Paul Flynn - Read My Day

Backbencher's job

A continuing surprise is how few people understand the role of an MP.

In the June election, the UKIP candidate complained that MPs did not control planning permissions. Others who should know better believe that MPs should be determining Newport City matters that are the exclusive preserve of councillors and Health and Education in Wales that are the business of Assembly Members.

As Newport MPs Jessica and I have duties to present a positive case for the city at national and international level. This is what we very actively strive to do. Our work is varied and we both have a lively presences on social media promoting local, national and international issues.

One international issue that greatly exercises me is the threat of the Trump Presidency. Possibly more than any other backbench MP I have responsibility for this because I led the debate prompted by a 2 million strong petition to cancel his invitation for a red carpet visit here. There is a continuing role in pressing the views of a growing number of people who are alarmed by the new President's irrational antics and impulsive character.

He is now the greatest threat to peace that the world faces. He blunders into delicate situations and creates crises. The most explosive issue in US politics is race and historical divisions between North and South of the USA. He had made the tensions worse. We should not be encouraging him. It's our world he threatens. We have only one of them.

Jam Trump's rubber levers

Trump is not as bad as we expected from his election campaign. He is unbelievably worse.

We have all met the incorrigible liars who create their own reality worlds in which they are the perpetual infallible heroes. They are always found out and are shunned as figures of ridicule.

Trump hit rock bottom with his infantile defence of the most dangerously divisive extremists in US politics. In six months he has inflamed every frozen world conflict that he has addressed and created the worst nuclear tension for 50 years.

Rightly his competence to perform the role of President has been challenged by a Republican Senator. His manic egotism and protozoan intelligence have created divisions where there was harmony reversing the traditional role of a President as the nation's impartial leader and healer.

Can he be removed? Although 40% of the population would like to see Trump impeached, history informs us that this is unlikely. There are ways the powers of those in elected office can be diminished when they behave malevolently. It happens here.

Ostensibly powerful UK ministers, including David Blunkett and Ken Clarke, have complained of rubber levers. They pulled the levers of change and nothing happened. Those with powers to implement, especially the civil servants, the policies gum up the works ensuring no changes.

Trump tweeted that transgender people would not be allowed to serve in US armed forces. The military disagreed. Trump pulled the rubber lever and nothing happened. Trump's promised destruction of Obamacare and wall building policies are on hold. Politicians, the military, industry, commerce the free media and intelligent American opinion have denounced Trump.

Congress and Senate have equal powers to the Presidency. They should assert them and obstruct all of Trump's malign actions.

Sacking of Steve Bennon from his shrinking circle of supporters reinforces the view that he behaves like a petulant child jealous of anyone else getting the limelight. Worse, it could be his addiction to sacking people. On his reality show all those who were sacked would be resurrected with new talent in the new series.

When President Nixon was drinking to excess and babbling inanities his staff removed the nuclear button from him. With luck the sane powers at the White House are thinking on similar lines.

 

 

Boost post

 

 * All those in the picture apart from President and Vice President have gone.

 

Related arti

We Were Warriors

We Were Warriors

Johnny Mercer

 

This is a great read.

 

It's especially illuminating for those of us who were not warriors but sent others to die in wars. Every MP should be confronted by the horrors that we imposed on our soldiers. If Mercer is successful, his  parliamentary work could transform politicians'

 assessment of future military adventures.

 

The abiding core belief of a majority of MPs is that Britain should always strive to punch above our weight militarily. Why? It always results in dying beyond our responsibilities.

 

Johnny Mercer became an MP because he is haunted by the gulf of perception between the calm all-powerful Commons and

the screaming terrors of the Afghan Wadis where soldiers must obey. During the most intense period of the Helmand campaign that he describes with penetrating insights, the Commons was being soothed  with reassuring faked optimism of military and political successes.

