They Blog For You

The staggering Wikileaks evidence proves that Nato Governments have been lying about the failure of policies in Afghanistan  for the past nine years.

Hitting back Time magazine published the mutilated face  of a wife punished by her husband, with the headline "What happens if we leave Afghanistan?" It's crude emotional blackmail.

A truthful message  would be, ' After 9 years of Nato's  costly and bloody warfare and nation-building husbands still mutilate their wives and humanist charity workers are murdered?

Cowardly Coalition

The Observer calls for an end to drugs prohibition today. The policy is Richard Nixon that we obediently followed from 1971. Then UK had fewer than a 1000 addicts, now it's 320,000.

Several South American countries are in despair because of the bloodshed that prohibition has created. They are espousing forms of legalisation of drugs.

Is there a gleam of hope here? Cameron and Clegg know drugs prohibition kills and that reforms work. They said so when they were backbenchers. Why are they courageous when they are wrong and cowardly when they are right?

Money rules

The People Voice saga has been hailed a movement of principle. Its story is one where opportunism played a large part.

One councillor and his friends delayed joining the party until one of them had finished his year as mayor. Had his principled conversion come earlier he would not have had Labour Party support for the mayoral role.

Huge credibility was given by the press to embryo Peoples' Voice parties in Torfaen and Islwyn. ITV Wales and the Tories exaggerated the Islwyn threat when I was last on ITV Wales. In May, their challenges were puny and Blaenau Gwent recorded a massive drop in support. 

Their bubble has burst. Future elections will produce swings to Labour in protest at the ConDem coalitions. The motivations for the disappearance of People Voice's councillors In Blaenau Gwent has a financial motive. One of them said that  he would now 'accept the full special responsibilities allowance paid to members', after stating at the last general election that they would 'try to reduce the payments by 50 per cent.'

Principles are fickle and transitory. Money is solid and permanent.

Newport, Newport

GLC's Genuine home-grown ballad of Newport - beware of imitations. You knows it http://bit.ly/claYLw