April 29, 2008

Gordon Brooon, in a desperate attempt to forget about opinion polls, mortgage crises, pensions crises, election bottling, "Britishness", rising debt, rising cost of living, fuel supply problems, backbench dissent, Lord Levy and the cat running away with the spoon, has come up with a bright new sparkly idea designed to tug gently on the flaccid and thus furious penis that is the Daily Mail's readership.

"Gordon Brown is to take personal responsibility for toughening the law on cannabis," screams its front page story today.

And how will this "responsibility" manifest itself, you may well ask?

"The Prime Minister will over-rule the Government's panel of experts (my italics, but take note) to announce next week that he wants it to return to Class B status."

And a nation silently mouths back as one: Oh. Does he.

The reason for this, says the Mail - the newspaper equivalent of the red-faced fat ginger-haired child of moderately wealthy, indulgent, but still largely distant parents - is because the move to reclassify cannabis as Class C under Tony Blair "coincided with an explosion in drug crime and several brutal cannabis-related murders".

Yes, of course it did.

Erm. But did anyone actually hear that explosion?

And "brutal cannabis-related murders"? Really?

How brutal?

"Man bored to death by stoner droning on about 'The Floyd, man'."?

Also, how advisable is it, really, to "over-rule the Government's panel of experts" - ie, people who know what they're actually talking about, as against those seeking political gain/refuge/rescue in an entirely unoriginal, unambitious and completely unworkable way - when the last time you did that, over pensions for instance, or over selling off the UK's family silver (well, gold) reserves at a rock bottom price, it came back to bite you on the arse in ways you really thought your foul Scottish wobbly-jowled short-sightedness would not "allow"?

And one final thought:

After next week, when you (theoretically) approach a dealer and ask if his dope is Class B or Class C, will he not just reply: "Who cares, man? It's just class."

Up the workers. Or whatever it is in Polish.