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Listed below are comments made by Secratariat between Wednesday, 28th October 2009 and Friday, 30th October 2009.

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Nick Griffin on Question Time 7:17pm on 30 Oct 2009 bigsammyb wrote:
"The BBC are damaging UK democrasy and must be reformed."

What democracy ?

Last time I checked we had:

An unelected, hereditary Head of State
An unelected House of Lords
Several unelected Cabinet Ministers
No choice in who becomes Prime Minister
Party Whips that take precedence over the wishes of MP's constituents
Over 70% of our laws written in Brussels

None of that sounds very democratic to me.
Scientists v Politicians: Round 3 6:04pm on 30 Oct 2009 When the drugs policies don't work:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/07/when_the_drugs_policies_dont_w.html

The drugs questions:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/07/the_drugs_questions.html

How Portugal treats drug addicts:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/07/how_portugal_treats_drug_addic.html

Give drug users a break:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/06/give_drug_users_a_break.html

A focus on harm:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/05/a_focus_on_harm.html

Soca and coca:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/05/soca_and_coca.html
Nutt faces sack 4:02pm on 30 Oct 2009 Sacked for telling the truth, but then I suppose the government have continually refused to sack those who have been proven to be liars, cheats & thieves so this kind of makes sense (or is at least consistent with previous decisions).

As ever in our Brave New Labour World, the truth is a lie, laymen know more than experts and the good people are all bad !
Scientists v Politicians: Round 3 11:56am on 30 Oct 2009 The History of Cannabis Prohibition:

http://www.legalize.org/history-of-cannabis-prohibition/

Medical Uses of Cannabis:

http://www.schmoo.co.uk/thclub/thcuses.htm

Alcohol more harmful than many illegal drugs:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/news_details.php?news_id=1205&year=2009
Nick Griffin on Question Time 4:54pm on 29 Oct 2009 @ JackMaxDaniels #356

Some good points.

There are various aspects of British culture that I do not conform to yet British culture obviously has a very big impact on my own culture and identity.

The Monarchy is an established part of British culture yet I am a Republican.

The Church of England is an established part of British culture yet I am an agnostic and do not conform to the rules of the Anglican faith.

Dog fighting & fox hunting are a part of British culture (although, obviously now illegal) yet I do not take part in these activities.

I could go on but I'm sure you get the point, accepting a part of our cultural past be it English, Indian or whatever else doesn't mean that you accept and practice every single aspect of that culture and the fact that I find certain practices in other parts of the world distasteful isn't a rejection of their, or my, culture.

I've also travelled quite a lot myself and have discussed this issue with various people from the old Empire and none of them have ever been hostile towards me as an individual, they may dislike various aspects of our nations history, especially concerning the colonisation of their own country yet they've never held me directly responsible and many of them have agreed that we do have a shared history and culture that links us all.

There are obviously exceptions to this and you can always find someone who disagrees, even to the point of violence but this doesn't mean that every other nation rejects the links to the British and our culture.

As a Scouser I've been attacked by people from Manchester when I’ve been visiting their city for no reason other than where I'm from yet this doesn't mean all Mancunians hate me or all Scousers or deny our shared culture.

I think we may have gotten mixed up a bit though, I'm not arguing in favour of a continued uncontrolled immigration policy.
I think we should withdraw from the European treaties regarding free movement of economic migrants and also think we should have strict controls over non-EU immigrants too.
I certainly don't think we should let everyone from every country into ours; I just reject the kind of isolationism of races or white supremacy that some people propose.
Scientists v Politicians: Round 3 4:25pm on 29 Oct 2009 CountingChickens

Just to clarify, are you stating that;
A - Cannabis is bad and people shouldn't use it, or
B - Cannabis is against the law so people shouldn't use it.

I know this may seem like nit-picking here but I think it is an important point, do you think it's the drugs that are bad or the breaking of the law ?

DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
"Seriously, what's the downside? Why does the government persist with prohibition, when everyone knows it simply doesn't work?"

I hate to sound like some raving conspiracy theorist but the only conclusion I can come to is that they continue with prohibition for the following reasons;
Keeping the tabloids on-side
Keeping the U.S. government happy
Keeping the tobacco & alcohol industries happy

Or (and this is a real conspiracy here) they actually want to keep supplying organised criminals with billions of pounds worth of turn-over each year.

I honestly can't think of any other logical reasons to keep the charade going, everyone who wants to get hold of recreational drugs in the UK can do and nothing the Police or any other government agency do seems to stop the supply.

Legalisation, regulation and taxation seems to be the only sensible solution to me, maybe one day we'll get a government that is able to deliver just that.
Scientists v Politicians: Round 3 2:26pm on 29 Oct 2009 CountingChickens wrote:
"People do die in this country and abroad because of cannabis (and other drugs, look at Columbia and Cocaine) and your money, unfortunately, is the cause."

No, Prohibition is the cause.
Just like it was in 1920s U.S.A. and everywhere else a government has tried to prohibit the activities of a significant proportion of the population.
Scientists v Politicians: Round 3 1:38pm on 29 Oct 2009 CountingChickens wrote:
"To the weed lovers above.
Oh what a wonderful world we live in. All cannabis users are tea-total, non-smoking angels. Give me a break. If you smoke cannabis with tobacco you ARE a smoker."

As I've already mentioned above, there are various methods for smoking Cannabis that do not require tobacco, they include using pipes, bongs, hot knives, vaporisers and using Cannabis as an ingredient for things like space cakes (cup-cakes with Cannabis in them), and there are many other ways of using it without using tobacco too.

