They were not doing driveways, cutting down trees - the site residents were into horticulture.
tinyurl.com/zuy8ztr
|
|
On the day it was burnt the entire Welsh Police force decided to hold a Deep-Breathing Exercise day nearby! ;-)
|
|
No such thing as a Welsh Police force. BIG mistake if it happens. With Plaid Cymru holding the PCC in three out of four forces it will happen sadly.
|
|
FFS... what a colossal waste of public money.
|
Probably one of the more successful businesses in Wales - unfortunately. Instead of burning it, could they not have passed it on to some Medical Research Labs for Medicinal testing / use?
Or would that have Made the Police Suppliers?
|
|
WAG has a certain notoriety for spending loads of money unwisely....
|
>>WAG has a certain notoriety for spending loads of money unwisely...
People with access to loads of money that isn't their own frequently spend it unwisely IME. If that tendency could be eliminated then I am convinced we would have no budget deficit to worry about.
All such bodies need a strong head of finance, preferably one who has done it in an entity that can actually go bust. Otherwise they just spend it because they can. Our present parish councillors are a case in point. Idiots.
Maybe 20 years ago I sat next to a chap at a wedding who was an independent director. He had been working with the Royal Opera House, which is supported by grants and sponsorhips. He told me how one recent production, under a celebrated director, had just written off and replaced a brand new set at a cost of £3m because the director didn't like it. Not the sort of thing you do if you have to pay your own way.
|
When I was working for a living I dealt with both Local Authority/Universities/Government Depts as well as commercial organisations.
They might be spending £100K or several miliion (if I was lucky) - the difference was how the sales process went.
In the case of a privately owned business I might speak to 6/8 people at the very maximum - meetings would last say 1 hour to maybe 2.5 hours maximum - if after 5 pm then a glass of something in a local.
In the public sector of all shades they would convene meetings where a colleague & myself might face a room of up to say 20 people for half a day with a break for lunch.
One thing was guaranteed was that I would be home early - the 20 people would get twitchy after 3.30/4pm........Andy Pandy time! (For young readers Andy Pandy tune at the end of the programme was "Time to go Home"
|
>> Maybe 20 years ago I sat next to a chap at a wedding who was
>> an independent director. He had been working with the Royal Opera House, which is supported
>> by grants and sponsorhips. He told me how one recent production, under a celebrated director,
>> had just written off and replaced a brand new set at a cost of £3m
>> because the director didn't like it. Not the sort of thing you do if you
>> have to pay your own way.
Names. We need names.
This thread is no good without names.
|
Surely they were just meeting the demand for a drug which most on this forum on and I seem to remember some contributors to tbis thread should be freely available and its use decriminalised.
Public beneficiaries really then.
|
|
They are never going to stamp it out completely, at least if they legalised it (even on a ration basis) they could tax it, and at least get their fingers on some of the loot!
|
>> They are never going to stamp it out completely, at least if they legalised it
>> (even on a ration basis) they could tax it, and at least get their fingers
>> on some of the loot!
>>
Control supply and quality, take it out of the hands of criminals and tax it. Nothing else makes any sense, the "War" on drugs was lost decades ago and is tying up too much police and court time with no effect.
|
The "war on drugs" was pointless from the get-go.
Legalise it, tax it, and hound it out of business over a period of time.
|
|
Legalise it, tax it, and use it to pay the increasing pensions bill.
|
Don't even bother to legalise it. A hell of a lot more people use it than is generally believed.
It's perfectly OK illegal. What a load of faff about nothing much.
|
>>A hell of a lot more people use it than is generally believed.
That's great news. More people to tax, and I'm not one of them!
But we need to legalise it so that we can tax it.
|
>> we need to legalise it so that we can tax it.
That 'we' again.
You and who else FMR, I can't help wondering? Interfering puritanical fusspots of course, but apart from that who are they?
|
If it calms you, then;
"It needs to be legalised so that it can be taxed".
|
>>You and who else FMR, I can't help wondering? Interfering puritanical fusspots of course,
devonite " at least if they legalised it (even on a ration basis) they could tax it,"
Robin O'Reliant " take it out of the hands of criminals and tax it"
Lygonos "Legalise it, tax it, and use it to pay the increasing pensions bill. "
Getting the idea, AC?
|
Don't be too hard on him NoFM, he has alluded to some Mediterranean DNA in his make up, excitable people and they often can't help it. As with horn sounding for example, they love a bit of that too. But of of course you know all this, living where you do. It behoves us to ignore it, no matter how intolerable it becomes.
;-))
|
>> chuckle chuckle
PARP PARP
|
Part of the 'fun' of using drugs is the paraphernalia/rituals involved, as well as taking the substance itself. Indeed when having a drink at home, part of the joy is the act of puring the measure out and the anticipation it evokes.
Equally, for many, the very fact a substance is illegal heightens the expectation of enjoyment.
The fact your are smoking a lump of resin/snorting some powder possibly imported via someone's rectum doesn't seem to put many off.
Or that 85% of your heroin fix is not actually heroin.
Most illegal drugs are quite safe if used 'properly' (ie. knowing the purity of the substance, avoiding risky injecting/ingestion). Proper use of drugs is made far more difficult while it is illegal.
|
>> Most illegal drugs are quite safe if used 'properly' (ie. knowing the purity of the substance, avoiding risky injecting/ingestion). Proper use of drugs is made far more difficult while it is illegal.
