From today’s Sunday Times, Page 2: -

"The problem with Ian Blair is that he is not a policeman's policeman. He is more interested in getting all the boxes ticked, in meeting targets than actually fighting crime."

It's a bizarre claim, and possibly actionable. If Boris seriously wants to cut crime, perhaps he should start with criminal libels against serving policemen?

I'm a few years away from being a young person myself, but I have seen several generations of parents shake their heads in despair at young people, saying they have no respect, no discipline, and no politics, but in my experience, that's far from true today.

The strength of feeling of young people against the Iraq war created an extremely political generation, perhaps more so now than at any time since the 60's. But it's certainly true that people are more interested in issue politics rather than party politics, which is a shame, because party politics gives you a real chance to change things, rather than simply protest about them.

Thanks very much for asking me to speak today. I often wonder what people think I'm going to say when they invite me to things like this, but in my experience, you invite a drummer to a party when you want someone to throw the TV out of the window.

So...

The title of the session is “can we make the Labour Party relevant again”. Well I think it's part of a much wider problem. People don't think political parties are relevant because they don't think politics in general is relevant. Politics got stuck somewhere around 1850, while the country has moved on.

The debate on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill last week was notable for two reasons. First, for the number of Tory backbenchers who used it as a platform to bark anti-government soundbites to feed their local newspapers. Second for the contibution of Tory backbencher David T.C. Davis.

I wrote this piece for The Guardian a month or so ago, but thought it might be a good start to my blogging here.

Drug statistics can make depressing reading. According to a recent report nearly 35% of the UK population have tried illegal drugs – that's nearly 19 million people.  Of those, around 330,000 are addicts - that's about as many people the city of Leicester.  The Government's response is outlined in it's 'Drug Strategy', which is due to be replaced or renewed next year.  But despite the UK having spent countless billions of pounds on education, policing, and enforcement, a recent UK Drug Policy Commission report says that there's no evidence it has had any effect on the amount of use. In fact, if the report is to be believed,  there seems to be no evidence from any country, that its national drug policy has had any lasting effect on the number of recreational or dependant drug users at all. Ever.