Heroin use down

I heard on the Today Programme that heroin use is down. This is partly due apparently to the poppy fields of Afghanistan not producing so much. The crop spraying has been a failure. In fact, the whole Afghan adventure is a disaster. The Taliban is not our enemy as such. However, the drug barons are. If the two are mixed up together then both are against us. But I suspect the powers-that-be are not that bothered about it all. If they were they would have destroyed those poppy fields years ago.

Brummie bus bows out at last!

Great news! The Birmingham-built Metrobus is being pensioned off, says the BBC. This boneshaker has been seen as a success story and no doubt it has done its job without breakdowns. Phil Bateman was head of the transport authority when the buses were ordered. He said, "They were Brummie buses built for people in the West Midlands to travel on and they suited our streets extremely well. They gave us efficiencies that we were craving at the time." But were they comfy back when they first appeared? I have to admit I don't know as I didn't do bus travel then. But I do now and my heart sinks when one of these turns up.

My guess is that we were never going to be treated to too much comfort as the seat slashers and cigarette smokers were competing for space. Even now the Birmingham buses are subject to blatant drug taking, window decoration and chewing gum impregnations. Seeing as there is no law enforcement to keep these types off buses and I'm looking forward to my bus pass, I'd like all bus companies to put up signs such as "This bus will stop automatically if a whiff of marijuana is detected, a window pane is defaced, or a seat is defiled!" Then I'd suggest all doors close and the perpetrators taken away by a police service that has been given the equivalent of sitting ducks at a rifle range.

Slow work in nobbling the Taliban's poppy crop!

I thought I'd investigate a bit more about the Taliban and the opium poppy. This is going to be a long hard slog seeing as we've got cretins running the war (politicians that is!).

Nice piece from the New York Times by James Risen. "Donald H. Rumsfeld and military leaders also played down or dismissed growing signs that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban, the Pentagon officials said." One has to wonder what use Rumsfeld was to the American people. A man who shook hands with Saddam Hussein once and really thought the war in Iraq could help his oil baron buddies!

"The eradication program is rife with corruption. Farmers know they must offer bribes to avoid having their crops destroyed, American and Afghan drug officials said. It is often only those who lack money or political connections whose fields are singled out." Is this war being waged in your name? Perhaps the British Army could march into Downing Street and remove the hapless Brown?

Here's how the slow progress at destroying the poppies is done. One man and a tractor! Sounds like a title for a BBC show.

Drug-dealing milkman spared jail

Benny Hill was a milkman once. He sang about Ernie. And Ernie gave a widow woman a bit more than gold tops on his regular round! Milkmen have long helped out their customers - in more ways than one.

Robert Holding is a milkman aged 72, which is a something to report in its own right. He received a suspended prison sentence at Burnley Crown Court yesterday for the supply and possession of cannabis. What? Yes, he's a drug trafficker! Heaven forfend. He must have been confused over the government's classification coding. Anyway, he's been supplying elderly customers, or so he says, with the drug to "ease their aches and pains". So he's now technically a criminal.

The judge said she was giving him the sentence as "an act of mercy" in light of his wife's illness. I suppose if she wasn't in a care home with Alzheimer's, the judge would have jailed him.

If you read this report in the Independent, you get the impression that the authorities took a very heavy hand. There is a large amount of pontification all round - the judge, the police and the CPS. It's a pity they don't take all that puffed up rage to the Ministry of Defence and ask what is being done to stop the real criminals in the Afghan drugs trade. It's no good spending a century in the hills shooting at the Taliban if the poppies flourish in the fields with impunity!

It's all a sense of priorities and proportion.

Jack Straw's fish out of water feeling!

Jack Straw is the kind of politician who is rendered speechless in front of unadulterated truth. With him, it causes something similar to that of a fish that has been rudely hurled onto the beach by a freak wave. No freak waves this week, but on Tuesday morning I heard Straw on the Today Programme in conversation with "a prisoner". Evan Davis asked the inmate what was generally the problem. The prisoner, a lucid and straightforward guy, said he thought his crime, drug smuggling, was caused by two factors. His greed and the ever-increasing poppy harvest in Afghanistan, giving him the ability to make money. Davis asked Straw what he thought. Time for the fish impression!

The prisoner was right. He admits to being greedy, and sort of suggests that he should be helped. We have anger management courses, sessions for smokers and drinkers, and of course drug addicts. Why not for greedy people too? Possibly if these were offered to a variety of people, we might cut crime.

My anger at the greedy finance guys who used the so-called sub-prime market to enrich themselves could be assuaged by such courses. Greed management - sounds good! These sub-prime cowboys were greedy, preying on ignorant people who were taken in by the blandishments. There is a fine dividing line between the two kinds of greed!

With regard to Afghanistan, we are fighting the wrong enemy. Tribal warlords who may or may not know where Osama Bin Laden's cave is are no great enemy to the West. Their vast poppy harvest is, and all the business emanating from it. Jack Straw has no clue how to deal with this. My cynical side suggests that tackling the problem may cause a whole raft of agencies to collapse, ending with the demise of the sniffer dogs. Who wants to be put out of well-paid employment? Keep the poppies growing, keep the soldiers dying, keep "the War on Terror" going.

Isn't there a better way? If the prisoner is so clear on this, I'd give him a period to try it out. After all, he could be better than the fish impersonator!

TV host Mark Speight 'found dead'

The BBC reports that the body of a man, believed to be missing TV presenter Mark Speight, has been found in a remote area of London's Paddington station. A formal identification is yet to take place but will be confirmed on Monday. This is a tragedy indeed. He has been a familiar feature in our house with his programmes about painting, drawing and design. My children thought he was very clever.

Humanity has a terrible propensity for self-damage. In this case, Mark has been racked with guilt about the circumstances leading up to the death of his girlfiend. Because of these circumstances, he had been arrested arrested on suspicion of murder and supplying Class A drugs, subsequently being released without charge. Enough in themselves to cause a person to feel that they had no further place in society. He was not to blame, except that he blamed himself for introducing her to drugs.

That he needed drugs or felt unable to face his family and friends says something, I think, about how we are as a society. John Donne famously wrote the lines "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." What was true 400 years ago, is true today.