THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO

A Safe Sign Fell

A dead end sign has labelled as needing repair, but before it was repaired it caused £1,500 of damage to a car belonging to a struggling 76-year-old pensioner.

Alan Boor parked his car outside the entrance of his house on Woodland Avenue, Rayleigh, near a sign that was based on the nearby grass verge, but after being informed by a friend that the sign had fallen down, Alan Boor quickly realised the sign had actually fallen onto the roof rack of his vehicle, breaking his passenger window and denting the door where it was hit.

Alan Boor took his vehicle to the Nationwide Crash Repair Centre in Benfleet, Essex, where they calculated it would cost £1500 to fix the damage caused. Regrettably, Alan can’t afford to pay for the repairs to his Nissan Almera and County Hall declined to support him.

This is simply money that Mr Boor doesn’t have, and he’s enraged that they simply couldn’t care less and that the sign obviously hadn’t been maintained, and had it been maintained the whole thing wouldn’t have fallen, the signpost was rotting at the base and all rusty, and he’s now waiting for them to assume responsibility and pay up.

Following the incident, Alan got in touch with Essex County Council, claiming they should be responsible for paying the repair fee, but the council notified Alan Boor the latest routine inspection was conducted on October 24 and it had since been inspected again, while lying broken on the floor, and was still certified as safe enough.

A report from the risk and insurance team at County Hall said that a post-incident inspection was made of the incident location whereupon the Highway Inspector observed a no through road signpost had broken at the bottom and was laying on the verge with the base of the post connected to the stump in the verge.

A risk evaluation was made of the site but it wasn’t thought to be serious.

Throughout the risk assessment, the fault was given a risk factor of three. Any score below six implies that it isn’t deemed to be serious, so the inspector allocated a low priority defect ticket advising repairs should take place throughout the next schedule of works.

Section 58(1) of the Highway Act (1980) provides a defence for the Highway Authority to prove it’s taken the prudent measures to ensure it wasn’t dangerous and was maintained to a consistent standard. The letter then proceeded to say that Essex County Council was unable to grant any compensation whereby there was a legal defence against any such claims and that it was for this reason that they confirmed that liability in regard of Mr Boor’s request had been refused.

But Alan said that this antiquated bylaw was enabling the council to claim immunity from prosecution.

A spokesperson for the council stated that the claimant had communicated with them raising additional points in relation to the matter, and consequently, they’re proceeding to examine the case.

Maybe Mr Boor should have pushed the signpost down before it fell down, it was rotten so it would have avoided all that misery, but of course, then he would have been charged with criminal damage. Yet, the council cause criminal damage and they appear to be free from prosecution.

Fortunately, the signpost only fell onto a vehicle, but what if that very signpost had fallen onto a child, they could have either been pretty severely injured or killed, so who would have been responsible then? What would have the council said then, “Oh, we’re so sad to learn that your child’s death but we’re not at fault here and we’re not settling.”

It’s the same with pothole cases, the council perpetually appear to deny liability because of some reason or another, and if this was a sign owned by a private company such as a construction firm or a high street shop then they would have public liability insurance, so clearly the council must have some sort of insurance in place.

Of course, most businesses will initially deny responsibility, and for the preponderance of personal injury compensation cases, it’s normally clear enough to see who’s responsible.

In situations such as car accidents where one car smashes into the back of another stationary vehicle, it’s easy to apportion responsibility and hence work out who will be the responsible individual when it comes to making a claim for damages.

When liability is denied, in this case by the council it would seemingly be simpler to get a solicitor to dispense with it, such as a no win, no fee solicitor who would tell you as to whether or not they believe you have any realistic possibility of winning if your claim were to go all the way to court.

Mr Boor’s solicitor could then ask to see the risk assessment or any checks that had been done in the last few years before the signpost fell, if the council are found that they hadn’t checked it, or if they’d had warnings about it, but did nothing about it, then surely they must be liable?

So, let’s look at this realistically, the signpost had failed and was laying on the ground and the council said it was perfectly innocuous, well, that’s beyond surreal, in fact, it’s like a sketch out of Monty Python. So, clearly as far as the council were concerned it didn’t pose any further menace, but of course, it did, because it fell on poor Mr Boor’s car, and the evidence that it fell on the vehicle is faultless evidence that it was unsafe and that danger is what?

The Arron Banks Allegations

Concealed in a stash of police files in South Africa, hidden documents expose a series of remarkable assertions. A story of diamonds, guns and Russian money, and, if the allegations are to be believed, they could cast some light on how British campaigners fought for the Brexit referendum in 2016.

Centre to the Leave.EU campaign was Arron Banks, a millionaire businessman who tapped millions of pounds into the movement, but now, an investigation has revealed startling allegations about Arron Banks’ business ventures, and where he is alleged to have got his Brexit cash from.

Many of the claims arise from his former business associate, Chris Kimber. The pair fell out, and are now battling a painful legal action, and as a consequence of this controversy, a wealth of extraordinary documents has come to light.

They include the allegations that Arron Banks solicited financial help from Russia, specifically from the country’s state diamond company, Alrosa. Another allegation relates to the claims of dealing in illegal diamonds, but Arron Banks has been made to dismiss the accusations that he bribed an African politician to get a licence to prospect for diamonds.

Strangely, the documents include the claim the business magnate planned to provide “mercenary support” – “if need be,” in order to keep this same politician in power, but Arron Banks strenuously denies the allegations.

It’s essential that we now find out who bank-rolled Brexit through Arron Banks, and this must be read by everyone in the United Kingdom who now knows that they were shafted by a guy who wanted to make money without giving a stuff about the UK people so long as he got his own way.

He’s just another dishonest businessman, like thousands of others. Study any them and you’ll find dodgy dealings, but there’s no real proof of any ties with the Russian government or assumed connections to the Leave campaign.

In brief, Arron Banks bought a dog of mine employed people for nothing, greased through licences, Branson fashion, but what has this got to do with Brexit? Well, he gave millions to the Leave campaign, so that’s what it’s got to do with Brexit.

But to be frank, most people aren’t interested in what money went where because they’d sooner stare at a bare wall for a few days, even though Brexit’s biggest bankroller faced a National Crime Agency inquiry over alleged ties with Russia throughout the Brexit campaign.

But there’s no smoke without fire, and articles broadcasting it, and how the bad boys of Brexit formed links with Russia and the Trump campaign is always deserving of a read, and if he is found to have done anything dodgy, then he should be penalised to the full scope of the law, and then some more.

Arron Banks is now the centre of a criminal inquiry which could unfold into a serious political disgrace. One which involves the unlawful undermining of the UK government as well as the EU by agents of the state which is antagonistic to both.

Leave.EU was established by Arron Banks in 2015, and he stated it would campaign for Brexit outside the Westminster Bubble, but how far outside the SW1 postcode of the Leave.EU donations were originally sourced, and Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin and his oligarch associates loom large in this tale, and now it’s the business of the National Crime Agency, but still, Arron Banks denies any wrongdoing.

Peter Pan Syndrome

Michael Jackson suffered from Peter Pan syndrome, it’s actually an illness, it’s the inability to grow up or engage in behaviour normally associated with adulthood. The term comes from the fictional children’s character Peter Pan, who never ages, and while transageism, or adults considering themselves as juveniles or adolescents, also referred to as juvenilism or adolescentilism.

