... God what a bleeding heart liberal I am ;)

""Also, there is not sufficient research on the long-term effects of pesticides on human health," he added." I'm pretty sure studies have been done linking this to reduced sperm counts/fertility levels, and possible links to increase in various cancer rates, but I'd have to dig around. so it's ok to take scientists' word on this, but not, say, climate change?

Pooh just got my special ediion watchmen. A bit disappointed there's no pirate comic though. I think I know a forumite who'd like borrowage though.

I actually like the first album. Yeah Noel's a bit of a twonk and his brother an utter twunt, but when has that been a barrier to anything in the music world. But they failed, as Presuming Ed so rightly says, to paint it black. I actually quite like don't believe the truth, it's nowt special but feels like it was done by people for whom the penny finally dropped that they are, after all, just a band

Did anyone go to Knebworth, chemical brothers, the prodigyand john squire joining Oasis on stage? Actually thinking about it he went artistically down the pan and ian brown went on to do some pretty decent songs. Not bad for the supposedly talentless one.

Doh!!

Nothing at all!!!

Nothing

I'm saying nothing

Eeeeeek, careful what you ask for!! Good to have Brendan back, though is it some coincidence that he and TLS have returned at the same time?

I thought it was good. Same formula, another simple tale, well told with a heart warming ending that keeps the right side of saccherine. I thought wassissname was basically a pretty boy who couldn't act. A michael praed for the ironic generation. But he was excellent, worked with it really well. Plus got to see our Anna again, always great even if she kept her clothes on this time.

"chestnut mushrooms? luxury, we 'ad to merk do wi t'chanterelle"

he he, how times change. When I grew up pomegranates, water melon, chorizo and jamon serrano in the house were signs of us being first generation immigrants, not middle class. We regularly had to smuggle them into the country as it was illegal to take them either out of Spain or into Britain

Indeed as tough as my middle class upbringing was I ain't proper posh like you so can only imagine what you must of gone through :-0

Don't get me wrong keef, I love the Sundays, have everything they ever did. Good songs, lovely kind of Englishness washes all over their stuff and she was elfin and cute, what's not to like. But her voice doesn't have power or amazing emotion, it is however perfect for what they do which is to relax and comfort you, hence the slippers.

Aaagh, data mostly fine. I'm sad because my beautiful purple PC has died and nowadays I can only afford some dull desktop from dell and will have to fork out five hunnerd quid for a legit copy of Photoshop!!