 

Mercer's portrait of war is unheroic and self-deprecating. We are spared no details of the sordid foul reality of the soldier’s life

and the inevitable dreadful  injuries and deaths. The nobility is in the strength of the bonds of friendship and mutual loyalty that overcame rejection of the perils of the tasks imposed on the soldiers. All MPs who were in the Commons for the past 20 years will shudder with guilt at  the fragility of equipment and our failures to drag out the ugly truth of missions that were unwise and sometimes impossible.

 

The arrogance of military leadership and the gulf between heroic fantasy of a politician’s war and the full reality of a soldier’s war has not changed. One MP recently described Passchendaele as a “wonderful battle”. Not to my father, my uncle and millions of others whose lives were damaged or ended by a futile WW1 that achieved nothing but WW11. 

 

The author admires the courage of his fellow soldiers and writes with empathy on his grief at their deaths and injuries. He is angered by the the failures to care for those maimed in body and especially in mind. He appears to accept the need for the Helmand campaign even though it promised to be a pacific incursion without bullets flying. From a handful of British fatalities between 2001 and 2006, Helmand led to the deaths of 450 UK soldiers. He writes that the Taliban 'counter-insurgents' started the war. Did they? My understanding is that a PM wanted to score a specific victory in his name by eliminating the drugs trade in Helmand. It was suggested to him as an attainable goal. Parliament did not vote on Helmand. Ministers of two government swallowed and preached the myth that defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan would protect the UK mainland from terrorism. It was a comfortable lie to still consciences.

 

Mercer is a fine sensitive writer. The truth leaps from his pages, unadorned, brutal and funny. His early life in a strict Baptist family, his wayward ambitions and a splendid single-minded determination to achieve his political ambitions are revealed with startling authenticity. It's comforting to know that the apparatchiks in the Tory Party are as crassly arrogant and wrong-headed as they are in the other parties. Mercer's election is a triumph for the naive but determined political novice. All that effort must be rewarded by political progress with his ideals.

 

I would like to help.

 

 

Related articles

 

New Best Friend

 

Last night I met Tony O'Donnell.

It was a riot of rushed words, shared memories of mutual friends plus gratitude from me for Anthony's playing of me at Donmar Warehouse Theatre. He wore a wig for the show which he sadly dumped for the photograph. Otherwise the resemblance  was convincing.

It was a strange thrill to watch a greatly gifted actor brilliantly  reproducing my voice, mannerisms and questions. This is a unique theatrical event because the libretto from the musical is verbatim MP speak. The musical is known as COMMITTEE. The long title is the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee takes oral evidence on Whitehall's relationship with Kids Company. It was no ordinary Select Committee meeting. It was explosive exchange between those who ran Kids Company and a group of MPs who were aghast at the our perception of the waste and misuse of £millions of public money.

Following the show Anthony joined me in singing our old school song-Green and Gold. We were both at St Illtyd's College Cardiff. I was there is the late forties Anthony in the early sixties but we share many friends-especially from the Splott area of Cardiff. We will have another get together to catch up on many events.

 

I e-mailed the Donmar today.

Many thanks.

 

We all had a wonderful time. All my staff are very knowledgable about Kids Company. The universal view was that the show fairly presented the strengths and weaknesses on  both sides in a very entertaining way. The musical was an unforgettable joy.  Meeting Anthony and singing our old school song was an unexpected pleasure. We share a great deal in our pasts and friends.

 

Watching someone play me on  a stage was not something I have ever expected. Anthony did a great job and the quotations selected were the best. As a committee I believe we did our job in exposing the weaknesses in Kids Company that had been previously disregarded. That came through. We still have unfinished business in exposing the waste and damage of the Big Society Stunt. 

 

All members of the cast were instantly convincing and deserve great credit for a unique musical that merits a bigger audience.

 

A marvellous inspired idea-brilliantly executed.'

 

 

Post Script.

 

 

COMMITTEE got a great deal right-but not everything.

