Reefer Madness

Seven decades ago, a film called Reefer Madness urgently warned parents that cannabis was the “enemy of innocent youth.” The drug, it cautioned, was destined to lead young people down a sin filled path laced with degradation, insanity, rape and murder. “Drug crazed abandon!” proclaimed a poster advertising the film. “A menace worse than death!”

Taken seriously at the time, the "morality tale" behind Reefer Madness is now the subject of much hilarity. Posters, t-shirts and mugs are available to purchase online bearing the film’s name, and its venerated cult status is such that not only has it been re-released in cinemas and on DVD, but it has even been adapted into a musical.

Yet though the cries of “worse than death!” are now widely recognised as ludicrous, strong traces of the moralistic rhetoric underpinning Reefer Madness can still be found in contemporary debates about cannabis. In the midst of the controversy surrounding the sacking of government drugs advisor David Nutt last year, for example, the then Home Secretary Alan Johnson warned that there were “thousands at risk of being sucked into a world of hopeless despair through drug addiction,” while tabloid newspapers urged readers to be aware of a “cannabis pandemic” and the “psychotic symptoms” associated with a new strain of “super-skunk.”

Like the plot of Reefer Madness, such claims are dramatically exaggerated. David Nutt has described the risk of psychotic illness as a result of smoking cannabis as “relatively small,” and his replacement as chief government drugs advisor, Professor Les Iverson, has also gone on record saying that links between cannabis and schizophrenia are “another scaremongering tactic from the anti-cannabis brigade.” Cannabis, according to Iverson, is “one of the safer” recreational drugs.

In the past, both Nutt and Iverson have also advocated legalisation; however, very few British politicians are willing to listen. Decriminalisation of cannabis would “send out the wrong messages” they often say, perhaps with a twisted vision of drug crazed abandon playing out in their minds. Though if drug policy is really about sending out the right and wrong messages, why does a substance as vicious and harmful as alcohol remain on the market? Surely, following the “messages” logic, alcohol should similarly be the subject of a ban.

But then, like cannabis, if banned alcohol would too be driven underground – its users criminalised, prosecuted, fined or even jailed. And the justice system has already got enough on its plate, what with all the psychotic stoners already clogging up the courts. In 2008/9, for instance, there were more than 167,500 cannabis related offences recorded in England and Wales alone.

The heart of the problem is prohibition itself, for with an estimated two – five million regular cannabis users in the UK, it has clearly failed in its mission to “stamp out drugs.” A new direction is necessary, and other countries are already leading the way. The Mexican president last week called for a “fundamental debate” on the “pros and cons” of drug legalisation, and in America a bill proposing the legalisation of cannabis will be on a Californian state ballot that will take place on November 2^nd.

Such moves clearly represent the future, yet in the UK our politicians remain stranded in the past – harping on about “sending out the wrong messages” as they fail spectacularly to move the wheels of history forwards and not back. It may be obvious to most that Reefer Madness is nothing more than a work of stilted fiction, but it seems that, in 2010, the stuffy British political elite are among the last still clinging desperately to its myths.

R.J. Gallagher - 11.08.10


A version of this article appears at:

Cloned food: a new era of market nihilism

In 2001, Professor Ian Wilmut, the scientist who created Dolly the Sheep, sparked an ethical row when he described the cloning of farm animals for food as “a natural progression” and the “sensible thing to do”. In the context of global food shortages, cloned meat could be a “huge potential benefit to mankind,” he said. But nine years on, and on the back of revelations that cloned meat has inadvertently entered the British food chain for the first time, Wilmut’s prophesised benefits are yet to materialize. According to UN estimates, over a billion people are now “undernourished,” and this is a figure that continues to rise.

Still, as Wilmut’s prediction dissolves into history, in agricultural circles support continues to swell in favour of cloned animals. Last week, an anonymous British farmer told the New York Times he was “using milk from a cow bred from a clone as part of his daily production,” and the president of the Scottish National Farmers Union described stringent European cloning rules as “ridiculous.” Cloning is “widespread elsewhere in the world,” he said. “If you go to the US or Canada you will almost certainly be consuming meat and dairy products from cloned animals at every turn.”

