John Reid's Hash Hush-Up
They kept it quiet for a few days, but yet another Blairite has been politically and personally humiliated. It is becoming noticeable how it always seems to be Blairite loyalists that are making the (bad) news. Almost as if it was an organised dirty tricks operation...A little bit of Afghan hash is hardly anything to get bothered about. Guido's good friend got 24 months for the posession of 23 grammes he brought back from Morocco, (for a first offence). So on that basis, time per grammes wise, Reid would only get a month. You know how it is, you go on holiday, backpacking in Afghanistan, or even visiting the troops, and bring back a little souvenir given to you by a local...
The excuses are:
- it was "minuscule", weighing less than one gram and with a street value of 85p.
- it could have been there for up to 20 years.
- he was not in the house at the time it was found and was said by sources to have "no idea" it was in a guest area."
- "hundreds" of people are said to have been in it over the years.
Mr Reid can not be accused of hypocrisy, he was the Cabinet's most ardent opponent of a smoking ban, man.
UPDATE : Two months ago cannabis campaigner Jeffrey Ditchfield, was arrested and charged with sending drugs to defence minister John Reid. Coincidence? More here. Hat-tip : Onan
44 comments:
A pre-emptive strike to prevent him replacing Clarke?
Hash? How unforgivably retro! Not very "New" Labour.
It’s a plant,
What is it with New Lieboor. One has a scandal so they all want one! Collective corruption!
If only it was in a hash brownie...
If he was a Brownie he would not have got caught.
85p? that means they're paying around 25 quid for an ounce.
It could have been there for 20 years, or two months
Mind if I roach the packet john?
85p a gramme is equivalent to £20 quid an ounce. Whenever they nick Joe Smoker they always inflate the prices, how come they discount them 80% for John Reid?
Can I shop where the cops shop?
I wonder how it was discovered and who reported it to the police?
Also interesting that they are saying it's 20 years old... have the cops taken the trouble to have it carbon dated?
Oh but it's in a "guest area" so it's all OK. I can really see that defence working for others - imagine how hard the cops would laugh at you if you had illegal drugs discovered in your living room, and you told them it was a guest area. Unless you put it in a 20 year old biscuit tin and said you found it of course.
I must admit that this comes as a bit of a shock... we were convinced that most of Blair's cabinet were smoking crack.
...and if the drugs were discovered during a "routine sweep", the question has to be asked (since the stuff has apparently been there for 20 years) why it wasn't discovered in a previous sweep.
Hmmmmmm.....
Sunday Herald - 26 March 2006:
Reid clearly has a difficult and stressful job, but while many people relax after work with a drink, he has been teetotal for many years. Since marrying film director Carine Adler in 2002, he has also given up his 60-a-day cigarette habit on the grounds that he wants to live longer in the company of his wife.
I had heard, I say to Reid, that he gave up alcohol because he believed that he was a better person without it.
“Yeah, I am,” he replies.
What does that mean?
“Well, it means basically that there’s enough wars in the world without me drinking.”
What does that mean?
“Well, it just means I’m better without it.” He sounds uneasy, nowhere near as chipper as when we were talking about the army. “Some people can drink every night and they never get over the top. I’m not like that. Anything I do, I do 100%. Anything.”
If this was discovered during a "routine" search there are several questions to be asked (and should be asked in Parliament)
1) How was it discovered? Sniffer dog?
2) If the latter (most likely), why was it not discovered before now, assuming that routine searches are, ahem, "routine"?
3) Does the lack of previous discovery indicate a) the police don't search thouroughly enough or b) the drugs were very recently stashed there?
4) Does the SOS for Defence keep a check on who comes to his house? Do the assigned security people do so? If you can bring in drugs presumably you can bring in worse.
5) If he/they keep a check, can they name who they were? If not, why not?
I could go on. But my suspicion is that this is another convenient storm in a blair-cup to distract from the fact that Prezza is for the coals tomorrow
Bastards.
Isn't cannabis a WMD under the USA Patriot Act?