Respectively this is not recorded in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and isn’t seen by the American Psychiatric Association as a specific mental disorder. The idea is modelled on transgenderism, and this transeageist theory has accumulated a great deal of debate.

The concept earned notoriety through Dr Dan Kiley (psychoanalyst) in his book The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up, first published in 1983. His book became a worldwide bestseller and led to a stream of copycat pop-psychology books.

Dr Kiley got the idea for “The Peter Pan Syndrome” after noticing that, like the legendary character in the J. M. Barrie play, several of the troubled adolescent boys he treated had difficulties growing up and accepting adult responsibilities. This problem extended on into adulthood.

Another example of Peter Pan syndrome is used in the Aldous Huxley’s 1962 book “Island” in which one of the characters talks about dangerous male delinquents and power-loving hooligans who are “Peter Pans.” Their class of males boys who couldn’t read, wouldn’t learn and didn’t get on with anyone, and ultimately turned to the more extreme patterns of crime, and he used Adolf Hitler as an archetype of this phenomenon.

A notable example of a celebrity with Peter Pan syndrome was Michael Jackson, who stated, “I am Peter Pan in my heart.”

Michael Jackson called the 2,700-acre Los Olivos, California home, where he lived from 1988-2005, Neverland Ranch, after Neverland, the fantasy island on which Peter Pan lives. He stated that it was his only way of claiming the childhood he never had, having started early as a performing artist with his family.

He built various images of children, a floral clock, a petting zoo, a movie theatre, and a private amusement park containing cotton candy stands, two railroads, a Ferris wheel, carousel, Zipper, Octopus, Pirate Ship, Wave Swinger, Super Slide, roller coaster, go-karts, bumper cars, a tipi village, an amusement arcade.

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On Jackson’s dime, thousands of schoolchildren attended Neverland over the years, from neighbourhood children too sick kids from far away, with visitors frequently calling it dreamlike, and a preschool teacher visiting the site stated that Neverland was scented like cinnamon rolls, vanilla and candy, a bit like “Willy Wonkers Chocolate Factory.”

The ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’ affects people who don’t want or feel unable to grow up, people with the body of an adult but the mind of a child. They don’t know how to or don’t want to cease being kids and start being mothers or fathers.

The syndrome is not currently deemed psychopathology, given the World Health Organization has not identified it as a psychological disorder. However, an increasingly greater amount of adults are presenting emotionally juvenile behaviours in Western society.

They’re unable to grow up and take on adult duties, and even dress up and enjoy themselves as adolescents when they’re over 30 years old, and that the overprotection of parents can motivate children to develop Peter Pan Syndrome, given it normally affects dependent people who have been overprotected by their families and haven’t received the required abilities to brave life.

The Peter Pans of present society see the adult world as highly problematic and glorify adolescence, which is why they want to stay in that state of privilege. It can affect both sexes, but it appears more frequently amongst men, and some of the characteristics of the disorder is the inability of individuals taking on responsibilities, or to commit themselves or to keep promises, extreme care about what they look like and individual well-being and loss of self-confidence, but even though they don’t appear to show it, they actually come across as exactly the opposite.

Young People Still Struggling

Even though society is more open about mental health, support is still difficult to obtain. There might be more recognition of young people with mental health problems that are developing, but it’s still considerably hard for young people to get the help that they require.

Mental health is just as important as physical health, and the resources are simply not there for young people who need to be supported for their mental health. There really isn’t enough help for children and young people with mental health complexities, and those young people who have succeeded in accessing Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services found it especially difficult to get an initial referral, and there’s a pretty long wait between referral and their assessment, and the assessment and treatment.

Countless adolescents first visit their GP for advice and guidance and are frequently told that they’re depressed and their GP will give them a prescription, so they pop a tablet or two and when that doesn’t work, they go back to their GP who increases the dosage without considering making a referral to Mental Health.

There’s a number of these kids that are self-harmers, whether it’s cutting, drinking or using drugs to escape from the torture that they’re feeling, and many of these kids don’t make it and end up taking their own life, but then they simply become a statistic and it’s all brushed under the carpet, AND THIS ISN’T OKAY!

This simply reflects on what we hear every day from young people and parents, and despite there being vast progress made, there’s still an unacceptable barrier to young people getting help.

Every day there are calls to “Parents Helpline” from parents whose children are not getting help at school, and who have been waiting months for an assessment, or who are told they don’t meet the threshold for treatment. What do these parents have to do, do they have to wait until something really serious happens or their child takes their own life because they didn’t meet some ridiculous criteria?

We hear about young people that have started to self-harm or have become suicidal while waiting for support, and sometimes even then, they don’t always get the help or fit specific criteria, yet evidence confirms that getting the proper help quickly can prevent problems from intensifying, and it’s simply not good enough that around half of those young people who reach out for help are merely turned away.

Getting the nation to talk about mental health is a vital component of the fight, but it further needs to be met by a mental health system that’s equipped to manage the current crisis, and we are at breaking point as far as mental health goes.

It’s brilliant that things are changing and attitudes around mental health make it more acceptable to talk because these youngsters find it really challenging, but we further need the support to back up that social reform.

This involves extra funding for all mental health services, and a new focus on mental health education in schools, with designated specialist support for young people to talk to.

If you’re a parent of a teenager, or you can simply recall your own adolescence, you know this can be an emotionally difficult time under the best of circumstances, but for millions who are parents of pre-teens and teens, adolescent years can bring difficulties that go beyond the normal dread of growing up.

Around 20 per cent of kids aged between 13 to 18 has a behavioural disorder. A category that includes mental illness, substance use, and eating disorders and many more.

In fact, half of all lifetime cases of mental disorders start by the age of 14. Left untreated, mental illness can lead to poor school performance, substance misuse, and precarious sexual conduct, as well as tension within the family of the sufferer.

It can further have serious long-term consequences if the teenager drops out of school or ends up in the juvenile justice system, but as is the case with adults, not all teenagers who need help with their mental health get it, even if their situation is serious.

And with adolescents aged between 13 to 18, half of those with mental disorders that had caused them severe distress or impairment had never received treatment for their symptoms, such as mood disorders, depression, anxiety disorders, ADHD, behavioural disorders, substance use disorders and eating disorders.

So, why do so few adolescents receive the mental health care that they need? Solely because there are not enough qualified children’s mental health professionals to handle the number of children and adolescents with mental illness.

The average waiting time for an appointment for a child or adolescent psychiatric care is close to two months, more than three times the standard waiting time of two weeks for children’s hospital services, and this widespread lack of access has far-reaching consequences.

Teens and families suffer longer, with adverse behaviour patterns continuing unchecked, and if mental illness is involved, the disease progresses, and with many being turned away because they’re not ill enough, others suffer long waiting times and it could be years before that changes.

The provisions are greatly below required levels and numerous people who do get help face long waits for treatment, and this can be disastrous for people’s life prospects, their physical well-being, education and work chances.

We need the right staff with the proper skills in the correct places because effective action on prevention and early intervention can help young people more swiftly, as well as ease the pressure on health services.

As a mother of a child who suffered from mental health and depression I was fortunate enough not to be clueless where my child was concerned and noticed several different things going on and got the ball rolling, but for many teenagers with depression or any mental illness it’s almost too late because many of them never get diagnosed.