Under EU legislation on “Novel Foods,” meat or dairy from cloned animals “cannot be put on the market without a safety assessment and a specific authorizing legal act.” But semen from millions of Bulls is imported into the EU every year – and most of it from America and Canada, where cloning is now widespread. As one EU official told the Telegraph: “It is more than probable [that among the imported semen] are doses from cloned animals. If just one per cent or 0.1 per cent is from cloned animals then there are 100,000s or 1,000s of first generation offspring.”

Loopholes in labelling laws mean that the offspring of cloned animals are not technically considered “genetically modified” under EU legislation. As such, produce derived from these animals in Europe – meats, cheeses, chocolates – slips under the radar. And some of it likely ends up in British supermarkets, even although the official stance of the Food Standards Agency is that food derived from the offspring of cloned animals still requires a special novel foods licence to be sold in the UK.

Like Professor Wilmut said in 2001, this is a “natural progression.” Not of nature itself, obviously, but of agribusiness. Because like any other capitalist enterprise, profit and efficiency, not ethics and egalitarianism, are the underlying principles of animal farming. An animal to a farmer is like a share to a stockbroker – not much more than a means to an end. Therefore, if a cloned cow can increase “efficiency” by producing larger quantities of milk, and a cloned bull can sire a whole herd of “elite” cattle, to the mind of the farmer, current EU legislation is not but a barrier to profits.

Hence frustrated British farmers have unsurprisingly begun to flout or bend cloning regulations. And as a weird air of science fiction sets in, it becomes clear that in the immediate sense what cloned animals represent is not a grave threat to public health; but rather, something that is potentially much worse. For what we are now entering is a new era of scientific, for-profit nihilism, based on a cruel and ideologically hazardous form of animal eugenics. While there will undoubtedly be rewards (financial, of course), the beneficiaries are unlikely to be the poor, or the hungry, or even the traditional farmers – never mind the animals themselves. In light of repeated warnings about the detrimental effects of animal agriculture, surely we need to be consuming less meat, not finding new ways to consume more. Now that would be a progression; that would be the sensible thing to do.

This article appeared originally at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ryan-gallagher/cloned-food-open-your-throats-for-market-nihilism

John Lydon

When the Sex Pistols exploded onto the British music scene in 1976, their arrival was perceived as a genuine threat to the stability of British Society. They wore swastikas, swore on live television, sang about anarchy and blasted the monarchy at every opportunity. The level of public anxiety over the band was such that, after their infamous appearance on the Bill Grundy show in 1976, one man was so incensed that he kicked in the screen of his own television. “I don’t want this muck coming into my home at teatime,” he told the Mirror newspaper.

But these days, things have changed. The gangly, fiery tempered front man of the ‘Pistols, Johnny Rotten, is now no longer considered a threat by the British establishment. Q Magazine has called him a “national treasure”, and this is a status surely confirmed by his recent invite to appear on BBC breakfast television. Stripped of his stage name, Johnny is Rotten no more: he has now reverted back to his birth name, John Lydon, and spends his time promoting dairy products, making television appearances and performing reunion tours. He’s even changed his tune on his attitude towards the monarchy. “I'm rather fond of the royal family,” he said in 2007.

His youthful fury has now turned to bitterness and egoism. “I’m the originator,” he recently told the NME. “I opened so many doors for so many people and they've all foolishly slammed it behind them. So what you get now is a melange of shit."

When not accusing others of copying his style, he is busy throwing insults at every band imaginable. The Clash were “highly manufactured”; Green Day “fucking stink”; Radiohead are “tosh”; Gorillaz are “shit”; Arctic Monkeys are a “showbiz construct”; The Beatles were “illegitimate”; and the Rolling Stones “repulsive”. He does, however, quite like Oasis (“They're a nice backdrop on a dull day”) – though Liam is still a “second rate Rotten.”

Occasionally, he shows a glimmer of compassion and humanity. “Racism, hatred, separation, this distinction of classes – all of this stuff's got to stop,” he told an American newspaper in 2007. “I grew up with all that hate wrapped around me, and I don't like to see it in the midday sun.”

But perhaps when those comments were made he was having an off day. Announced last week, his decision to perform in Israel with the recently reformed PiL is truer to form. Despite widespread calls for a cultural and economic boycott of the country in light of its widely documented human rights abuses and alleged war crimes, Lydon said: “Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated."

