Cassilis discusses exam grades, and why letting everyone succeed leads to less social mobility, rather than more.

Transform eviscerate Ian Oliver's position on drugs. Just imagine if all the money that goes on prohibition went on treatment instead... Brilliant comment on these issues here.

Jo Christie-Smith wants you (assuming you're a Lib Dem) to put yourself in th Who's Who. Even if (especially if) you're a lowly blogger. BEWARE, though. The help file is a .pdf. *makes the sign of the evil eye at Adobe*

This is why I LOVE Chicken Yoghurt.

What? Poverty and shitty, unfulfilling employment should take some of the blame [for the rise of terrorism]? Say it ain’t so. It’s the capitalist miracle we’re talking about here, isn’t it? Rising tides float all boats, don’t they? Free markets never made anyone bad, did they? Who knew MI5 would turn out to be a nest of goddamn pinkos.

That's weapons grade sarcasm, right there.

drjon has an illustrated religious schism which is doubtless very serious for those involved, but is bloody hilarious for the rest of us.

And finally, terrible news: they're cancelling SGA! This is my fault for getting into it. If I hadn't, it'd be going on and on...

We all know that the government position on drugs is decided by expediency rather than by sense and reason. Cannabis was downgraded to class C as a sop to the sensible position that it should be legalised AND a sop to those who say all drugs should be criminalised. Given the current government's puritanical tendencies and relentless pursuance of smokers and drinkers, it was only a matter of time before the idea was mooted of reclassification to class B.

As Evan Harris so eloquently said on Any Questions this week (taking his cue from here, I reckon)

- It's crazy to ignore the advice of an expert committee that you have set up purposefully to investigate something. What was the point in setting up the committee?
- Pot use has gone DOWN since it was reclassified
- classifying pot in class B makes a mockery of the whole classification system when there are legal drugs which are more medically dangerous (note: I am not saying that pot has no dangers, but both alcohol and tobacco are worse)
- messing about with the legal system to send a message to young people is pointless at best, and counterproductive at worst.

I'd add that messing about with the legal system at the behest of the police is the top of a slippery slope to a police state, too.

The best way to tackle the drugs problem in this country (and every other) would be to legalise, tax, and plaster health warnings all over ALL drugs, then people can make an informed choice. Prohibition doesn't work, and it never has. However, I recognise that political expediency means that this won't happen for a long time. With that in mind, at least evidence based reasoning should be used to dictate policy, rather than the urge for positive headlines from the Daily Mail set.