David Ottewell's Politics

Congratulations to Euro-MP Arlene McCarthy, who has been nominated in the national and local government category of the Women of the Year awards.
Arlene is a bundle of activity who has been particularly active in stemming the supply of illegal eastern European guns to gangs across the UK. She’s also done much to crack down on internet paedophilia, as well as supporting consumer rights over everything from mobile phone roaming rates to potentially dangerous toys.
Whenever I bump into her she seems to be dashing round doing something.
She said: “It’s an honour to be nominated but seeing the list of great and exceptional women who have won in the past I do not expect to win.”
Typical.

I don’t smoke cannabis. Not because of any great moral objection, but because (a) it’s clearly bad for you, and (b) I’m deeply temperamentally unsuited to any sort of mind-altering drug. If anyone is going to be seriously psychologically damaged by cannabis, it’s me.
I know plently of people who do smoke cannabis, however. And I can’t recall any of them ever being caught by the police.
Which is why I wonder how successful the government’s latest “crackdown” will be.
There was plenty of debate when the home secretary announced she was moving cannabis back to class B from class C. This was mainly philosophical: civil liberties v the need to protect people from self-harm, cannabis v alcohol and other “legal” drugs, and so forth. The practical question was somewhat ignored: what would reclassification mean in terms of police action, and penalties?
Now we know. Spot-fines of £80 for anyone caught in possession twice, and prosecution – with the possibility of jail sentences – for those caught a third time.
That sounds tough, but the courts can already give custodial sentences for possession. What’s changing is the maximum term – up from two years to five – and, presumably, the attitude the police and CPS.
The spot-fines are new. Whether they will act as a deterrent to cannabis use is another question. Many cannabis users are middle-class people who smoke discreetly in their own, or their friends’, homes. I’m not sure police could catch any more than a tiny proportion, even if they decided that trying to do so was a sensible use of their resources.
Which they won’t.
The people who are more to likely to be caught are younger, more brazen about their cannabis use – and generally more working class. This group is also more to be subject to police stop-and-searches in the street.
Well, you might say, if these people are stupid enough to get caught then they bring it on themselves. Maybe. But I still feel a little uneasy about a move that hits one section of society with fines and jail sentences for something we all know another, more respectable group is getting away with Scot-free.

So the global economy is in meltdown. Experts are no longer predicting a long, slow recovery. Instead, they say, the world will soon become some vast post-apocalyptic wasteland. Men in mud-spattered pinstripe suits will grapple on the floor, scratching at each others eyes with blackened fingernails as they try to reach a discarded Marks and Spencer sandwich.
But never mind all that. A picture has just arrived of Hazel Blears supporting the Breast Cancer Campaign:

Apparently we are all supposed to wear pink on October 31. Assuming any of us make it that far, that is.