"I can see why a common name for cannabis is dope."

Just as we can see why a common name for pro-prohibitionists is "The Ostriches".

"All I see are people using long words trying to sound clever."

Yes, it's called an evidence based argument; you may want to try it sometime.

"Remember, the argument from Professor Nutt is that cannabis is NOT dangerous and that smoking and drinking are."

No, the argument from Professor Nutt is that Cannabis is not as harmful as the government are making it out to be. The evidence from around the world will tell you that Cannabis is not as dangerous as Alcohol or Tobacco; a recent study found that tobacco was the world's number-one killer in 2000, causing 4.9 million deaths.
The study also found that 1.8 million deaths worldwide were a result of alcohol use, while illegal drugs caused 223,000 deaths.

So, alcohol contributed to the early death of 1.8 million people, tobacco contributed another 4.9 million deaths while all other illegal drugs combined caused 223,000 deaths in 2000. Last time I checked 6.7 million was a more than 223,000, in fact it is about 30 times more and that is for all illegal drugs, not just Cannabis.
No matter how you look at it, Cannabis is safer than Alcohol and Tobacco.

The fact that you are misrepresenting what the Professor is saying and the conclusions he has come to only show how weak your argument actually is.

"The other fact is that you can only really buy Skunk from criminals (rightly or wrongly) That makes you a contributer to the rape and murder of the many people destroyed by the criminal classes as they exploit people to make the cannabis resin"

Not so, I get my Cannabis from people who are growing it themselves. This is very common these days and is becoming more popular due to the various nasty things that criminal gangs are adding to their Cannabis. I’ve also grown my own in the past.
Either way though this is a very tired argument and could easily be countered with the argument that you are forcing people to buy from criminal gangs by the very act of criminalising Cannabis and other recreational drugs, this is a cyclical argument and gets us no-where while also diverting us from the more important argument regarding the legalisation, regulation and taxation of recreational drugs.

Although we know that you secretly don’t want to have that argument because it is one you are destined to lose.
Scientists v Politicians: Round 3 11:27am on 29 Oct 2009 CountingChickens wrote:
"Have you ever met a cannabis user that doesn't drink or smoke"

Yes.
I am a Cannabis user and I haven't used alcohol for 10 years.
I do smoke cigarettes though.

I also have lots of friends who use Cannabis but don't drink alcohol or smoke tobacco; many of them do not smoke spliffs but instead use pipes, bongs or other methods to smoke Cannabis without mixing it with tobacco.

Most of the Cannabis users I know have stopped drinking alcohol or only drink occasionally.

Moncur's Maraudeluders wrote:
"We know not and care less, what the effects of any particular drug is on the individual, but do know that the occasional cannabis user is almost certainly going to be the occasional binge drinker and performer of anti-social behaviour or an apologist for the same."

Firstly, that's a load of absolute rubbish. As I've already stated, I don't drink alcohol and most of the Cannabis users I know do not drink alcohol, none of us are ever anti-social, binge drinkers or apologists for either.

What your argument basically comes down to is that you don't like our drug of choice and, regardless of the evidence surrounding the case for legalisation; you want it kept illegal because of your own concept of morality.

You're coming at this from a position of absolute ignorance yet you still wish to force your views and opinions onto everyone else even though the evidence from other countries such as Holland and Portugal is overwhelming in showing that prohibition is a major cause of crime, ill-health & social problems.

As ever, I'd recommend people have a look at the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition website, it's very interesting to see what many of those on the front lines in the War on Drugs actually think.

The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of harms resulting from fighting the War on Drugs and to lessen the rates of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.

LEAP has two primary goals:

To educate the public, the media and policymakers about the failure of current drug policy by presenting a true picture of the history, causes and effects of drug use and the elevated crime rates more properly related to drug prohibition than to drug pharmacology.

To restore the public's respect for law enforcement, which has been greatly diminished by its involvement in imposing drug prohibition
Nick Griffin on Question Time 10:34am on 28 Oct 2009 JackMaxDaniels wrote:
"Awards which discriminate the origin both on culture and race, if there was no racial discrimination the categories would be used - as they are in all music outlets."

In an ideal world this would be the case, unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world.
As everyone knows, the MOBO's were started up at a time when Black-British music was generally being ignored by the music industry and they were set up for the sole reason of recognising these genres of music that were otherwise unrepresented by groups such as the Brit Awards.

To claim that this is some sort of racism is, in my opinion, hilariously wide of the mark.

All you're doing is saying that these people who were, less than 20 years ago, being discriminated against by the mainstream are now racist because they started up an awards ceremony to recognise people who were otherwise being ignored.

It is this constant refusal to put things into context that I find so amusing, forget about the many years the Black community were discriminated against and forget about the reasons groups like this were ever set up, just sit back and whine about how you're being discriminated against, how they're the racist ones and how it's all so unfair.

And as for:
"I am sorry to hear you think standing up for white culture is piteous, outrageous or sensationalist."

You're not standing up for white culture, you're just complaining about the fact that other people have got off their backsides and done something for themselves.
Although I've never felt my own culture to have a colour, in case you've forgotten, the British Empire once covered over half of the world and included many different races, religions and cultures, as far as I'm concerned they're all a part of my cultural history and the Raj is just as important to my identity as the Celts, Picts, Vikings & Romans.

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