I generally find it conducive to my well-being to avoid any thoughts of Michael Gove whatsoever.
However, this week I discovered something much more upsetting and that was mental images of the Scottish Tory totally off his face.
Sorry if I have put that in your head.
This fine fellow briefly came onto my radar almost twenty years ago.
I was handed his scholarly treatise in the offices of An Phoblacht, it was entitled “Northern Ireland: the Price of Peace”.
Two years after the historic peace accord, in 2000, he had written a pamphlet attacking the Good Friday Agreement (GFA).
The entire premise of Gove’s analysis was a case study in “Godwin’s Law”.
For him linking the GFA to the initial failure to stand up to Adolf Hitler made perfect sense.
He used terms like “appeasement” and he was strongly critical of the GFA, which he called a “rigged referendum”, a “mortal stain” and “a humiliation of our army, police and parliament”.
Obviously, I cannot confirm or deny if Mr Gove was under the influence of drugs when he wrote this brilliant thesis.
However, this week he fessed up that his association with cocaine was around twenty years ago.
When I was handed Gove’s pamphlet by a comrade in the An Phoblacht office he wanted my opinion on it.
My curt analysis was unprintable even for us!
I can’t remember if I had opined that the author was obviously on something.
However, the entire issue of drugs was something that interested me journalistically back then.
A year after I read Gove’s daft pamphlet I wrote this piece for An Phoblacht.
For the avoidance of doubt, my view hasn’t’ changed in the intervening years.
I believe that criminal prohibition of any drug merely creates a compound problem.
It diverts from a possible solution and creates vast wealth for organised crime.
Something that should be dealt with as a health issue becomes enmeshed into the criminal justice system.
For the avoidance of doubt, Mr Gove and his coke snorting friends were undeniably funding crime twenty years ago.
It is undeniable that Al Capone would have just been a two-bit street hoodlum if it wasn’t for the Volstead Act.
Even people who have a “nice dealer” are the endpoint in a supply chain that causes misery to a multitude of people who are caught up in the global narcotics trade.
Whether it is cocaine or cannabis the user is generating vast wealth for some of the worst examples of our species.
It really is that simple.
Of course, the Westminster tribe has a long association with the global drugs trade.
Indeed, in many ways they pioneered it.
The British Empire was probably the first narco-state.
Don’t believe me?
Then just Google “Opium Wars”.
The Honourable East India Company made Pablo Escobar look like a rank amateur.
In the immortal words of Hyman Roth, they had “a government who would work with them”.
The stuff that Rory Stewart was puffing in Persia made fortunes for the robber barons of the Square Mile in the 19th century.
Back then Britannia ruled the waves and waived the rules.
They did so because no one was powerful enough to stop them.
This week the different media response to the confessions of Gove and Stewart suggests to me that England’s birth defect of class snobbery is utterly incurable.
The former has had to chisel his way to the top from difficult early beginnings and the latter was always set for a life of privilege.
Roderick James Nugent Stewart OBE FRSL FRSGS MP is a child of the Empire.
He was born in Hong Kong, the British colony that was central to their drugs trade in the 19th century.
The son of a British Diplomat and MI6 officer Stewart was then sent off to Eton and Balliol College Oxford.
Given these early obstacles, it is amazing that Stewart Minor has done so well for himself!
For the true Westminster elite, someone like Gove will ways be grubby if occasionally useful, whereas Stewart is one of their own.
Just to be clear, I’m not too perturbed by what either of them sniffed, snorted or ingested back in the day.
However, I AM concerned with what they want to do with political power.
According to wee Rory, he once chased the dragon, but Gove wants to herd unicorns and deliver the sunlit uplands of a hard Brexit.
Now, that thought is enough to turn anyone to drugs.
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Phil, have you read the vomit inducing homage to Petrie from Ian Maxwell.
‘A huge character, a beast in the boardroom, a very funny man, we just need to bring that out over time’ and so on.
Maxwell”s time would be better spent talking up his own character and attributes, hitherto invisible.
Given the CEO gig at Hampden based on what?
The fact that he’s slipped in the door in a seamless fashion says it all.
Nothing changes and the chaos in the disciplinary procedures is now off the charts.
Kicking and punching opponents off the ball is perfectly acceptable depending on whose involved and some moveable measurement of the force involved.
A joke appointment for a joke organisation. Same old, same old.
Drug is a drug is a drug, simple. Mind changing mood altering chemicals in any form cannot be used safely and to say so is immoral.
Decriminalisation is the way forward but not of the drugs but of the people who display their symptoms i.e.use that is likely to cause harm, to a person or persons. Portugal has a successful, not perfect, but successful model.
Also to demonise someone for being honest about their use of drugs is shaming them, the very thing that causes addiction to be continually treated as a criminal problem rather than from a health perspective.
Many political people I’ve spoke to are private in their views that they would back decriminalisation bit would never go public because of the stigma.
Alcohol for instance causes more damage than all other drugs used put together.
Good on Gove and the other guy for getting honest.
Still wouldn’t want them running the country though.
Interesting comments on Michael Gove in Daily Mail on Monday 10th June quoting journalist Sean O’Grady who remembered
Gove’s enthusiasm for Ulster Unionism where ‘he’d be perfectly happy to sing along with Orange songs – The sash my father wore-
all that sort of stuff’ and stating that others have witnessed Gove belting out such tunes – he new all the words ! Just the type of person we need as leader of the Tory Party and perhaps even the country !