Lack of screening for depression is one part of the problem in children’s mental health, and there should be screening and detection for depression or any kind of mental illness, and parents may also not recognise the manifestations of a mental health problem or may not be aware of how severe the problem is, due to the lack of their understanding or perception of depression in children.

However, some parents know there’s a problem and ignore the blatant symptoms of depression in their children, or merely don’t want to help and are reluctant to seek help for their child’s depression, so would this be considered child abuse for a parent not to get medical help for their depressed teen?

Well, neglect is a continuous failure to meet a child’s basic requirements and is the most prevalent form of child abuse. If you left your child starving and filthy, without sufficient clothes, shelter, supervision and medical health care, that establishes abuse.

If a child is in danger or is not shielded from physical or emotional harm, that’s abuse, and this further involves not getting the love, care and attention they need from their parents.

A child who’s neglected will frequently suffer from other abuse as well, and neglect is dangerous and can cause severe, long-term harm, even death.

Neglect happens when parents or carers can’t or won’t meet the child’s needs, but sometimes this is because they don’t have the skills or support needed, or just because they don’t have the skills they don’t want to bother because it’s easier to brush it under the carpet, this is neglect!

Child abuse is an act by another person, adult or child that creates significant harm to a child. It could be physical, sexual or emotional, but it can just as often be about the lack of love, care and attention, but whatever form it takes, it can just be as crushing to a child as physical abuse.

An abused child will usually encounter more than one kind of abuse, as well as other challenges in their lives, and it frequently occurs over a duration of time, rather than being a one-off event.

Teens experience depression for much longer than their parents are aware, but there are several reasons for this, including the stigma of mental illness, and teens not being forthcoming because they blame themselves for feeling depressed and don’t want to upset anybody.

In fact, feeling like things are your fault is one of the manifestations of depression, and we’re lucky if a teenager tells their parents they’re feeling depressed or a parent recognises that flag signalling and takes their child for evaluation because the depression is likely far more severe than the parent might recognise.

And most teenagers who attempt suicide have never been assessed or treated for depression before, but after a child attempts suicide and a parent begins to understand and learn about depression, most parents are prepared to do anything to support their child, but in some cases, this doesn’t happen.

This is especially harmful to teenagers who ask for treatment and the message they get is that their suffering is not serious enough to treat, and depression and its worst danger, suicide, are severe and frequent problems in children and teenagers. Suicide is the second leading cause of death, resulting in more deaths than from cancer or any other illness or disease.

In addition to deaths by suicide, depression can cause progressively exacerbated brain changes, yet, even after a qualified mental health professional diagnoses a child with depression, some parents refuse treatment, and consequently mental health can be ignored with a parent who willfully refuses to provide treatment for their child for depression which could be seen as a form of child abuse.

The term medical neglect refers to a child being harmed due to a lack of medical care, but this not only applies to parents but also to the inadequate mental health treatment that they get or don’t get from service providers in the medical profession.

But medical neglect further happens when parents understand the medical advice given, along with the favoured treatment that would have important benefits for the child’s well-being, and the parent or caregiver still denies or ignores treatment or access to care, another way for neglect to occur is to disregard visible manifestations of the illness.

Nevertheless, GP’s and doctors are likewise just as negligent when they don’t or won’t do anything about the child or teenager that has asked for help and just brushes it under the carpet, and while there’s a criterion which is normally applied to chronic physical illnesses like HIV or asthma, it seems to be rarely applied to mental illnesses.

It appears that if a child or teenager has an illness such as diabetes or asthma, a parent would take their child to the GP for treatment, but it’s frequently found that if it’s a teenager with depression or has attempted multiple suicides the parent is less inclined to agree to any help for their child.

Depression is difficult to diagnose because it is not always obvious, and parents may not believe in an illness they don’t see, and families who may not want to engage in psychotherapy or may object to their child taking pills, what are the alternatives for ensuring these children get proper care?

Well, I guess when parents and physicians view depression like any other illness, then more people will be helped, and GPs and doctors should be pulling together to stop neglect like this from happening by talking to parents about depression and treatment, and implementing education and discussing their concerns.

Parents need to be taught that some illnesses still exist and cause pain even if they can’t always see it, and parents should also know doctors aren’t blaming them for their child’s illness, but they’re responsible for getting their child appropriate treatment, and if they don’t, that’s neglect!

Danny Dyer Says

Danny Dyer said that a teenager who left London to join up with ISIS in Syria should be permitted to return to the United Kingdom because the UK security services could get necessary information from Shamima Begum about how young people are radicalised by revolutionaries.

Maybe she does need the opportunity to perhaps explain herself and what’s going on over there, perhaps we do need to learn a little bit more about how they got to her and how she felt it was the right time to jump on a plane and leave the United Kingdom at the age of 15 years old.

She is still a young girl, and perhaps we can learn from it.

Shamima left Bethnal Green, East London, aged 15 in 2015, with two other schoolgirls, and joined up with ISIS in Syria, and partnered a Dutch national who fought for a terrorist group, but now, with the caliphate on the verge of collapse, Shamima has moved to a refugee camp in northern Syria, where she was hunted down by reporters, who she told about her desire to retreat to London.

Shamima has recently given birth to her third child, a baby boy. Her two other children died in infancy, so maybe this is the mindset of why she wants to go back to the United Kingdom with her son?

She thinks that a lot of people should have compassion towards her and her son, and doesn’t want to remain in the camp permanently with her son and that the British administration doesn’t have any proof to say that she’s a security threat, and she’s asked her family to keep trying to get her back to the United Kingdom and that the biggest priority is her son, and she hopes that perhaps for the well-being of herself and her son that the British government let her back into the United Kingdom.

Shamima lived as a homemaker throughout the four years in the ISIS region and maintains she never did anything bad, and never prompted people to go to Syria, but Home Secretary Sajid Javid has indicated that he will fight to prevent ISIS fighters retreating to the United Kingdom, but Justice Secretary David Gauke said that Britain can’t make citizens stateless.

Numerous ISIS supporters have returned to European nations, but it’s a tough hurdle that we now front because what should we do about those who are still attempting to return? And as Home Secretary, his precedence is to guarantee the security and protection of the country, and should not let anything endanger that.

This is quite a debatable subject and there are copious amounts of people who would not agree with her coming back to the United Kingdom, she made the decision to join ISIS and marry a Dutch national, but if she fears for the safety of her son, perhaps she should send him back to England for the safety of his future and stay behind.

Yet, with all this publicity she will sell her story and end up becoming a millionaire, whilst we have to endure on our pensions for being loyal, hardworking British taxpayers all our lives, so where is the fairness?

She only wants to come back because ISIS has been defeated, and she has nowhere to hide now, so what really happened to her Dutch hubby? Is he dead, or did he just abandon her for another wife?

We don’t really need her to be returned to the United Kingdom in order to obtain information from her. The United Kingdom has security services that are more than competent in getting the information they need, and the very sentence where she says, “They don’t have any evidence against me that I’m dangerous” so she’s not saying that she’s not dangerous, she’s simply saying there isn’t any evidence against her that she is dangerous.

Stop Treating School Refusal As Truancy

School refusal, sometimes known as school phobia or emotionally based school avoidance and is normally defined by off the scale anxiety, and it can occur from any amount of underlying problems including bullying, or an undiagnosed, unsupported Special Educational Need or Disability, or a mental health problem.

Whilst the underlying problem can exhibit significant difficulties in itself, the resulting school refusal leaves families in crisis, and a new holding code would start to measure the scale of the developing dilemma.

