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Showing posts from December, 2019

Addictions. Porn, Drugs, Alcohol and Sex. Don't prevent it, make it safer.

In 1926 New York, during Prohibition, 1,200 people were poisoned by whiskey containing small quantities of wood alcohol (methanol). Around 400 died, the rest were blinded. The methanol they drank was in the moonshine they had bought illegally. In fact it had been added by law to industrial ethanol in order to make it undrinkable. Prohibition existed to protect everyone from the 'evils of the demon drink'. However, people still wanted to enjoy alcohol. So bootleggers bought cheap industrial alcohol and attempted to distill it to remove the impurities the state had added, but the process wasn't regulated. The state was inadvertently responsible for the suffering - although it was easy for them to blame the bootleggers and to justify escalating the war. This didn't stop the bootleggers. In fact it forced them to become more violent to protect their operations, and even less cautious about their production standards. Volumes of illicit alcohol, and therefore proportionat

Jeremy Corbyn might be our next Prime Minister

Update: OK, so I was wrong.... We ended up with the largest Tory majority since Margaret Thatcher. In fact I got it badly wrong. Interestingly more people voted for Remain supporting parties than Leave, but our voting system distorts who gets into power. However, the points I make below are still valid even if I wrongly predicted how strongly brainwashed the British public had become about being able to 'do a deal with the EU... and therefore expecting their newly elected leader, Boris Johnson, to "get on with it". He won't, because he can't! Free Trade Agreement for goods and services means we forever follow the EU's rules We can't agree to do that (it's why we left) So no FTA [My original post starts here] On the day of the Brexit referendum in 2016, I realised I'd had enough of being a Tory party member. Indeed I had, until that day, been a donor to party funds, such is my fear of socialists destroying yet another economy by promis

Society Needs Uber - Not Just for Rides.

When you get in a mini cab, don't just sit there looking at your phone. Chat to the driver! He or she has a story you need to hear as you make your way to a warm home in the suburbs, an expensive restaurant, the theatre or a concert... which your drivers and their families can only ever dream about. It's not only courtesy to respect them as humans rather than vehicle accessories, it's an opportunity to learn about other countries, other cultures and to take a glimpse into what it's like to be a 'have not'. It's about respect and empathy. By banning Uber from London, its socialist mayor, Sadiq Khan, is ironically removing one of the most powerful opportunities for privileged classes to meet and get to know, albeit briefly, the very people he is dedicated to helping. When else do we have the opportunity to hear their stories? We're trapped in a metal box for up to an hour or so. Instead of rudely ignoring them, we should be finding out why they're mi