This whole myth that Gove has had to ‘chisel’ his way to the top is as mythical as the Unicorns he plans to herd. He was adopted of course but they were very supportive parents and sent him to school here http://www.rgc.aberdeen.sch.uk where the fees are now over £13k per annum (bursaries are available but he hardly chiselled one for himself when he was 6 or 7 years old!) He ended up deputy head boy (yep, it was all boys in his day!) and he went on to oxbridge, journalism and politics. He never had it that hard.
I take your point that he wasn’t exactly a street kid.
However, he isn’t from the ruling tribe like Wee Rory.
Now, that is a distinction Gove will be acutely aware of as he tries for Number 10.
Not meant as a dig at you tbh Phil but the whole media seem to report that Gove had some tough upbringing but the reality is somewhat different. He’s certainly been very close to the establishment and the ruling tribe for the last 30 odd years too.
No problem.
I think if you are closely observing the elite tribe then you would see how, in several nuanced ways, Gove isn’t a true insider.
However, Stewart most definitely is.
They really have no conscious whatsoever,I’m sure they think that exposing their use of illegal substances makes them seem like ‘one of the people.’
Sadly,it won’t work out that way for them,these remarks will follow them the rest of their working life’s,which in both cases,I sincerely hope it isn’t working from any position of power or influence.
I think that you may be have been slightly overzealous in your lumping together of cannabis and cocaine.I certainly see why you have done this but,you only have to look at the US and see the figures in tax revenue that the US government are now enjoying.Legalisation has brought HUGE tax revenues,and that will change peoples minds,sadly,money talks.
I feel once this has run successfully for approximately 10/15 years We,here in the U.K.,will see a complete shift in policy from Westminster,moving along the lines of firstly medicinal use,which is already happening in 4/5 cases where they have made exceptions.Recreational use will then at some point follow afterward making inroads to becoming legal.
There are simply too many medicinal purposes for the government to ignore it.The use of CBD oil is spreading like wildfire in the US and elsewhere too.The U.K. government already grow and export approx. 50 tonnes,or even as big as 500 tonnes,I’ve read conflicting reports,that it sends abroad for use in medicinal practices,but God forbid they use it here for widespread medicinal purposes.
Britannia ruling anything now is but a pipe dream,maybe even an opium pipe dream.
Thanks Phil🍀
Wee shite sat opposite me for 3 months on the desk, still can’t express my feelings…
You got it almost right until the self professed ignorance of your ‘pipe dream’ remark.
The Empire began with the Romans, under the orders of the Jesuits in the Vatican, and has been in continuous existence since then and just because some of the misinformed in the UK & Ireland does not change that fact.
The current American aspect of it simply the military arm of this Empire and it is no coincidence that there are only three genuine Sovereign States on Earth and that these are Washington DC, the military arm of the Empire, The City of London, the financial arm with Vatican City representing the religious aspect, which is the most powerful of all three.
These are the three strongholds of the Empire which surrounds in an unholy trinity of the current Jesuit Pope being ‘The Father’, Lizzie ‘The Mother’ and the tempestuous military might of the US as ‘The Son’ of their unholy union.
And everything they do, from their deliberately ‘failing’ drug policies to their deliberate ‘failures’ to improve societal well being is part of a continuous ‘holy war’ (see Unholy War) against humanity.
So even the concept of a ‘British Empire’ has always been somewhat redundant since all roads lead to Rome and always have done and, as the other poster C O’B astutely observed, by simply following the money you too will discover this.
Unless of course you believe it to be mere coincidence that the wealth of the Vatican is mere coincidence.
As Phil’s most quoted author plainly stated, ‘The war will be continuous and without end’ and here we are in the middle of it, with next to no one understanding why this is so.
Three sovereign states rule this earth and the might of their military, financial and religious powers should not only be underestimated but ought to be read and understood by all.
So I suggest that you get cracking as time is short before their final plans come to full fruition and the end game is inevitably played out as they wrote it in their books and bibles.
Dear sir, …
Almost all of those lining up to replace May are hard Brexiteers.
Leaving with no deal is their mantra no matter what the economic effect is on the country.
No worries they say, Trump is waiting to bestow a phenomenal trade deal on the UK.
Really? It’s much more likely that the beneficiary will be the United States, not the UK.
Corbyn and the Labour Party have let the country down massively as no one knows exactly what they are pitching.
The thought of a clown like Boris leading the country when May departs is truly frightening.
Once you realise that the British Empire IS the organised crime boss you soon understand why they refuse to decriminalise drugs.
For surely you don’t believe that the Empire’s drug running proclivities ended with the opium wars, do you, not when their Yankee lackeys caused absolute bloody havoc across the Americas in the 80s ’s to seize control of the cocaine trade for themselves and have been waging war across Afghanistan for over 20 years ago to now be producing more opium than even the Taliban?
The British Empire is the organised crime syndicate and Lizzie is Griselda Blanco.
This, too, is easily accessible online information, should you choose to access it.
It is a sad truth that we are all Governed or Ruled by the Elite Phil.
Europe is no different by the way the EU is a construct of the Banking Industry and Powerful who want to shift vast sums of our money about free of charge.
Ireland is no different btw the Rich stay rich and the rest?
Well we can all Get tae Fcuk as far as they are concerned.
Call it Neoliberalism,Capitalism whatever you like but all it is is a modern form of slavery.
The majority hear the brunt of Taxation whilst the Minority write the complex rules within it so as to avoid it where possible.
They wrap it neatly in a flag of choice and present it as Democracy and Freedom of choice but the sad reality is it is anything but.
We get what they choose to give us.
Not necessarily what we actually need.
The corruption and double standards that these cretins and leaches operate by are just side issues in the big scheme of things.
Follow the money,the money always takes you to the source of the issue.
Greedy,self indulgent bastards the lot of them.