 

It's a mistake  to portray a select committee as a united force hellbent of getting their Chairperson on the six oclock news. But they want to get the subjects on their report exposed on the six o'clock news. PACAC were divided between the Chair and two Committee members who were formerly on Cameron's cabinet. All three were fierce defenders of the Big Society.  Kate Howey and I who wanted to nail the extravagance and waste of Cameron's stunt.

 

Many audience members at the Donmar thought the story was unfinished. It still is. It's a misunderstanding to believe that select committee members should be impartial. We are seeking out the truth. In this case a very persuasive pair of witnesses had to be ruthlessly challenged. It is part of our job to expose their skilled but vacuous evasions. The pair had convinced three PMs (and their wives) to part with vast amounts of public money that could have been beneficially spent elsewhere. The job of the select committee member is to be partizan on the side of side of truth and transparency. 

Great to hear last month that the Kids Company Trustees are being brought to book for their failures to do their work in ensuring financial viability to this inefficient charity.

They survived only because of political patronage run by the Poster Girl of the Big Society. I have long argued that the Public Administration Select Committee has not finished its task on this.   As yet there has been no penalties for the two ministers who handed over £3 million of taxpayers' money to Kids Company a few days before they collapsed. That was in defiance of published Civil Service advice. The Prime Minister should have reported them to the the Independent Adviser on Ministers' Interests who supervises Ministers' Conduct. It's a long story but it did not happen. One of the witnesses should have been summoned to appear again at the committee for possible misleading statements. It was not done. The committee conclusions on the role of the Trustees is below.

"Primary responsibility for Kids Company’s collapse rests with the charity’s Trustees. Whether these allegations prove true or malicious, if the Trustees had not allowed the charity’s weak financial position to persist for so long, Kids Company would not have been so vulnerable to the impact of the allegations. e Board failed to protect the interests of the charity and its beneficiaries, despite its statutory responsibility to do so. Trustees repeatedly ignored auditors’ clear warnings about Kids Company’s precarious finances. is negligent financial management rendered the charity incapable of surviving any variance in its funding stream; when allegations of sexual misconduct emerged in July 2015 and threatened to impede fundraising, the charity was obliged to close immediately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'.....after all, JC is PM, and his views count.'

 

Maduro is a continuing horror story.

What baffles me is the claim that the leader of UK opposition can have any but a very minor effect on the outcome there. No more than he can on the outcomes of the situations in Kenya, South Africa or Rwanda.

Twice in the past 12 hours I have been invited to pontificate on the Iain Dale and the Julia Hartley Brewer shows in order to blame Corbyn for the sins of Maduro. This is the Tories throwing a dead cat on the table again in order to distract from the immediate crises that all UK MPs have on the top of our agendas. Crises for which we have full responsibilities:- the problems in our NHS (midwives, IVF), Prison chaos, Brexit new proof of £350million lie, Tory weak divided Government and most crucial of all-on today's 72nd Nagasaki anniversary -the grave imminent danger of nuclear war as North Korea and Trump threaten each other, plus the shrunken Korean nuke.

That's a real news agenda today. We might add the crumbling credibility of an Italian plot. From those items to the influence of JC on South American politics is minor. It's the Tories again trying to undermine JC's reputation with their posturing propaganda. That blew back on them in the General Election. Putting this non-story on the top f the news makes senses only in proving Tories are terrified of a new General Election and a JC PM. Anyone returning from a long holiday and catching LBC news values might conclude, 'After all JC is PM and his views on a South American crisis will count?' JC has not condemned the European invasion by force that imposed a common currency and language on us They then pushed off and left us with the Dark Ages. Put the boot into the Romans, Jeremy.

There are other ways in which the views of the UK on Maduro can be usefully expressed-especially by Government.

Why is Tory silence not top of the LBC news agenda?

Avoid an answer? Throw dead cat on the table!