Hear him!
Extreme caution at all times with white powders of unknown provenance. As with grass, the good stuff is thin on the ground, a rare treat (and that's if you like the substances - I don't like opiates myself but pure coke is very nice once in a blue moon. Speed is very effective but soon messes you up).
|
>> "It needs to be legalised so that it can be taxed".
Who says? Or, in whose opinion?
And why was it made illegal in the first place, more or less harmless as it is (like that harmless substance alcohol, oh yeah)?
It's a deplorable story, shot through with greed, stupidity and sadism. So stupid that it makes speed, cocaine and heroin seem more or less harmless too.
|
I am perhaps a little out of touch with the latest prices, and I cannot be a***d to check my maths, but the principle remains solid; The following is wildly inaccurate because of my reckless assumptions, but the core numbers are correct.
Processed and prepared cocaine is available in Columbia for around £1,000 per kg. It is sold in the US for around £40,000 per kg
Heroin can be had for around £1,800 per kg in Pakistan but will cost you around £100,000 per kg retail in London.
The synthetics range between a cost of £200 - £400 per kilo up to a retail price of £40,000 - £50,000 per kg.
Lets stick with cocaine;
So a market trader in Bogota receives about £1,000 for his kilogram. A legal kilogram packet insured costs about £9 to send to London. So now the package costs £1,009. Lets assume a profit margin and costs along the lines of cigarettes or alcohol, so the price of the kilo would now jump to £2,018.
We then tax it at around 80%, just to get our money’s worth, and thus the price jumps to about £3,600 per kilo..
Taking New York as an example, about 1% of the population spends around £100 per day on drugs. That’s around £600,000,000 per year.
However, the legal plan would cut the cost of those drugs from £600m to about £60m. The drug users of New York would save £560m per year, so imagine the enormous drop in crime and hardship. And New York taxation would suddenly gain £27m! PER YEAR!
Added to that the US spends about £30,000,000,000 per year on the “War on Drugsâ€.
So, extrapolating the population of New York up to the population of the US, and I know that will be inaccurate (8m to 320m) gives us a factor of 40.
Including all drugs, Cocaine is No., 2 in the league and represents about 2% of the total gives us a factor of 50.
So, legalising drugs in the US would result in;
- Users saving £560m per year
- Tax receipts increasing by £1,000,000,000 per year
- Tax payers savings of £30,000,000,000 per year
Of course, unemployment amongst drug smugglers and pushers would rise massively, but since more shop assistants and tax assessors would be required, that should work out. Drug related crime would massively diminish
I see no reason to suppose that the result would be any different in the UK, albeit scaled down by a couple of zeros.
Not o mention that by far the greatest proportion of the revenue would remain within the UK, rather than that nasty johnny foreigner getting it all, that even UKIP might have to rub two brain cells together.
And finally loads of drug users would increase their usage massively and die, saving the Health Service so much money that they could offer free treatment to immigrants.
What’s not to like?
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 15 Jun 16 at 16:12
|
The biggest lobby against legalising cannabis (at least in the US) comes from the alcohol industry.
|
>> The biggest lobby against legalising cannabis (at least in the US) comes from the alcohol
>> industry.
>>
>>
I am convinced that far thinking drug kingpins finance the anti-drugs lobby.
Keeps their business going and prices up. A mere $100 million or so in bribes is chickenfeed from their profits.
|
>> What’s not to like?
The people who previously made all the money from selling illegal drugs will turn to other crimes. So we should probably some of the taxes fighting organised crime.
|
|
A fair point, though they will struggle to finance their new crimes after a while. But its ok, we'll be able to afford it.
|
There' a lot of repetitive talk about 'crime' in this thread.
There's nothing intrinsically criminal about illegal drugs. They're just illegal. Criminality is something on a different level. Commercial drug dealing seems often to involve it. But the criminality isn't in the dope, it's in the dealers.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Wed 15 Jun 16 at 17:57
|
>>There's nothing intrinsically criminal about illegal drugs.
Actually that is the ONLY relevant factor. If it is illegal, then doing it is a crime.
I think you're getting confused between "crime" and "sin".
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 15 Jun 16 at 18:21
|
Certainly the harmful criminality I would think is in the supply, with a lot of small stuff by users funding their habits. If people want to use drugs with full awareness of what they are doing, then fair enough I suppose if it affects no one else.
But it does. Walking my small granddaughter across Riverside Bridge in Cambridge recently I was about to suggest we sat for a while on the seat half way across when I noticed the dozen or more used syringes on the decking.
I see that as a problem - at the moment my granddaughter will try to pick up anything that looks interesting, usually pebbles, so I'm sure a syringe that looks just like the one her mother gives her medicines from wouldn't be ignored.
As far as the users are concerned, the most surprising thing to me is that so many will take tablets etc with no certainty at all about what is in them, knowing that they are produced and sold by criminals only interested in making money out of them.
|
Whats not to like?
An increase in a number of the population running round having psychotic episodes,
|
That would be;
a) Up to them
b) short lived as they will be either arrested, learn to cope or will die.
c) something to do with the new tax receipts and and massive enforcement savings.
|
£3m Welsh Govt grant to traveller site! - devonite
