"The ineluctable truth..."

Now David Cameron has been elected leader of the UK Conservative party, I thought I'd look back at some of the stuff written about him at the time of his refusal to admit to participation in any youthful alternative to getting pissed out of his skin.

The research provided much amusement, perhaps most from this Daily Mail article, titled:

"Drugs, David Cameron and a question that must be answered". ('must', mind you!)

"The ineluctable truth is that drug abuse is one of the most important and disturbing issues of our age and it is simply not acceptable for a man who aspires to lead Her Majesty's Opposition - and one day become Prime Minister - to claim that taking drugs is a private issue."
(nor is it wise or responsible for the media to propagandize over such an 'important and disturbing' issue)

"Today it's an open secret that in the worlds of politics, the media, finance, fashion and showbusiness, a spliff or a snort of cocaine are deemed all too acceptable."
(this from a member of the media!)

"If Mr Cameron had had an affair outside marriage, then there just might be an argument for regarding such a matter as being relevant only to his family and his own conscience rather than an issue for the public domain."

That stopped me. Surely, if Mr Cameron had had an affair outside marriage, then he would have lied to his wife about it. Do we really want liars for politicians? - any more of them, anyway?

There's a classic propaganda drip in this article, too:

"But the bitter truth is that there is a direct connection between this ambivalence over drugs among an affluent metropolitan elite and the hopeless, helpless junkies in bleak housing estates who are destroying their lives and blighting whole neighbourhoods through crime.

Is there a family in the land who isn't touched by this terrible evil? How many parents worry themselves sick over the possibility that their children will fall prey to the ubiquitous pushers?

How many people are prisoners in their own homes because of the drug dealing outside their front doors?

How many have their homes repeatedly robbed by junkies needing to feed their addiction?

And how many of those addicts have sunk into mental illness through supposedly "harmless" cannabis? (please see post on Cannabis and Psychosis below)

No fewer than 70 per cent of prisoners in Britain's jails have been convicted of crimes that are in some way drugs-related.

So vast is the prison population that a desperate Government is now reduced to letting inmates out early, in their tens of thousands, in an attempt to relieve the pressure.

Burglars, fraudsters, thieves and thugs - an army of undesirables is being decanted on to our streets in another symptom of the way our criminal justice system is being overwhelmed by the tide of lawlessness, largely inspired by drugs."

(kind of slipped all that in, didn't they?)

Just one other piece in that same article:

"In America, a land of truly transparent democracy, where holders of high office have to submit themselves to ruthless and unsparing scrutiny by Congressional committees, Mr Cameron's silence would be deemed astonishing and unacceptable."

('truly transparent democracy'; is that true?)