Welsh MPs 'star' in musical version of Commons inquiry

David CornockParliamentary correspondent, Wales

 

Image copyrightMANUEL HARLAN

Image captionSpot the Welsh MP: a scene from 'Committee' at the Donmar Warehouse

If the transcript of a parliamentary select committee hearing were an obvious candidate for a musical then Andrew Lloyd Webber would probably have got there first.

But Lord Lloyd-Webber has left the stage clear for the creative brains behind Committee or The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee Takes Oral Evidence on Whitehall's Relationship With Kids Company - to give the musical its full title.

It is based on the verbatim transcript of the grilling of Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh and chair of trustees Alan Yentob (who is a BBC presenter and former BBC creative director).

Committee members who appear as characters in the show include Conservative former Welsh Secretaries Cheryl Gillan and David Jones and veteran Welsh Labour MP Paul Flynn.

London's Donmar Warehouse stresses "this production has not been authorised by any participant or Parliament" but as a veteran observer of these things I'd suggest there is little for Parliament to get too upset about.

It displays a fair insight into the way select committees work.

Early on, a clerk reveals to the audience: "All select committees are hoping their report gets their chair an appearance on the Today programme - that's the golden thing, the 8:10am slot on the Today programme". Cue a tuneful chorus of "the 8:10 am slot" from the cast.

Image copyrightMANUEL HARLAN

Image captionMPs on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee grill Alan Yentob and Camila Batmanghelidjh in a scene from 'Committee'.

Director Adam Penford said (during rehearsals): "The idea of doing a new verbatim musical based on the transcript of a select committee hearing is quite a crazy idea but potentially incredibly exciting. "Whilst it's part of the musical function to explore how we hold ourselves to account as a society it also asks multiple questions about the relationship of government to the people."

The production presented new challenges for the actors. Robert Hands, who plays David Jones, said: "I've never played a real person before and I didn't know I could do it, I was a bit worried about it actually."

He needn't have worried. Indeed, every member of the cast is thoroughly convincing and instantly recognisable to anyone who watched the original hearing or knows the MPs involved.

'Ectoplasm'

Cheryl Gillan went to see it with other committee members. Her verdict? "A very interesting treatment of a very serious matter using the words that are in the public domain but surreal to see yourself portrayed on stage."

Paul Flynn is played by Anthony O'Donnell ('Dai Davies' in Stella), who delivers Flynn questions - "a spiel of psychobabble, a torrent of words, verbal ectoplasm" directed at Batmanghelidjh - with the gusto of the original.

The Newport West MP tells me he's looking forward to seeing it and meeting O'Donnell. He remembers Camila Batmanghelidjh's evidence with frustration. "It was all about distraction and changing the subject, throwing a dead cat on the table."

A frosty exchange between the two of them about spending £150 of the charity's money on a pair of shoes for a client is given a suitable theatrical treatment.

David Jones recalls: "It was the strangest parliamentary event I have been involved in. It was bizarre, the whole thing. Camila's conduct was extraordinary and in the end I gave up on her and just asked Alan Yentob questions.

"I think it was valuable and I think the value of it was that action is being taken as a consequence of it."

It was revealed on Monday that the Insolvency Service is trying to get the charity's directors, including Camila Batmanghelidjh and Alan Yentob, barred from holding company directorships for up to six years.

Paul Flynn also believes there is "unfinished business" in the committee's investigations.

You can sample the musical here or see it for yourself at the Donmar Warehouse, where it runs until August 12.

Kids Company ; Unfinished Business

Great to hear that the Kids Company Trustees are being brought to book for their failures to do their work in ensuring financial viability to this inefficient charity.

They survived only because of political patronage run by the Poster Girl of the Big Society. I have long argued that the Public Administration Select Committee has not finished its task on this. Our work is on display at the Donmar Theatre in glorious musical form.  As yet there has been no penalties for the two ministers who handed over £3 million of taxpayers' money to Kids Company a few days before they collapsed. That was in defiance of published Civil Service advice. The Prime Minister should have reported them to the the Independent Adviser on Ministes' Interests who supervises Ministers' Conduct. It's a long story but it did not happen. One of the witnesses should have been summoned to appear again at the committee for possible misleading statements. It was not done. The committee conclusions on the role of the Trustees is below.

