Sim-O

BBC:

Heroin and cocaine addicts on the government’s treatment programme are being given drugs as a reward for clean urine samples, the BBC has learned.
The National Treatment Agency (NTA), which runs the £500m-a-year scheme, admits the practice is “unethical”.

Its own survey of almost 200 clinics in England found users were being offered extra methadone, a heroin substitute, or anti-depressants for good behaviour.

Good behaviour? What is this? Prison?
Either the addict wants to get off the junk or not. If not, fuck ’em off out of the programme because they are just wasting everyones’ time and effort.
If an addict really wants to beat their addiction (and it’s not a habit, ffs) then being clean is reward enough in itself.

More needs to be done for addicts that genuinely want to get clean, including getting their head sorted about it.

The classic case of a drunk. You’re always a recovering alcoholic.
No you’re not. Stop counting the days that you’ve been ‘dry’ and get on with your life. Stop waiting to have the drink that you don’t want. Waiting for something that isn’t going to happen. Going 400 days, or whatever, without a drink/hit. If after that time you still want a drink/hit, then the programme hasn’t worked, cos it’s sure not a physical addiction after that time is it.

Labels: Drugs

Picture from Iain Dale.

Update: It looks like a hat-tip is due to Kerron Cross for originally posting the pic.

Labels: Odds and Sods

Picture from Iain Dale.

Update: It looks like a hat-tip is due to Kerron Cross for originally posting the pic.

Labels: Odds and Sods

The Foresight report on why we’re getting fatter:

The central message of the Foresight report, put together by a team headed by Sir David King, the government’s chief scientific adviser, was that there was no simple answer to the problem. The nation had “sleepwalked” into it because our hunter-gatherer biology was out of step with the technological convenience age; we were programmed to eat as if we did not know where the next meal was coming from. “If we just behave normally we will become obese,”

I would argue that it isn’t our biology that is wrong, but the food chain that has been developed by capitalism, with intensive farming and processed factory foods that contain the cheapest ingredients and loads of additives.

Labels: Health

Don’t help Burma, help China.

How does the “Saffron Revolution” affect the China and the US?

First it’s a fact which few will argue that the present military dictatorship of the reclusive General Than Shwe is right up there when it comes to world-class tyrannies. It’s also a fact that Myanmar enjoys one of the world’s lowest general living standards. Partly as a result of the ill-conceived 100% to 500% price hikes in gasoline and other fuels in August, inflation, the nominal trigger for the mass protests led by saffron-robed Buddhist monks, is unofficially estimated to have risen by 35%. Ironically the demand to establish “market” energy prices came from the IMF and World Bank.

The UN estimates that the population of some 50 million inhabitants spend up to 70% of their monthly income on food alone. The recent fuel price hike makes matters unbearable for tens of millions.

Myanmar is also deeply involved in the world narcotics trade, ranking only behind Hamid Karzai’s Afghanistan as a source for heroin. As well, it is said to be Southeast Asia’s largest producer of methamphetamines.

This is all understandable powder to unleash a social explosion of protest against the regime.

It is also a fact that the Myanmar military junta is on the hit list of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Bush administration for its repressive ways. Has the Bush leopard suddenly changed his spots? Or is there a more opaque agenda behind Washington’s calls to impose severe economic and political sanctions on the regime?

Read on…

Labels: Burma, China, USA

The US military says 19 suspected insurgents and 15 civilians, including nine children, have been killed in an operation north of Baghdad.

…

“These terrorists chose to deliberately place innocent Iraqi women and children in danger by their actions and presence.”

Sounds like someones been employing the same PR advisers as Israel:

“The Palestinians make cynical use of children” – according to the IDF, the children killed in Gaza this past week arrived at the scene for one of two reasons: Either they were part of a particularly young terror cell, or they were sent there by terror groups as human shields.

Fucking Arabs, all the same, it’s in their make-up, don’tcha know?

There’s better examples of the victim being blamed, but I’m drunk and can only just find the keyboard, never mind anything else.

Labels: Iraq, Israel

Please. Don’t ask.

Labels: Photoshopping

Please. Don’t ask.

Labels: Photoshopping

Labels: Music

Craig Murray, sticks a middle finger up to Usmanov, and his lackey lawyers Schillings, by making his first post a repost of the article Usmanov took such exception too.

Labels: The t’internet