Self-interested, cynical, rich and closed minded, Lydon is now not much more than a parody of his former self – a shadow of the man who once struck fear into the hearts and minds of the status quo with his volatility and rage and cries of “no hope, no future”. No longer able to shock the way he once could, at 54 years old he clambers for publicity by insulting other bands and appears in adverts not because he needs the money but because he craves the attention it brings. He can try to relive his youth with reunion tours, but like Sid Vicious, the legend of Johnny Rotten is dead and buried.

R.J. Gallagher - 22.07.10

A version of this article appears at: http://www.theskinny.co.uk/blog/2-the-skinny-blog/462-a-skinny-take-john-lydon

Labour Party Leadership

I put together an analysis of the Labour Party leadership contest for openDemocracy the other day. It's a bit too long and dry to repost here, but if you are interested you can find it by following this link: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ryan-gallagher/labour-leadership-contest-round-up

Shaking the Foundations of Tabloid Journalism

Now that England are no longer in the World Cup, it’s back to business as usual for the popular press. Never mind Wayne Rooney or Fabio Capello, South Africa was yesterday and there are issues waiting to be indignantly addressed: immigration, Muslims, asylum seekers, benefit fraud, homosexuality – a meaty combination of all the things that matter, served with a side of celebrity and garnished with nudity, and all for less than the price of a packet of crisps.

Indeed, the tabloids have returned to form this week and there has been plenty for them to shout about. On Tuesday the front page of the Daily Express was devoted to a story reporting that windows of a swimming pool in Walsall had been tinted in order to protect the modesty of Muslim women. “MUSLIMS FORCE POOL COVER-UP” announced the headline. “They’ve obviously listened only to what the Muslim community wants and ignored the rest of us” a local man told the Express.

The story was also picked up by the Daily Mail, and the readers’ comments section accompanying the online version confirmed that its message had been received loud and clear. “I am fed up of all these concessions being given to muslims all the time”, wrote one anonymous user. “Sorry, this is a Christian country, not Muslim” added another, posting under the name Lusherly.

But interestingly, most commenters failed to notice a sentence discreetly pinned on to the story’s conclusion: “There were also requests made by some non-Muslim users as well.” An insignificant detail we can only assume.

Wednesday’s Express offered its 668,000 readership a chance to reflect and gather their thoughts after the swimming pool outrage – nothing to get too worried about, just a hosepipe ban (“HOSEPIPE BAN FOR MILLIONS”), a report about overpriced groceries (“OVERPRICED OCADO BLASTED BY ‘SCEPTICS’”), and the new direction of Kylie Minogue (“KYLIE MINOGUE TO MOVE INTO DIRECTING”).

And just as the flute of steam began to ebb from their ears, Thursday’s Express arrived on newsstands nationwide like a bat out of hell: “NOW ASYLUM IF YOU’RE GAY” roared its headline. A response to the decision made by the Supreme Court to grant Gay and lesbian asylum seekers the right to stay in the UK if they would be persecuted in their home countries, the tone of the accompanying article was one of panic. “Asylum claims could soar” they warned, “millions might try to claim they are gay to qualify for asylum in Britain.”

A chilling prospect for any self respecting Express reader – not only are they asylum seekers, but they are Gay too. And some of them might even be Muslim; God forbid. Again the Mail also ran the story, and again the commenters furiously pounded their keyboards with a vicious force. “CLOSE THE BORDER NOW”, demanded ‘Jane’, writing in capitals to place emphasis on the seriousness of her demand.

But worse of all was the coverage in the Express’s sister paper, the Daily Star. “NO ROOM FOR GAYS” said the headline, the piece’s anonymous author keen to inform us that the Supreme Court’s decision was nothing but bad news. Why? “The resulting flood of numbers could push our creaking infrastructure over the edge” apparently. But not only that, “We simply cannot afford to keep taking the world’s outcasts... We must look after our own first.”

It’s not difficult to see why the Star costs only 10p – you get what you pay for. At one fourth of the price of four Tesco Value toilet rolls, only a fool would expect it to contain anything other than journalism of a standard that makes the Mail and the Express look respectable – and that’s no mean feat. But though the Star’s piece might read like an excerpt from a BNP manifesto, the content of the Express and the Mail have this week been no less troubling. The Press Complaints Commission have apparently received “a number of complaints” about both the Express and the Star’s coverage of the Gay asylum seekers decision, and the clock is still ticking. Join the march of discontent here in reference to sections 1 (i) and 12 of the Editors’ Code of Practice.

