Wednesday 7 May 2008

Quote of the day

The government listens to advice. And then ignores it.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said that, as their advice had been disregarded, ministers should disband the advisory council of experts and replace them with an advisory council of "tabloid newspaper editors".

It's good to see the BBC turn to the gummint-funded 'charities' Addaction and DrugScope* for comments.

I also like this, possibly the most f***witted comment of the day:

The committee ... also voiced concern about the prevalence of domestic cannabis farms supplying the market and the involvement of organised criminal networks.

If it were legal, we could:
a) import it from the Middle East or Jamaica, thus reducing our 'carbon footprint' (those domestic 'farms' use a scandalous amount of electricity) and possibly reducing the trade deficit as well (depending on what's cheaper, wholesale cannabis or oil),
b) make 'criminal networks' superfluous, obviously, and
c) collect a shed-load of tax (assuming cannabis were taxed at similar rates to tobacco and alcohol, we are talking several billion pounds a year)

* Whose funding will now no doubt be severely curtailed for daring to question whether tractor output really is increasing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it would be an excellent idea to start compiling a database of charities, showing their income (also expressed as a percentage) received from government.

Mark Wadsworth said...

See here.

ScotsToryB said...

Mark,

I have my dense moments so forgive me if I find it a bit strange that your link for %age income from govt. sources v. total income links to your home page and all your articles.

Whilst I consider this a privilege uncommonly granted I feel there may be a slightly more efficient way to find the referred.

Ony sayin' is what.


STB.

Mark Wadsworth said...

STB, I was being lazy! I just linked to all posts with the label 'quangocracy'. Most of thse posts mention so-called charities and say how much taxpayers' money they get.