"Primary responsibility for Kids Company’s collapse rests with the charity’s Trustees. Whether these allegations prove true or malicious, if the Trustees had not allowed the charity’s weak financial position to persist for so long, Kids Company would not have been so vulnerable to the impact of the allegations. e Board failed to protect the interests of the charity and its beneficiaries, despite its statutory responsibility to do so. Trustees repeatedly ignored auditors’ clear warnings about Kids Company’s precarious finances. is negligent financial management rendered the charity incapable of surviving any variance in its funding stream; when allegations of sexual misconduct emerged in July 2015 and threatened to impede fundraising, the charity was obliged to close immediately.

e Charity Commission’s guidance requires Trustees to “make decisions solely in the charity’s interests, so they shouldn’t allow their judgement to be swayed by personal prejudices or dominant personalities”.2 Kids Company’s Board of Trustees lacked the experience of youth services or psychotherapy necessary to interrogate the decisions of the Founder-Chief Executive. is approach le the Trustees unable to defend the reputation of Kids Company and thus to discharge a prime obligation of the good governance and leadership of any organisation. It is essential that Trustees of all charities ensure that some members of the Board have experience of the area relevant to the charity’s activities, in addition to the necessary skills, and that all Trustees have the appropriate attitude towards responsible governance."

Civil Service's new 'hub-mania'

182 jobs will be lost from Newport.

 

DWP have announced the closure of several offices in South Wales including their Sovereign House operation in Newport. Sovereign House has been at the heart of the Newport community for many years and almost 200 back office staff are employed here.

 

Precious civil service jobs are of increasing importance as manufacturing industries have declined. Current plans will strip these jobs from the city centre and move them to Treforest.

 

After leading a debate in Parliament objecting to the closure and meeting with the Minister responsible last week, it is clear that DWP are making baseless decisions and rationalising afterwards. Nonsensical Government strategy to move civil servants into hubs has manufactured irrational decisions. Not unusual for this Government, but this time Newport is the casualty.

 

 

When downsizing means upsizing

 

DWP plan to construct a new super hub in Treforest which will hold 1600 staff.

 

The rationale for hub-mania? DWP insist they have too much floor space relative to the number of employees and must downsize their estate to make savings. As a result Sovereign House will be axed by the Department as the building has capacity for 400 people and is only half full.

 

Confusingly Government have admitted the hub will allow the number of staff in South Wales to increase by 20%. Sovereign House will be closed under the guise of saving on floor space and cost when new staff could be easily accommodated in the remaining space here.

 

Existing infrastructure and solutions have clearly not been investigated. Government believe that purchasing land and constructing a new super hub is more cost effective than maintaining and upgrading their current offices. So as not to be proven wrong they helpfully “have not acquired specific refurbishment quotes for the buildings in question” and refuse to state any costs of the Treforest site.

 

Old buildings are beyond upgrading, unless they are in Whitehall.

 

DWP Minister Damien Hinds denounced Sovereign House, a 1960s building, as “particularly old.” Yet the Education Department are moving from a modern building constructed in 1991 and refurbished in 2009. Instead staff will find themselves shunted to the Old Admiralty Building in Whitehall, constructed in the 1720s. No doubt the building’s listed status will make upgrades expected of a modern office difficult. The refurbishment bill for this 1600 person hub weighs in at a hefty £50 million.

 

If a site fits the hub mantra then money is no object and age no barrier.

 

 

Untold impact on Newport

 

Losing these jobs will have an untold impact on Newport city centre. Civil service jobs in Newport have been a great success providing many local people with well-paid, stable work and career progression.