I agree with the comments on no previous sweeps finding anything. If his argument is acepted - then doesn't that throw the definition of possession into question? there is a medical cannabis march on Parliament on 24th May - maybe Dr Reid can get help with his old aching JOINTS
Must have been some search if they can find a 'minuscule' amount of cannabis. After 20 years (ha!) it must have looked like any other bit of dust/dirt. Why did they test it? Strange goings on, is there something they aren't telling us - again? On the other hand he is too aggressive and lacking in insight to be a toker.
What's the problem with Cherie wearing white to meet the Pope?
A gram of resin is a tiny amount, not even enough for a spliff, I mean what were the police doing, sticking their hands down the back of his sofa?
This resin would have been approx half the size of a standard garden pea ( as i am sure many of you know)
this stinks like skunk, i have no objection to people taking drugs, just an objection to hypocrites whose wages i pay.
Haven't got my hand around links as yet but here is a headline grabber -
Keith Richards Hospitalized in New Zealand
Apr 29 9:43 AM US/Eastern
Seems he fell out of a tree!
Re Cherie wearing white for the pope.
This is a privilege granted only to Catholic Queens. There are three or four such in the world (thank X). Cherie is not one and, indeed, the last time our Sovereign met him she wore appropriate costume (black with a veil).
What a cunt.
Another distraction. Cherrie-blossom is not that attractive.
Bastards.
keith richards has been out of his tree for the last 40 years
Anon at 4.44 - see Simon Heffer's column in the Telegraph today. Basically the wearing of white when meeting the Pope is by convention reserved to Catholic Queens. It seems unlikely that Ms Booth was unaware of this, in which case we must be dealing with someone with an ego the size of Greenland.
I should elaborate. The Queen has not met the present Pope as such. But if she did, she would wear black.
To wear white when protocol doesn't allow it is outragious
As I said, BASTARDS.
Papal Benny might well prefer paramilitary brown or green. Please let’s not forget his Hitler-Jugend, Pinochetista credentials, dears.
Assistant chief constable of Strathclyde Police John Corrigan such finds were a regular occurrence.
Oh were they now?
Personally I prefer John Reid's little comment on Jack straw and Condi Rice in this week's Private Eye - Rumsfeld must have been stymied !
Let's face it Queen Cherie is such a monstrously UGLY bitch he would probably have preferred it if she was wearing full islamic dress with just her greedy,piggy eyes visible!
Do you think they store up all these little embarrasing incidents for use during a major crisis or now the press has got the bit between its teeth are we finally seeing how crassly stupid NuLabour actually are?
RM
edna - trying to deflect from the awfulness of Ms Booth is pointless, because however unpleasant the person she is meeting is she is still the biggest scumbag in the room.
Oh, and the Pope was enrolled into the Hitler Youth just like everybody his age in Nazi Germany because it was automatic and it was the law; you might have laid down your life to avoid the BDM but most people will go with the flow and not willingly propel themselves in the direction of a concentration camp.
There is an interesting timing to all of these little humiliations though, is there not?
First a skeleton is discovered in the Home Office closet, one which has been there a long time and which was probably known about in certain circles for quite a while.
Then Mr Prescott gets a new nickname. Again, old "Two Shags" has been at that game for quite a long time, and again someone was sitting on that little gem waiting for a time to use it.
Finally Mr Reid gets embarrassed with a tiny but presumably highly odiferous bit of resin in his house. A planted bit of resin?
So, the question is, who is the person who triggered these exposures, and why? The Home Office one rules out the Opposition or a mole quite nicely; had it been known about for a while, they would undoubtedly have used it to put the knife into Blunkett by exposing him as an incompetent.
Coincidence is out, too; these things happened a bit too close together.
So, who on earth would want to make the Home Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister look like complete twerps, along with making Ms Blears look a fool in front of a non-rigged audience, and Mr Reid feel very uncomfortable.