Indeed, the infrastructure continues to creak as another droning chorus of misguided indignation rises and falls. But as the creak grows louder its origins become clear: it’s the foundations of tabloid journalism that are buckling, not the welfare state. Let the “outcasts” come in their droves, for there are empty houses that need filled. The Notting Hill Carnival can be the welcome party, a celebration of “outcast unity” in the spirit of its inception. And who knows what could be possible; if we make enough noise we might even manage to buckle those tabloid foundations once and for all.

R.J. Gallagher - 09.07.10


This article appeared originally at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ryan-gallagher/shaking-foundations-of-tabloid-journalism

The Demons of American Apparel

There are very few companies that produce adverts as distinct as those bearing the name of American Apparel. The L.A based clothing company’s notoriously risqué, candid, soft-porn aesthetic is like their Nike ‘Swoosh’ – it identifies them instantly to Joe Public, their “provocative photography” powerfully thrusting them straight under the nose of their target market.

Pitched to appeal to a new generation of “Young metropolitan adults not preoccupied by monogamy” in the words of company CEO Dov Charney, the photographs that have made American Apparel infamous vividly reflect the character of Charney himself. Described by one website as a ‘visionary pervert’, it is well documented that he is a sexually charged man; he once masturbated in front of a journalist, and has faced several accusations of sexual harassment by a string of former employees, though none of these have ever been proven in a court of law.

But it is not Charney’s adverts or his sexual promiscuity that is behind the latest controversy to taint the name of American Apparel. Rather, it is his company’s employment policy that has this week been making waves. It began last year when a disgruntled American Apparel store manager leaked an email to the website Gawker.com. “[Dov] went on a huge tirade and made stores that weren't doing well send in group photos”, wrote the manager. “He is tightening the AA 'aesthetic', and anyone that he deems not good-looking enough to work there, is encouraged to be fired… Dov wants to weed out the ‘ugly people.’”

Charney promptly issued a response, denying the accusation. "We strive to hire salespeople who… themselves have good fashion sense," he said, "But this does not necessarily mean they have to be physically attractive."

Yet more emails, leaked again to Gawker last week, have been adding greater weight to the claims that Charney’s employment practice is discriminatory. All aspiring American Apparel employees must now submit “head to toe” photographs of themselves before they are considered for a job. And while the company’s website reassures applicants that they “are open-minded and are looking for individuals who are of all shapes and sizes”, according to previous employees this couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Not only did they police our clothes but our eyebrows, makeup, nails and hair color” one previous manager told Gawker. “Our store consultant also on several occasions told girls to lose weight or told them they were ‘too top heavy for crop tops’...They routinely denied applications based on looks or shoes.”

The company have since issued a statement claiming that they judge not on “beauty” but on “style” – though the rising tide of employee accounts suggesting the contrary leaves this open to question. They may be known for their “sweatshop free” garments and for paying their factory workers twice the minimum wage, but beneath their ethical veneer ugly demons lurk in the closet of American Apparel.

R.J. Gallagher - 26.06.10

A version of this article appears at: http://www.theskinny.co.uk/blog/2-the-skinny-blog/449-a-skinny-take-the-demons-of-american-apparel

Giles Thorley and the Great British Pubco: a Sordid Tale of Inequality and Subjugation

After nine-years at the helm of Britain’s biggest pub company, Giles Thorley announced in March that he is to stand down as Chief Executive of Punch Taverns in order to pursue “time with his family”. The departure is amicable – a statement issued by Punch thanked Thorley for his “incredible commitment and drive” – but as the door closes behind him he will leave in his wake a trail of debts, bankruptcies and boarded up pubs; his steps towards life as a family man slowed only by the sheer weight of the gold lining his pockets.

Amassing for himself a personal fortune of an estimated 30m during his short tenure at Punch, Thorley’s success was built upon a mountain of debt. Clinging to his unwavering belief in the model of securitisation throughout the recession, he led the company down a path that seen them sink 4.5bn into the red, as the company estate was used as an asset in order to expand the Punch empire to encompass what at one point reached more than 8,500 properties UK-wide.