It would ensure a steady strategy across all schools, aid children until their problems could be addressed and ease families from the threat of prosecution for unlawful absences.

The decision to approve absenteeism rests with specific schools who are ruled by legal responsibilities, attendance targets and Ofsted goals as well as the pupil’s wellbeing, but none of the current 23 attendance regulations allows for a holding stage while the problem of school refusal is investigated and suitable help rendered.

Without medical evidence that a child is unfit for school, absence is consequently usually unauthorised and classified as truancy, which is a prosecutable crime, and budget cuts, increased testing, delays in , higher thresholds for mental health support and challenges securing and achieving Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), which succeeded the earlier Statement of Educational Need, are all compounding the dilemma.

Whilst there’s no reliable evidence on school refusal at present, the growth in homeschooling, prosecutions and permanent exclusions are all pointers of a significant problem, and a national Facebook group, Not Fine in School (NFIS) which started in November 1917 presently has over 4,800 members (February 2019) and has increased to the rate of 350-400 new members every month.

The completion of an NFIS poll which appeared in March 2018 and was completed by 1,661 families revealed that 92 per cent of parents believed that their child’s school attendance problems were related to undiagnosed or unsupported Special Educational Need or Disability.

Despite this, 20 per cent had been told not to pursue asking for an Education Health and Care plan (EHCP) and a further 20 per cent didn’t even know what an EHCP was.

55 per cent of parents were blamed for their child’s attendance problems and 25 per cent of parents were reported to Social Services because of their child’s bad attendance.

18.4 per cent of parents had been accused of manufacturing or influencing their child’s illness, further known as FII or Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, and 67 per cent had been put under pressure to force their child into school, yet 59 per cent said this had made the situation worse.

A new attendance code is only part of the narrative and must be backed by extensive examination, thriving school refusal response plans and national supervision because it’s a daily fight to get a child to school with so much anxiety going on, and simply watching a child make themselves sick so that people can tick boxes is so evil, and at what time are people going to sit up and accept that it’s not the parents failing.

And parents of school refusers are being punished for their child’s anxiety problems and undiagnosed Pathological Demand Avoidance, but are being given warning letters about unlawful absences, yet parents have their own problems to deal with without the intimidation of being penalised or imprisoned.

People are signing the petition because until the stats reveal how great the problem is, there will be no incentive to do anything to help these children and parents, and those children who refuse to go to school due to anxiety bought on by many years of schools not meeting their needs, are separated from their peers and handled like dangerous animals.

This is why there are numerous parents that are now homeschooling their children because the school system has failed to identify or document that failure, and everything must change.

Biggest Broadcasting Union Joins Battle

Britain’s largest broadcasting union has joined the Mirror-backed campaign to save free TV licences for the over-75s, as millions of older people risk being disrobed of the benefit after the Tories gave responsibility for funding the perk to the corporation from June 2020.

But pensioners and campaigners are battling to save the necessary lifeline, and the Bectu broadcasting union is supporting the campaign, and it rebukes the Tories for U-turning on a 2017 election promise to keep the benefit for the remainder of this parliament, even though it had already given funding accountability to the BBC.

The Government made a manifesto commitment to safeguarding free TV licences for over-75s and now it is washing its hands of its own welfare obligations and expecting the BBC to pick up the tab, and that’s utterly unacceptable.

Not only should the government still meet the cost of any concessionary licence scheme, but there should also be a broader discussion about funding methods for the BBC so that everyone can be sure that its fate as a treasured and necessary public service is safeguarded.

Households with a member over-75 automatically qualify for a free licence, saving them £150.50 a year, but it’s not just about the money. Many older people end up being on their own and are pretty isolated from the community particularly if they’re disabled or even worse housebound, and anyone over the age of retirement should be permitted to have their TV licence for free because sometimes it’s the only thing they have left in their life.

But under the overhaul, the benefit could be restricted to save the BBC money, under a stitch-up where the Tories have sought to evade responsibility.

The cost is estimated to hit £745 million-a-year and Auntie is deliberating on whether to restrict free licences, means-test them or axe them all together, and the decision to shift the cost to the BBC was exercised in 2015.

But the Conservatives pledged in their 2017 election manifesto to protect the benefit, and Bectu’s submission to the BBC consultation makes the case for Whitehall to carry on financing the perk.

This concession is a benefit and, as such, liability for its funding should regress back to the government and not the BBC, and there might be a significant bearing on quality if the BBC is made to divert cash from programming and danger of jeopardising the future of a raft of major public service programming.

Free licences for the over-75’s play a significant role in promoting social integration, tackling isolation and improving quality of life for older citizens, highlighting the Tories broken election promise.

However, since establishing a government, they have assured the BBC that it will be free to take its own decision on the fate of concessionary licence fees from 2020, and these conflicting promises have forced the BBC’s hand and weakened its capacity to sustain current levels of production and quality.

The corporation has already had to deliver savings on an unparalleled scale and there’s no leeway for more cuts without a disastrous impact on quality and production, that will be felt by viewers and by members. With the BBC squandering the money licence payers cough up by overcompensating so-called personalities and presenters to appear on shows no one wants to see.

Most of the shows are all brainwashing propaganda for the left wing who control the BBC, and most of the material that’s on there is all worn formatted repeats, it’s time to scrap the licence and make it free for everyone.

And if it’s not made free, then at least make it a subscription. Most people belong to Sky or Virgin Media et cetera and pay way over the odds and then still have to pay for their TV licence, what’s that all about? The problem is, people simply accept stuff that they think is out of their control, and if we’re paying for a subscription to view TV, whatever the channels are, they should all be merged as one because why should we have to pay for Sky and Virgin Media et cetera and still have to pay for the BBC?

And what’s with the free TV once a person’s 75 years old, are they anticipating that many by that time will be dead by then?

TV usage should be metered like a lot of things are, that way we only pay for what we view and how long our TV is on for, that way there will be no subscriptions and if we can’t afford to watch it, then we don’t. I guess it could be classified a bit like big brother, but then they follow our consumption anyhow.

As it stands pensioners are made to feel like a burden on the economy, they’re blamed for the NHS crisis, with the government coming after them for more tax and now the BBC’s hopping on the bandwagon. Yet they have no difficulty throwing money at all and sundry, but the people who have grafted all their lives and have helped to build this country have to suffer in their later years, making it difficult for them when they should be putting their feet up and enjoying their well-earned rest.

If the BBC want to save money maybe they should prune back their huge lavish salaries of its so-called star presenters, yet they cheat the elderly of a tax break to justify the likes of Zoe Ball and Ferne Cotton and others.

If you view or record shows as they’re being shown on telly in the United Kingdom, which is deemed as live TV you’ll need to be covered by a TV licence. You further require one if you use BBC iPlayer. What many may not realise is that this is the case regardless of the device their viewing it on.

And according to research, over 31 per cent of students don’t know that viewing live TV on a mobile device requires a licence, although in most cases they don’t need two if they already have one. So whether you’re viewing live TV on a television, computer, tablet, games console, smartphone or any other device, you’ll need to pay the fee.

But you don’t require a TV licence if you only view content after it’s been shown on television except if it’s on iPlayer. TV programmes downloaded or streamed following the broadcast on other catch-up services are fine without one.

