Leader in the Telegraph.
Yesterday, two things happened that may just start to turn that tide. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, announced that the Government was ignoring the advice of its own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and will reclassify cannabis as a Class B drug - four years after it was downgraded to a Class C drug.
This does more than simply illustrate the gulf between Tony Blair’s metropolitan liberalism and Gordon Brown’s fastidious Presbyterianism. It is actually about policing.
…
The other important move was Boris Johnson’s first significant announcement as Mayor of London - that the drinking of alcohol will be banned on all public transport in the capital from the beginning of next month.
In both cases we have millions of people being told what they may not do, both profoundly illiberal moves, on the spurious grounds of their possible effects on others. We already have rules agains being drunk and disorderly, we already have rules against bothering other passengers, we already have rules against any of the effects of either drugs or alcohol on other people.
But let’s ban them just to be sure, eh?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Kay Tie // May 8, 2008 at 9:43 am
Yep, sounds like that odious Tory fart Simon Heffer.
2 Roger Thornhill // May 8, 2008 at 10:00 am
I agree. If they just used the resources they will use to enforce the no drink laws to maintain safety and behaviour on the tubes, there would be no need to ban alcohol.
My bet is every tube train already has the signs plastered up. Funny how they can get such things organised almost overnight, like the rebranding of a new rail franchise, yet lights remain busted and vandalism unresolved.
3 Mark Wadsworth // May 8, 2008 at 12:14 pm
What Rog says. There is a photo in today’s Metro showing Boris standing proudly next to a large poster that has alreday been printed and stuck up in a Tube train. Ban comes in w.e.f. 1 June. Bastard.
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