 

Having these jobs in the local community is of great importance for the economy. Sovereign House workers support local shops, restaurants and businesses in the city centre which will be negatively impacted by the closure. To hear that Government has no plans to publish or carry out impact assessments is not good enough.

 

Welsh Government are at odds with the plans as they have been prioritising the placement of jobs where they are most needed to address poverty in Wales. Their commitment is to creating better jobs closer to home for employees. The UK Government are wilfully undermining this policy to the detriment of Newport.

 

Treating employees with contempt

 

Employees only found out that the new hub would be in Treforest after plans were leaked on the architect’s website. DWP have not been transparent with their staff.

 

In an exercise of utilitarianism civil servants picked Treforest as the best site for most employees using average travel times from google maps. Incredulously they have not bothered to ask employees if they can relocate. A full consultation would likely contradict their unrealistic low estimate of the numbers who will be unable to relocate.

 

DWP fail to recognise that their staff are not pins in a google map. Sovereign House is full of hard working and reliable employees, many with commute restricting caring responsibilities and disabilities. Public transport issues limit the reasonable distance that staff can travel to a new location and cost of the commute will hit low income families hardest in the long-term.

 

With the Minister admitting the business case for the hub is “in development” there is vital opportunity to apply objectivity to the process. Only with published accurate comparative cost models, an impact analysis on Newport city centre and the needs of staff taken into consideration should a decision be taken.

 

Sovereign House is a good investment with a stable, skilled, experienced workforce. Staff turnover in Newport is much lower than some of the larger inner city offices elsewhere in DWP. A rigorous analysis of the evidence would present Newport as the best investment option for future jobs.

 

Time UK caught up with life-saving reforms

From VICE magazine

 

SAFE SESH

Paul Flynn MP: We Must Legalise Medicinal Cannabis

PF

• PAUL FLYNN

Jul 21 2017, 12:52pm

The Labour MP on why it's time for the UK to catch up with the rest of the world.

This article is part of "Safe Sesh", a VICE harm reduction campaign produced in collaboration with The Loop and the Royal Society for Public Health. Read more from the editorial series here.

It seems a reasonable question to ask the new government drugs minster.

"Fifty years of intelligent, pragmatic drugs policies of decriminalisation in the Netherlands has delivered a prison crisis: there are not enough prisoners to fill their prisons. Isn't this a problem we would like to share?"

The minister blinked back at me, baffled. I have jousted with a score of her predecessors in my 30-year Commons battle for drugs sense. All have been fed garbage by civil servants – evidence-free, prejudice-rich. The abiding ethos of the civil service is the unimportance of being right. Most meekly submit to the tabloid's populist views; they refuse to challenge their vote-gluttonous political masters. Their careers prosper. Others caught in possession of intelligent ideas – who know that drugs prohibition increases deaths and crimes – stay silent or suffer career wreckage.

The UK's approach has delivered drugs misery at vast cost, and two past drugs ministers were troubled by the futility of pushing harm-multiplication policies. Mo Mowlam would add hand-written messages to me on the bottom of official ministerial correspondence, saying, "I'll see you in the Strangers' Bar and tell you what I really think." She explained that Prime Minister Blair would "go ape-shit" if she spoke the truth. At the end of her career she decided to write a book condemning the UK's drug policies. I worked on it with her, but very sadly she died and it was not finished. Another Labour drugs minister, Bob Ainsworth, toed the party line in office but became an impassioned anti-prohibitionist when he returned to the back-benches.

Two public prohibitionists who did not believe a word of the civil service scripts they were compelled to obey.

---

WATCH: High Society – How Weed Laws Are Failing the UK

---

Two recent events stung me into a call for medicinal cannabis users to break the law, via using cannabis at Parliament. (Press reports inaccurately suggested I urged users to smoke cannabis on the parliamentary estate. Mixing cannabis with the deadly drug tobacco is unwise and unnecessary with the alternatives of ingesting it as a drink, food or a vapour.) It caused a minor flutter because MPs are not supposed to incite crime, but after 20 years of campaigning impatience is now justified. The law I am inviting seriously ill people to break is an ass.