When we speak about live TV, confusingly it isn’t necessarily a live episode of a programme, it could be pre-recorded. Live TV is content that’s being transmitted on a TV channel. This applies to all channels including, say, +1 channels) on any mainstream TV platform, including Freeview, Virgin or Sky.

It further pertains to viewing live TV through internet-only services such as Now TV and YouTube, but only if you view content that’s also being aired on a TV channel, for example, if you use YouTube to watch cat videos or pranksters you don’t require a TV licence to do that.

So, online services that only show content on-demand, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, don’t need to have a TV licence.

Here are some examples to show what this means:

When viewing an episode of The Big Bang Theory on your TV, on Channel 4, you DO need a TV licence.

When viewing an episode of The Big Bang Theory via the Channel 4 online streaming service (All 4) at the same time as it’s being shown on Channel 4, you DO need a TV licence.

When watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory online when it isn’t being broadcast live on Channel 4, you DON’T need a TV licence.

Your TV licence covers your household, no matter how many TVs you have, but the rules vary for shared student accommodation. Additionally, if you pay for a licence at home, it’ll cover you on a mobile device outside of your home subject to specific conditions.

However, I can’t honestly see a lot of over 75’s being thrown into prison for not paying their TV licence, they don’t have enough room in prisons as it is, and hurling pensioners into prison for such a trivial transgression would create a public disturbance, as well as putting further pressure on the prison service.

Theresa May is continually banging on about ending austerity, and then she allows this disgraceful act of mugging pensioners of their TV licence, and it’s political deception before our very eyes, saying one thing, but meaning another.

Yes, let’s set up a system where super-rich people can dodge inheritance tax through trusts but let’s make old people pay for their TV licences. You couldn’t make this crap up if you tried.

The BBC is out of date these days, and the way in which people view television has transformed radically, and you can get more than eighteen months of stuff on Netflix for the price of a TV licence.

If you’re registered blind, meaning severely sight impaired then the BBC grant you a blind concession TV licence, which gives you 50 per cent off the cost of a TV licence, but you don’t qualify for this if you’re registered as partially blind, this tells you everything you need to know about the BBC!

This is such a dated tax, and the fact that it’s still called a TV licence says it all, and it’s a scam, it’s not a TV licence, it’s a tax. Turn it off folks, stream your content from none live platforms, apart from Iplayer, there are masses of material out there that you can view without having to get a TV licence. It’s just a stealth tax to pay a magnitude of overpaid stars.

And seeing as it’s the elderly who seemingly watch more TV and can least afford the licence fee, which is simply a typical cynical move by the Left-wing elite that govern the BBC to get more funds to pay for yet more politically correct programmes intended for the youth audience that probably don’t watch as much TV or buy a licence, but which is paid for by everyone else.

Cancel your licence and do something more productive with the money.

A chronically-ill grandmother from Belfast was incarcerated for six days after she didn’t pay her TV licence. Anne Smith, 59, from Poleglass, who has severe mobility problems and was awaiting a double-hip replacement, was ordered to present herself to police by 5 pm on the Wednesday of last year so she could begin a six-day sentence behind bars.

She was jailed after she didn’t pay a £1,100 court fine for failing to pay her television licence.

The mother of four, who has 12 grandchildren said she was terrified at the possibility of being jailed, and she said it was utterly ludicrous that they would arrest a woman over a TV licence.

The poor woman had broken her hip and was powerless to get out of the house for an entire year. In hindsight, she should have paid her TV licence but because of her health and the fact that she’d had to support her sister through cancer, she merely didn’t get round to it.

This is a distressing situation and the arrest and the incarceration of a woman for a somewhat trivial offence, and her family made it clear that there were mitigating circumstances given her extremely severe health difficulties and attempts were actually being made to meet the outstanding fines at the time she was arrested.

However, it appeared that because the bench warrant had now been issued, this was not allowed and she was instead arrested from her home and then taken to Hydebank Prison.

There clearly is an obvious over-reaction here because the system should have shown some flexibility because jailing a chronically ill grandmother doesn’t do anyone any service, especially when she was making good on her struggles to pay the fines.

It’s shameful that a 59-year-old chronically ill woman was sentenced for not paying her TV licence, and this is cruel treatment of a defenceless working-class woman.

No one was detained for the £650 million Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) bill, but when an ordinary person struggles to make ends meet they’re tossed into jail. One rule for the wealthy, one law for the poor, and it’s sick and draconian.

The government are simply filthy corrupt politicians who would steal from their own grandparents, presumably Theresa May as sanctioned this? And we send approximately £14 billion overseas in so-called aid, yet the government want our 75-year-olds to pay up for this left-wing TV propaganda.

So, now it’s picking on the pensioners with the BBC not wanting to pay it and then taking it away from the pensioners. Perhaps they should simply sell the BBC off altogether and scrap this antiquated TV licence for everyone as it’s no longer fit for purpose.

And clearly, they’ve sussed that there’s going to be an ever increasing amount of people entering this age bracket, next it will be that old chestnut, “We’re moving it to the age of 85 because people are living longer!”

The BBC is targeting the elderly now because the younger generation is using Netflix, Amazon and other streaming sites and services because they offer much better entertainment service, and it’s affordable and 100 per cent better value than paying for the BBC.

The BBC is going to die a gradual death and there are many people out there that are going to enjoy watching it pass into the history bin, but here’s an idea, let the courts send all these over 75’s to prison, where they’ll get a free TV, free food, free immediate healthcare, a free warm room and bed, and no bills to pay, and which costs the government more money to do that then accentuating over a stupid TV licence.

Politicians break promises all the time, so should this be the kind of situation where a voter should be able to go to court and obtain some legal solution? And usually when someone breaks a promise over something important, the other person can threaten to get the law involved, and you can prosecute the offender.

It’s your right to legal redress and not only for straightforward disputes, and normally, there’s some smart lawyer someplace who can formulate your case. Can you imagine if every 75-year-old took this matter to court, it would be the greatest thing in British history?

The thing is, politicians are elected to deal with the important fields of policy that affect the people, matters of life and death, going to war or funding matters that will determine society’s standard of living, the economy and law and order, because this is as serious as it can get.

BBC presenters get excessive wages:

BBC presenters salary
Name Salary band (2018) Main BBC job
Nicky Campbell £410,000 – £419,999 Presenter, Radio 5
Jeremy Vine £440,000 – £449,999 Presenter, Radio 2
John Humphrys £400,000-£409,999 Presenter, Today and Mastermind
Andrew Marr £400,000 – £409,999 Presenter, Andrew Marr Show

Gary Lineker, who fronts the BBC’s football coverage, is paid between £1.75 million and £1.76 million a year, supplanting at the top of the salary list the Radio 2 presenter Chris Evans, whose £2.2 million salary has been reduced to £1.66 million – £1.67 million, partially as a consequence of resigning from the BBC2 program Top Gear.

However, the BBC is a publicly owned sanctioned corporation created by the Royal Charter. That’s a really elaborate way of saying that it belongs to the people, there are no shareholders, and it’s declared to exist by law, no one else can call themselves by the same name, and is granted legal status by the Crown.

The BBC’s five public expectations are set out by the Royal Charter and Agreement, the constitutional basis for the BBC as presented to Parliament. These purposes outline the values the BBC holds when trying to accomplish its purpose to inform, educate and entertain.

