SINKING THE TITANIC

This summer has been one of discontent. Seeing the grass turned to straw in Hyde Park was like watching the camel's back snapping in two, and there were enough blades to take care of every camel in this fragile world of ours.

The episode last week of terrific delays at airports due to intelligence reports about hijackings left a sour note indeed in the travel season, and, all this, juxtaposed to images of T. Blair enjoying his good vibrations, having somehow managed to escape this as if forewarned setting a couple of days before, made us question whether he ought to just stay put. One paper set up a call line for people to weigh in with their advice.

The dude at the top of the political totem might have a lot to answer for, but what about the rest of the crew? As the Titanic sinks they all seem to be opposed, on priciple, to getting the lifeboats down. Patience, people, patience, let's not rush things now...

Patience indeed. How long, O Lord? Maybe the answer is that the nonsense will continue as long as we sit back and let government ministers enjoy themselves with has been rock stars and 'accidentally' give away hundred of millions of pounds worth of UK defence companies to wanna be guitarists, aka George Bush, whose fiddling episode did not look good as Hurrican Katrina wiped out the largest port in the US. Maybe he was too busy counting the profits on the Quinetics deal and wondering how much to kick back to 'Poodle' - whose predecessor received quite a handsome payout indeed, about $5m worth of Carlyle stock. Nice of the Bushes to be paying such bonuses to UK politicians.

Back home, however, there are not a lot of folk rushing to hand them such rich pickings. Some are quite unhappy with the dishonest sell-offs and other scams.

Anyone with any sense can see that there needs to be a change, and that there are not a lot of politicians making it. A medical cannabis symposium in May of 2006 held inside the Houses of Parliament attracted only four politicians; Lord Rea, Baroness Jenny Tonge, MP Paul Flynn and MP Brian Iddon. Where were the rest? Enjoying a convenient status quo in which the pharmaceutical companies screw the public out of money with expensive and sometimes unproven drugs? One patient at the symposium testified that NHS drugs gave her problems, for which she was prescribed more NHS drugs. Guess what: someone is making more and more money off this, and several hundred MPs did not bother to show up and attend. And so the band played on, bad chemicals got licenced to use in the NHS and proven medicine, that Queen Victoria herself used on the advice of the royal physician, was banned.

For decades now the hemp movement in the UK has been part of the larger environmental awareness, especially as hemp can be grown without pesticides, can produce environmentally friendly paper, textiles, biofuel, etc. All of which makes it a top priority, but how many UK polticians have done anything at all except fiddle and ask us to be patient? The reality surrounds us like the icy cold waters around the Titanic. Dives, who would not lift a finger to help the starving Lazarus, might be proud of them. Ultimately Lazarus died of his wounds, his death hastened by the dogs that the rich man thought funny to set upon him.

Dives could have, instead, sent him food - even the crumbs that fell from his table. Today's politicians could well afford to spend their time creating jobs rather than selling the defence industry to Carlyle or playing air guitar with W. Yo, Blair, [people expect you to do your duty and serve the nation. You and your staff need to get to work, dude. Bring in a biofuel industry so no one has to be dependent on Arab oil. Create a UK based hemp paper industry so we can stop chopping down trees and importing paper. Develop a UK textile industry. Invest in domestic medicine, not synthetic drugs.

Those of us in the hemp industry committed to these goals will be contacting ministers and posting their response, or lack thereof, on this site. We are getting lifeboats down with or without our politicians.