In the face of massive arrears though, Thorley reaped rewards – earning 11.3m for a years’ work in 2007 – yet his accumulation of wealth was starkly contrasted with the struggling plight of those renting pubs from Punch Taverns. Described as “morally offensive” by the TUC’s general secretary Brendan Barber, the Guardian’s annual survey of executive pay awarded Thorley the dubious honour of “boss whose salary is most out of line with his employees”; for, as the report noted, “his remuneration package is equal to 1,147 of his employees.”

But such a stark level of inequality is not confined only to the bank balance of Punch Taverns' outward-bound CEO – rather, it is engrained in the very fabric of the pubco and its culture. A government report in 2009, for example, found that over 50% of lessees whose pub had turnover of more than £500,000 a year earned less than £15,000; and according to a recent report carried out by researchers at the University of Durham – which surveyed 3,000 landlords on their income, rent and costs – 73% of publicans on a ‘tied contract’ with a pubco earn less than £10,000 a year from the business. “The pubcos may share the risks with their lessees but they do not share the benefits equitably” concluded the government report.

A tied contract is, like its name suggests, a state of bondage. It is a ball and chain around the ankles of pubco leaseholders that forces them to work twice as hard as their ‘free’ counterparts for not even a fraction of the same reward; as, seduced by the prospect of affordable entry into the pub trade, prospective tenants are lured into signing up with promises of reduced rent. However, obligated to purchase some or all of the beer sold on their premises at an inflated price from the landlord (i.e. Punch), as well as share with them profits from pool tables and fruit machines on top of meeting rent payments, the reality is in fact that it is often a struggle to make ends-meet for tied-tenants.

The arrangement is almost Feudal in character, with leaseholders bound to a kind of contractual serfdom – told they are ‘partners’ but treated like slaves – they are subjugated, regulated and observed from a distance by their lord and master; every pint they pull monitored at all times by an electronic device to make sure they don’t dare purchase beer from anyone else but the pubco.

Horror stories told by current and ex pubco leaseholders share the same narrative, to the point that reading alternative accounts becomes like a case of déjà vu. “My niece and myself are Punch Taverns tenants and we have had a tortuous time” wrote Graham Brown in a memorandum submitted to the Business and Enterprise Committee, “Pub Companies are using their purchasing power to increase profits rather than to benefit the tenants” he added. Another Punch leaseholder named Val Hogan echoed the same sentiment in a post made on the Times Online website: “This company has single handedly showcased to me what greed actually means,” she wrote, “They take your money, your hard work, treat you like you are an idiot… 45k may not be a lot to them, but it sure as hell meant a lot to me, it was my house, and I lost it. Thanks Punch.”

Aware of the severity of the problem, the Business and Enterprise Committee (now the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee (BISC)) begun an investigation into pubco practice in 2004, with a follow up report published in 2009. Initially it was conservative in its recommendations, stating it was not clear "that removing the beer tie would make tenants better off" – but by 2009 they were fairly unequivocal. Quoting an FSB poll, the report noted that “94% of respondees wanted an end to the tie” – “the consistency of these themes suggests that something is seriously amiss” its conclusion remarked – the committee finally recognising that the beer tie results in a “decrease in the lessee's income [that] is absolute”.

There is now widespread political support for pubco reform. Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, as part of their policy proposals announced prior to the general election, all pledged to implement statutory regulation should the industry refuse to self-regulate – providing cross party backing for the stern warning issued by the BISC in March: “If [the industry] fails to deliver on its promises by June 2011,” they wrote, “it should be in no doubt what the reaction will be.”

Attempting to forestall government action, Punch Taverns have announced that they will trial a ‘free of tie’ lease in September, but scrutiny of the terms of what they are calling the “Punch Buying Club” proves it is little more than an exercise in clever P.R – only some beer will qualify as ‘free of tie’ and any money the tenant saves in beer discounts will be quickly swallowed by a sharp increase in rent – in essence the relationship will not change.

Statutory regulation is what is needed, for the notion that the market can and will regulate itself has again been exposed as one of the greatest fallacies in modern times. Too much damage has already been done. For too long the government has sat back apathetically whilst pubcos have swung wrecking balls repeatedly at the foundations of equity and decency in the name of profit. Giles Thorley might be sailing off into the sunset 30m richer, but thousands of pubco leaseholders are crammed onto a single ship and it’s sinking. It’s about time we sent a rescue party.