So, what does your TV licence fee pay for? The fee you pay gives a broad range of TV, radio and online content as well as expanding new ways to deliver it to you. In addition to financing BBC programmes and services, a proportion of the licence fee adds to the costs of rolling out broadband to the UK population and financing Welsh Language TV channel S4C and local TV channels.

So, if we’re paying for a TV licence then why are we paying extra for other channels that the governments BBC don’t own? Well, the simple answer is company’s like Virgin Media, Sky et cetera, they’re in bed with the TV Licensing Authority which is contracted out to who knows where these days.

The requirement to hold a TV licence and to pay a fee is mandated by law under the Communications Act 2003 and the Communications (Television Licencing) Regulations 2004, as amended, and one needs to be covered by a TV licence no matter what device they use to view or record television shows that are being shown on TV or live online TV service.

One can’t download or view BBC shows on demand, including catch up TV, on BBC Iplayer, this includes TV’s, desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, games consoles, digital boxes, DVD, Blu-ray and VHS recorders.

Even if one accesses BBC Iplayer through a different provider, such as Sky, Virgin Media, Freeview or BT, you must have a licence.

However, it appears that rambling politicians are beyond the law, with one competitor who unambiguously commits to one plan of action when seeking a public vote and then does something entirely diverse, much to public inconvenience.

However, the law is not well placed to help the discouraged voter. For example, you can’t sue that politician for breach of contract, at least not in the jurisdiction of England and Wales because a politician’s promise isn’t an offer which by your acceptance when choosing a vote constitutes a lawfully obligatory agreement, so in reality their agreement, promise, whatever you want to name it, is worthless, and what comes out of their mouth is all wind and piss.

But if we had a law upon politicians breaking their word, all that would mean is that politicians would then simply break their promises in a different way.

Law is not magic, but then politicians should not default on their obligations, and they should be answerable for what they say and do and should be fearlessly scrutinised by their peers and there should be extreme clarity of the political process.

Furthermore, if politicians are going to make promises that they obviously aren’t going to keep, why should the public take these manifestos seriously?

Not only do politicians continually make promises they know they will never keep, but they further know that they will never be held liable for those promises that they never meant to keep and will be uniquely immune from any sort of formal review method.

There’s no other position in the world that bears the same privilege from proper scrutiny, unquestionably not one that involves working on behalf of its voters, and all we see is them abusing their position, and it seems like all world legislators misuse their positions to protect themselves, simply because they can.

Political parties are pretty much immune from regulation when it comes to telling porkie pies, but then the people who are responsible for the conduct of politicians are the voters who put them in office.

Agony Of Homeless Mum-To-Be

Warming her hands on a cup of coffee, Mandy looks up sadly and says that she lost her baby because while she and her partner Sean were wandering the streets in search of respite from the bitter cold and striving to withstand biting temperatures since becoming homeless just before Christmas, their unborn child, tragically, did not.

Mandy, 47, said that the nurse said it was the cold that killed her child because Mandy was going through a number of variations in temperature, from piercing cold, to warm, to freezing again and the baby couldn’t cope.

Mandy was already expecting when her husband booted her out. Sean, 32, the unborn seven-week-old’s father, was evicted from his lodgings, and the couple worried for the baby’s welfare, so they went to the council asking for help to arrange an interim settlement.

They waited five hours in the council offices, only for someone to come back and inform them they could only accommodate them if they provided a pregnancy test, and went to an appointment with a midwife.

They went to the hospital, but the only appointment they had was a month later. Now it’s too late, the baby is dead! And they believe that if the housing officers had responded more quickly to get Mandy out of the cold she would not have miscarried.

It’s awful out on those streets and usually so unbearably bitter cold that sometimes people out on the streets feel like they might not last the night, and local charities have now reprimanded Tory-run Northampton council for constantly delaying help, and the authority has now reached ludicrous levels of exclusion.

Stan Robertson, 51, was once homeless and now delivers cooked breakfasts to the likes of Mandy and Sean each day, and the people that he’s helped have been prohibited from council services, and if it wasn’t for people like Stan, they’d have no one.

Northampton borough council denied that a pregnant woman would be refused access to its services, and a spokesman from Northampton borough council said that any rough sleeper who thinks they’re pregnant would be quickly fast-tracked into temporary accommodation in order to ensure they don’t have to sleep rough on the streets.

They further denied making it hard for homeless people to access services but acknowledged that the night shelter is only accessible to local people, and said that given that it’s a free shelter that gives meals, if they don’t insist on some kind of local connection then the taxpayers of Northampton would effectively be helping rough sleepers from everywhere.

In this day and age there’s no reason for people to be homeless, but with austerity cuts and Brexit being more important than the people of the United Kingdom nobody appears to give a damn, and numerous homeless people are being assaulted on the streets or are forced into prostitution.

Once out on the streets, it becomes difficult for them to get work because they have no fixed abode, and companies are really unwilling to take them on, and then there’s Buckingham Palace with all those apartments lying vacant, I thought the Queen was a Christian and had some empathy?

However, this is the fate of Great Britain, and it’s getting worse, and we’re happily welcoming a Dickensian Britain where we have the wickedest politicians in the history of Great Britain and no morals in society, money first, people last, where royalty get their weddings paid for while poor people get persecuted.

And what’s absolutely horrifying is that other people believe that displaced people make themselves homeless, but they don’t because the Job Centre give a date for an appointment, then they change it, and then say that they missed their appointment, then they sanction them, so they finish up with no money, and it’s even worse on Universal Credit as they now mess the money up for months at a time so then they’re evicted from their homes and other homeless people simply give up on the broken system as they can’t get anywhere or answers from them.

People don’t genuinely make themselves homeless, it’s not a life choice, and it’s an outright catastrophe, but people have no pity, so they go ahead and shame her, but people should not be shaming her, they should be shaming the person who made her homeless.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have got herself into that position in the first place, but it’s easy to lay blame when it’s someone else, but what one should remember is that is someone’s daughter and granddaughter had the pregnancy been viable. Most councils will ask for a doctors letter or something from the midwife as confirmation, and asking them to do a pregnancy test is a really personal thing to be asked by a council.

What does this council do, provide pee sticks to test if women are really pregnant when they come in?

I know how wicked things are in some areas as my son and his partner have a baby and they live in a bedsit and have been told that they will have to wait ten years before they get a one bedroom flat and that they will then have to sleep in the living room while the child has the bedroom, and the possibilities of ever getting a two bedroom are virtually none existent, so what chance does the homeless person on the streets have?

There are also other people who would never get considered for a council house or flat and have to rent privately. Some are living in bedsits with three children or more because they can’t afford a bigger property on Universal Credit, and I already know what other people are thinking, they shouldn’t have so many kids.

Next, the government will bring in sterilisation after the first child, or perhaps the government want to bring back Nazi forced sterilization as a law, and while the government are at it, why don’t they just bring back concentration camps for the women that even consider pregnancy?

Because none of this is morally ethical, but what our government labels as morally ethical is letting people from other nations to simply hop over on a vessel to England whenever they want, and then they welcome them in with open arms, give them someplace to live and put a silver spoon in their mouths along with it.

But the people of the United Kingdom have to wait because it appears we’re less significant, even though we were born here, and as I’ve said before, I have no problem with foreigners coming to the United Kingdom and they have been doing so for a long time now, but presently we simply don’t have the room.