First, fond memories were stirred by an invitation to help with a new drama-documentary on the life of Elizabeth Brice. She was a marvellous lady, a television producer who listed translating Noddy books into Latin among her many achievements. She campaigned under the name of Clare Hodges, drank cannabis tea on the terrace of the Commons and persuaded the Belgian Parliament to legalise medicinal cannabis in 2001. She died in 2011 with her life's work unfinished.

My pangs of regret and guilt for the lack of progress on Elisabeth's campaign were sharpened by the renewed culpable futility of the "new" government drugs strategy. It is a repeat of the lame, moronic, bovine cowardice of the past 46 years, in place since the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Added is some window-dressing of meaningless adjectival jargon: "joined-up, holistic, multi-disciplined, all-embracing, comprehensive" new concepts. Joining one failed policy to another failed one does not make a successful policy. It creates a bigger failure. There is no sign that a single brain cell in the civil service or government has been flickered into new thinking by the current global disillusionment with drugs law.

Until 1973, before drugs policy as we know it was introduced, tinctures of cannabis had been medically available for over 100 years in the UK. In its natural form, it has been used for 5,000 years as a medicine in all continents. Our country was swept along with the international hysteria provoked by President Nixon's missionary zeal to eliminate all illegal drugs use.

Some weed and a Grasshopper vape. Photo: Jake Lewis

The legal use of cannabis is being increasingly established in many parts of the world. Twenty-nine of the USA's 50 states have provision for the supply of medicinal cannabis. In Canada, it has also been legalised. In Europe, medicinal cannabis is produced in the Netherlands and is available in Italy, Finland, Switzerland and Germany.

Incredibly, British laws are locked in a permafrost of ignorance. Nothing has changed. Public opinion is in advance of Parliament. In 1999, a jury sought to be compassionate to a wheelchair-bound cannabis user. They asked the judge if they could disregard a law they all thought was unjust. The judge ruled that Parliament decides, and they were forced to convict. Injustices were meted out as Parliament continued to dodge its responsibility and failed to reform.

Our present law forces users onto the black market, where the most hazardous forms of the drugs are marketed by irresponsible dealers and consumed in the most dangerous ways. A female police officer forced into early retirement by MS had no choice but to buy her cannabis from the petty criminals she once locked up. Others have solved their supply problems by importing seeds from Amsterdam and growing their own. For this victimless "crime", Parliament's law is still punishment by years of imprisonment.

The police and prosecutors are doing Parliament's work for us by ignoring the law. There has been no repeat of the frequent arrest of medicinal cannabis users in the 90s. The law has been ridiculed by druggie grannies into public contempt. But it's still the law.

Medical cannabis legalisation has in every case shown no spike in cannabis use, no increase in road fatalities, reductions in the criminal market and tax breaks of millions of dollars.

On the 10th of October, I will present a ten-minute rule bill to the Commons to legalise cannabis prescriptions. Are UK MPs ready to join the world-wild reform of laws that kill more people than the drugs?

@PaulFlynnMP

 

Paul Flynn (Photo: Lewis Whyld/PA Archive/PA Images)

Trinity of snake-oil salesmen repent

Do you remember this charming picture?

I accurately described it a Trinity of Snake Oil Salesmen. It was early this year when Chris Grayling, David Davies and Alan Cairns posed at the Severn Bridge and announced the 'Good News' that Severn Bridges toll would be set at the bargain rate of £3.00!

 

But it was no bargain because next year they should be nil. It was an attempt to con us. The snap General Election forced a re-think on the Tory Trinity. Today they will announced that they have seen the Labour Light and will resist temptation to continue milking the cash cow of tolls double taxation. It will be announced with a blast of Tory self-satisfaction in Newport today. (no. I have not been invited.)

Will anyone ask if election opportunism played a part in their volte-face?