Prescott has only survived by being a token Old Labour dinosaur to appease the Old Labour backbenchers and by being too stupid to be a threat to Teflon Tony. Ditto Clark; a usefully thickskinned idiot who can be relied upon to obey the master and not think too much.
Whoever arranged this wanted Prescott and Clark out of the way, along with as many other vaguely competent people as possible, and wasn't scared of Old Labour.
Who could this be, but Gordon Brown.
Old Labour to the core so doesn't need the token dinosaur around, and who is going to have a purge of Blairites when he gains power anyway so doesn't mind crippling a few along the way.
He's been in the heart of government long enough to know about the Home Office incompetencies and about Shagger John. I'd bet he knows quite a lot, so there'll definitely be blood on the carpet when the time for Teflon Tony to go rolls around.
Where is Gordon Brown and his supporters? Some people might think they have "deserted" the Nu labour project.
It happens to us all doesnt it?
charlie in the bathroom , the odd "E" under the sofa, Pete Doherty as a lodger.
kingBongo : "drink deep or taste not .." etc - if you read more you will see many did not join/were not conscripted into the Hitler Youth.Bless.
well at least he hasn't been photographed with an s&m prositute wearing his tie with a load of cocaine paraphinalia in front of him...
Ref the awful Blair woman meeting the Pope.
Only Queen Sofia of Spain, Queen Paola of Belgium and Grand Duchess Josephine of Luxembourg may wear white when meeting the Pope. When Her Majesty met the Pope in 2000 whe wore the correct outfit.
It is always interesting to observe those who observe politeness and deference to convention and those who have contempt for it.
I love the idea of designating my front room as a "guest area" and therefore apparently a legally neutral area. I really hope someone tries that as an argument in court soon. The "Reid Defence" the lawyers could christen it...
Sorry, was catching up on this blog after a day away so reading upwards from the lower postings, didn't realise Cherie was right above me - now that's a horrible idea!
Didn't Boy George try this defence a few months ago in New York? "It must have been a guest's." And it worked just as well then as it will now.
As for Blair: ego the size of Greenland, and why would you go see the pope if you didn't care what people were saying about you? This was a publicity stunt that she fucked up royally. Could she really have believed people would equate her position (married a guy who got elected) with that of a queen?
Vielen Dank for the history lesson, kingbongo dear, but it really wasn’t necessary: Edna’s National Socialism is actually rather good, even if she does say so herself!! Moreover, I’m quite reluctant to accept your “biggest scumbag in the room” Cherie slur: surely that garland is collected by hubby each morning as regular as sodding clockwork.
To answer Geoff's comment about the "Reid Defense"; I think that the law generally takes the view that the homeowner or tennant takes responsibility for all that goes on in his home unless it can be specifically pinned on someone else.
Not that the mere trifle of a legal principle is ever going to worry NuLabour. They are the blessed, annointed by God to rule over us miserable peasants.
The only thing that encourages me is that the last time we had a ruler who claimed the Divine Right of Kings, we had a civil war and he ended up loosing his head. Funnily enough that ruler's wife was a left footer too.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed....etc etc.
My God - what a state British Politics are in!
Rotten to the core.
I wonder who Mister Snow Queen Cameron is planning to have an affair with?
I had the Conservative and Lib Dem Candidates at my front door yesterday - both anxious to differentiate local from national politics. The Conservative surprised that I had not forgotten Tory Sleeze. The Lib Dem admitted he wants to bring in local car parking charges despite what local people might think - and then in the same breath, telling me his party favours making local politics more local and how important it is to give power to local people.
The Labour twiddler has not dared come up my path yet.
If he does, I shall question him about Iraq and he will go away with a flea in his ear.
Nobody worth voting for here - so much for democracy.
John
Reid's Brasilian wife makes "films" - no doubt her coterie of friends left some behind when they ran out of coke
Now If Iran could just designate a "guest area" for their nukes, perhaps usrael wont bomb them.
The dope was probably posted to him by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2003/08/15/hdope15.xml&sSheet=/health/2003/08/15/ixhmain.html
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