Why can’t they just go to America where there’s masses of room, or Australia, why because they won’t let them in! After all, if the shoe was on the other foot and Great Britain was in turmoil and we required refuge in another nation, do you imagine they would let us in? Charity begins at home.

And there appears to be such a hideous attitude from some people who have no concept of what it’s like to be out on the streets, but everything can change in the blink of an eye, and those people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Northampton does have shelters but they’re not always easy to access due to restrictions, and I’m sure neither of these people intended on being in this position, and anyone in this situation needs care and kindness and not senseless discrimination.

I so hope that anybody reading this with a senseless opinion doesn’t become one of those people out on the streets who feel worthless. Whatever they did, however, they got there, they’re human beings, and life is a life, no matter what avenue of life one comes from, and no one knows what’s around the corner, particularly with the Tories in government.

Margaret Thatcher Will Get A Statue

Margaret Thatcher is going to get a statue in Grantham, despite threats of vandalism, as proposals to construct a £30,000 statue in the ex-Tory PM’s home town where it was approved unanimously by a planning committee.

It will be put on a 10-foot high granite plinth due to concerns of a motivated far-left movement, who may be committed to public activism.

The statue was formerly planned for Parliament Square in Westminster, but instead, it will be placed at St Peter’s Hill in Baroness Thatcher’s home town of Grantham, Lincolnshire, a place those in support of the application said she had put into the worldwide consciousness.

Lincolnshire Police said they didn’t reject the application but asked the committee to be wary around the security of the statue, and concerns about the statue being vandalised were at the forefront of some of the councillors’ minds, with one implying the statue would be better placed in the middle of a pond to prevent people from climbing it.

South Kesteven District Council decided to dismiss objections from the public, which included the potential for crime and disorder, Mrs Thatcher’s divisive policies, and public cost implications. Currently, the only marking of Baroness Thatcher in the town is a plaque on the corner of North Parade and Broad Street to show where she was born.

The statue, standing just over 20ft high, will be located in between the two current statues in the area of Sir Isaac Newton and Frederick Tollemache. It was created by artist Douglas Jennings, but the statue was denied by Westminster Council with a report saying it could attract potential vandalism and civil disorder.

But the Lincolnshire-based council chose to give consent on the condition it is erected in the next three years, but a small number of Labour Party members from the area protested outside the Guildhall before the hearing, displaying banners such as Grantham Resident Against Maggie.

The plan had 17 objections and seven people writing in support, with those in support commenting on the possibility of an enhancement to Grantham’s tourist offer, and during the meeting, the committee’s chairman Councillor Martin Wilkins ventured to remind the panel they were a non-political body, to which one councillor replied: “This is a statue of Margaret Thatcher, how can it not be political?”

A report to the committee said: “In general, there remains a motivated far-left movement across the UK (though not so much in Lincolnshire) who may be committed to public activism.

“Margaret Thatcher does, however, maintain an element of emblematic significance to many on the left and the passage of time does seem to have diminished that intensity of feeling.”

Councillor Charmaine Morgan said she would not vote on the application and spoke against it, saying: “It is currently being held in an out of sight, secret location.

“Perhaps it should stay there.”

But those in support asked why it had taken so long for the statue to be brought to the town.

“Very few towns can claim a prime minister,” one supporter said, adding: “Grantham should be proud.”

Although we should question how the statue of the most vilified Prime Minister in living history will be protected, it will certainly be a tourist draw, with most people and sightseers thinking about how they can trash it, and I’m sure the statue of her will draw many pigeons that will defecate on her, similar to the way she defecated on the workers.

Once again nobody is taking any notice of what the public wants and they will still put this statue up of Margaret Thatcher, and then they will spend a fortune keeping it clean because one thing for sure, it will definitely be vandalised on a regular basis, why don’t they just put statues up of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady while they’re at it.

Not only that, whilst the public fund the police through their Council Tax, the green lights been given for this monstrosity to be put in within the next 3 years, even while austerity continues, what a misuse of taxpayers money on such an eyesore.

How about using the money on children in hospital or heating for old folks, you know something useful?

Less Of A Threat To Society

Should drugs like cannabis be sold in off-licenses? Well, the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner believes so, and Arfon Jones recently came out and called for measures to be taken to regulate the sale of certain prohibited substances.

He wants to see drugs controlled and sold by responsible retailers similar to off-licences that sell alcohol because he doesn’t see the difference between the use of alcohol and the use of cannabis.

The candid former policeman has further come out publicly in the past stating that the current war on drug crime has totally failed, and his opinions have produced a mighty response amongst readers, with many coming out either for or against the suggestion on social media.

Some people have never been weed smokers but totally agree with Arfon on this. The problem is some people are close-minded and they refuse to recognise things from a different perspective. Alcohol is one of the worst drugs there is, yet being drunk isn’t just culturally acceptable, it’s become glamorized.

Pot smokers are far less of a menace to society than drunks, and if you talk to a recovered alcoholic they would personally tell you how much harm drinking does because alcohol abuse can cause Polysythemia, Chronic Pancreatitis and Diabetes.

However, since medicating with cannabis some people say that all their conditions have gone, no more Polysthemia, Chronic Pancreatitis or Diabetes, but there are other people who say that starting off on soft drugs will lead to heroin and cocaine addiction.

People need to look at what’s happening around the world. It’s legal in a number of countries and States of America and Canada joined the long list, so do these countries know something that we don’t?

Portugal embraced a different approach to drug use and now that system is being utilised as a role model for legalisation due to its profound success, and the figures show prohibition doesn’t work, well done Arfon for leading the way on this new approach.

The grown-ups need to do some actual research because children with severe autism are being treated with oils and are able to communicate and play, and elderly people with Parkinson’s disease and people with cancer are being treated with CBD oils and are performing much better.

But ignorance is bliss and being brainwashed is the new hip thing these days.

Of course, cannabis shouldn’t be sold in off-licences because it needs to be controlled, so for medicinal use on prescription would be a good thing because on many occasions it’s been demonstrated as a benefit to a number of people.

At the moment there are numerous people who are purchasing CBD oil on the black market for pain mostly and it’s been seen to work, and it must work to a particular level because it’s really expensive and people wouldn’t buy it if it didn’t work, not at the price it’s being sold for on the black market.

But the United Kingdom, on the whole, are considered too conservative and narrow-minded to make those propitious changes, unfortunately, not only on this subject but other issues as well, and most of us Brits need to think outside the box.

Since Prohibition ended in the 1930s, alcohol has become broadly accessible and culturally accepted by the masses, whereas cannabis has continued to be essentially forbidden and moderately defamed, although these views are slowly starting to change, and there are still numerous people who think that marijuana is more damaging than alcohol.

Most cannabis smokers would oppose this intensely with this view, but is their belief supported?

Alcohol is by far the most easily accessible mind-altering substance on the market. Anybody over the legal drinking age can wander into a shop and purchase enough alcohol to get totally trashed, or stroll into a pub and rack up a substantial tab without issue.

Cannabis is considerably more hard to come by, and in many places it’s still banned, indicating that the only way to get it is on the black market, and even in the many places where weed is allowed, there may be constraints on how much you can get, not to mention the fact that high-quality bud can be prohibitively costly.

Although this has not affected marijuana’s notoriety, and more people are using it now than ever before, it still comes nowhere close to alcohol in terms of who participates and how frequently.

