How times change...

When I was a lad, I could go to the local shops with 50p in my pocket and come home with a bag of sweets, three gobstoppers, a packet of crisps, The Beano and a bar of chocolate.

You can't do that anymore.

Fucking CCTV.

Mephedrone illegal within weeks

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has confirmed HMG plan to make the currently-legal high mephedrone illegal within weeks. The drug, known on da streets as meow-meow according to several newspapers (though I've not heard anyone call it that, and neither has H*, the 17-year-old drugs-fancying raver son of a friend of ours), will be classified as a Class B controlled substance alongside cannabis and speed and as such anyone caught with it could face up to five years in the nick. Dealers could face fourteen years.

Argh! Drugs! Evil! Panic!

Mephedrone has been linked to the deaths of four people in the UK since it first emerged at a festival on the Isle of Wight in 2009 - less than half the total number of people killed by food allergies every year.

Well, thank feck for that, eh? I'm sure that, just as has been the case with all other drugs, banning mephedrone will rid our nation of this rather un-scourgely scourge. Smackheads don't even exist since heroin was banned, do they?

Meanwhile, over in Portugal, the number of teenagers using drugs fell during the first five years since the country decided to decriminalise possession and consumption of drugs - as did the number of new HIV cases. People seeking treatment to combat drug addiction, on the other hand, more than doubled.

Hmm. Might we be doing something wrong?

*Name omitted for obvious reasons.

Times Fail

Acid Rabbi is extremely disappointed to hear that The Times and Sunday Times will soon start to charge readers who wish to access their online publications (a quid a day, two quid for a week). Not so much because we'll miss reading the Tory shitrags, but because we'd rather put all our money towards beer than lining Rupert Murdoch's already well-lined pockets.

However, we're very glad that this article appeared before we'd have to pay for the pleasure of seeing it. Check out the author's name. :-)

Cameron the Whore

Conservative leader David Cameron promises "I will banish extremists from Britain," according to a Jewish Chronicle online headline, going on to say that his party "...would never ally with a party we believed to be antisemitic, led by antisemites or with links to the far right."

I wonder if this means the Tories' European friends from Prawo i Sprawiedliwość and Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/LNNK, the latter being the party notorious for including members who attend events celebrating the Waffen-SS? Both are members of the EU European Conservatives and Reformists, a group which the UK Conservatives have also joined under Cameron's leadership despite controversy and alarm among those members of his own party who don't wish to be associated with the extreme right.

"Honey, if you vote for me I'll do anything you want!"

Oh, David. We know there's a General Election just around the corner and you're desperate for votes now your lead in the opinion polls has slipped so much, but you're so transparent we can see right through your attempt to persuade British Jews to tick your party's box at the ballot box - it's not the first time you've made it obvious you'll say anything necessary to get a vote, either, because you did the same thing when you tried to attract the so-called pink vote not too long ago. Perhaps if your actions backed up your words it'd be a different matter, but if you associate with blatant antisemites people are going to assume you're one too.

Taiwan Earthquake - OMG! End of the world!!!

"And, like, really bad shit will start going down, man..." (Revelations 3.22)

Read about it here.

I wonder how long it's going to be before somebody really gets on my nerves by trying to tell me that three earthquakes in the space of two months is proof that things are gearing up for the end of the world on 21.12.12? I wasn't sure exactly how many earthquakes over a certain magnitude occur each year (though I vaguely remember something called the Gutenberg-Richter Law from my Environmental Science A-Level), but according to the US Government there's around 134 annually of >6.0 on the Richter Scale, so three in two months doesn't quite inspire me to start stashing tinned foods.

Still, another chance to mock a hippy is always welcome. :-)