According to the 2015 Survey on Drug Use, a huge 86.4 per cent of adults aged above 18 years had tried alcohol at least once, with 7 per cent confessing to being big drinkers, and in comparison, a survey conducted by Marist College Institute for Public Opinion discovered that just 52 per cent of adults had tried marijuana at least once, and 14 per cent reported that they used cannabis frequently, with frequent use described as at least once or twice a month.

I frequently overhear people saying, let’s go to Amsterdam where we can smoke as much cannabis as we like, well, here’s everything you need to know about marijuana smoking in the Netherlands.

Though deemed a lowbrow kind of entertainment by some, coffee shops play an essential part in Dutch tourism, and figures suggest that 25-30 per cent of people who visit Amsterdam spend time in a coffee shop.

Cannabis is currently prohibited in the Netherlands, but, Dutch legislators approved legislation that would allow the professional cultivation of marijuana, and fans insist it’s a step towards legalisation, which will make the cannabis business more open and increase the degree and quality of the drug for consumers.

Yet, there are many people who believed that smoking marijuana was legal in Holland, but no, they were wrong, and despite the abundance of coffee shops, which sell cannabis over the counter, the drug is not allowed in the Netherlands.

It is, nevertheless, tolerated, indicating the authorities will turn a blind eye to those in possession of 5g or less.

Coffee shops are permitted to store a culmination of 500g of cannabis on the premises at any one time, and growers have not generally in the past been prosecuted if they’re growing five marijuana plants or less, and even though coffee shops are technically forbidden, they’re given licenses to trade by the authorities, are you confused, you’re not the only one because Dutch drug law is a murky old game.

Nevertheless, the laws are crystal on one matter, coffee shops are not permitted to purchase cannabis. Many coffee shop proprietors, therefore, use third-party buyers, who source the cannabis, no questions asked, and bring it into the shop.

Once the weed is through the door, providing it amounts to no more than 500g, it is permitted by the authorities.

If it becomes legal to grow marijuana, coffee shops will no longer have to worry about employing buyers to sneak it through the back door for them, and basically, the new law would make it affordable, easier and safer to run a coffee shop.

It would be a more simple system, and the coffee shop proprietor would be as normal as the proprietor of a pub, and as well as coffee shop owners, the customer would further potentially benefit from the proposed legislation.

The quality of the marijuana will get better, and the cost would not be so high, so in every way, it’s better.

Now imagine the average cannabis smoker, and you will likely be greeted with a far more chilled out mental representation, so based on this, it would be easy to believe that stoners are less of a menace than drunks.

The fact is, both cannabis smokers and drunks can pose a threat to themselves and others because both substances can produce impaired reasoning, coordination, perception, and response times, leading to increased accidents, particularly once they get into a vehicle.

In 2014, 9,967 people died in traffic collisions involving alcohol, a figure which makes up 31 per cent of all driving-related deaths in the United States, and traffic accidents are furthermore widespread in marijuana users than the overall population.

But, the precise figures are unclear for two reasons. Firstly, THC can remain detectable in your system for many days after intoxication, suggesting that you can test positive for weed long after you’ve sobered up.

Secondly, when marijuana is detected after an accident, it’s usually found in a combination with other things, including alcohol, and this fact makes it extremely hard to get accurate information on precisely how many traffic accidents are caused by marijuana alone.

It’s thought that smoking marijuana could raise your probabilities of a deadly accident by as much as 83 per cent. Yet, this is a modest number compared to alcohol, which could boost the chance by a staggering 2,200 per cent.

As well as being a danger on the roads, heavy drinkers further pose a substantial threat to their own well-being in general, as well as an increased risk of injuries, and those who drink massively on a regular basis are raising their chance of severe diseases such as liver cirrhosis and some kinds of cancer.

Alcohol is also extremely addictive, and as many as 15.1 million people (6.2 per cent of the population) are classified as having an alcohol use disorder, indicating that they typically abuse or are reliant on alcohol.

In comparison, around 4 million Americans are thought to suffer from some degree of marijuana use disorder, although this lower figure could be due to more limited access as much as anything else.

Furthermore, an estimated 88,000 people in the United States die every year from alcohol-related causes including diseases and accidents. This figure makes it the third most common preventable cause of mortality, lingering behind tobacco and poor diet coupled with the absence of exercise.

Alcohol is the biggest killer for 15–49-year-olds and estimates for a monstrous 25 per cent of mortality in those aged 20–39.

In contrast, mortality directly associated with marijuana is almost non-existent, and a fatal dose of THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis, is estimated to be someplace between 15g and 70g, indicating that to overdose you would need to smoke far more weed than is imaginable, even by a heavy smoker’s standards.

So it seems that smoking cannabis is far more innocuous than drinking in terms of health, but how about other factors such as crime?

Crime is another area where alcohol seems to pose a considerably greater threat to public safety than marijuana, and violent crimes usually involve alcohol as an aggravating factor, and of the 11.1 million victims of violent crime every year, 2.7 million report that their assailant was under the influence of alcohol. That suggests that alcohol was involved in around 1 in 4 incidents of violent crime.

This figure increases for violent offences carried out against an intimate partner or ex-partner to as many as 2 in 3 cases, and 67 per cent of incidences of domestic violence have been linked to alcohol abuse.

In cannabis users, the opposite seems to be true. One study on couples’ marijuana use found that in couples who both used cannabis, the prevalence of intimate violence was reduced significantly over the first nine years of marriage, so these results imply that on the whole, cannabis users pose far less of a threat to their loved ones than heavy drinkers.

Another crime generally associated with alcohol abuse is rape or sexual assault. About 37 per cent of these violations are thought to be alcohol-related, and in 2015, there were 97,000 reports of rape or sexual assault related to alcohol among college students alone, and it’s further thought that alcohol could increase the probability of committing murder, although the precise data on this is unclear.

These facts appear to support the stereotypical view of a placid stoner compared with a violent drunk. Yet, there are always going to be a few exceptions to the rule.

One study on drug use and crime in young, inner-city adults found that those who regularly used marijuana were more inclined to commit weapons offences, attempted homicide, and reckless endangerment than those who abstained from the drug.

The three drugs found to be most dangerous to other people were heroin, alcohol, and crack cocaine, while those most dangerous to the user themselves were heroin, crack, and methamphetamine, but the drug found to be most dangerous overall was alcohol, which scored 72/100 on the researcher’s scale.

This figure could come as a shock to some people, particularly when compared to the next most dangerous drug, heroin, which scored just 55/100. Cannabis ranked much lower on the scale, with an overall harm score of 20/100.

Taking the above criteria into account, researchers believed it to be somewhat more dangerous to the users themselves than it is to others. And just in case you’re wondering, the least hazardous drug was found to be mushrooms, with an overall harm score of only 6/100 and the associated risks being to the user alone.

Neither cannabis or alcohol is entirely harmless, so the statistics imply that pot smokers pose far less of a threat than someone who has been drinking, although both drugs can seriously impair judgement, and for a pot smoker this is more likely to be the result of eating an entire container of Ben and Jerry’s than a drunk starting a fight.

The biggest threat that cannabis smokers pose to public safety is the raised chance of fatal traffic accidents after smoking, although the risk is unquestionably higher if they’ve been drinking as well. So whether you’re a cannabis smoker, a drinker, or both, the message is the same. Know your limits, be responsible, and if you’re intoxicated, please don’t get behind the wheel, for the sake of yourself and everyone else on the road.

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