Whilst I can appreciate the light heartedness of the piece, I think it rather underestimates the impact on lives and the knock-on impact on society. It also seriously underestimates the violence used by the Albanians in particular. In addition, the huge profits they make are invested in undermining other parts of civilised society. The UK has no relationship with Albania so why these people are even allowed to be here is a mystery (many came as native Albanian refugees from Kosovo and started chain migrations). Every major UK port of entry is controlled by them with one exception, Liverpool, which is protected by the IRA. Also, whilst I agree that middle class coke users are an easy target to poke fun at, why does nobody ever poke fun at the gay “chemsex” users who are an enormous part of the market? To keep things light hearted, who can forget the prodigious drug consumption of the Reverend Flowers, chairman of the Co-Op, whose chemsex orgies included every known drug under the sun.
Yes, I have often made the point that the Albanians did not even have the right to be here, Albania not being in the EU. But New Label wanted to rub our noses in, well, coke I suppose, so here they are. No less than 700 of them are to be found in our jails, an astonishing number given the overall number of Albanians in the UK. And wasn’t it an Albanian woman who killed that little girl in a park in Bolton quiet recently?
As for the light heartedness of the piece, if you didn’t laugh at what the governing and media classes have done to the country, you would have to take your own life.
No less than 700 of them (Albanians) are to be found in our jails
Do the warders fear them in prison as much as the police on the street?
Balkan men tend to be a bit different despite the insistence of the 1990s media in calling the Yugoslav conflict a war in the heart of Europe.
We were having a family dinner in our Belgrade garden one evening when we heard several gunshots nearby. Sounds like someone being murdered, my wife said. She was right we discovered next day.
The father of one of my children’s nursery school friends was blown up by a car bomb. It was treated as “stuff happens”.
It may come as a surprise to you but car bombs and executions were also common place in this country up until the 1990s, particularly in the corner known as Northern Ireland. Always amazes me how little people know. We have a city in our country with a wall running down the middle to separate religious factions.
I have no idea why we tolerate these people the way we do. It makes my usual centre left tendencies fly out of the window when I think about these scumbags.
I was shocked with the Reverend Flowers case. The aspect that upset me most was the betrayal of trust. If you can’t trust a drug addicted rent boy who can you trust?
Ah yes, Mr Flowers the Chemical Methodist! A few years the deputy headmaster of St Benedict’s School in London was busted for the illegal photos on his computer. He was also a keen party goer, mostly of the coke’n’sodomy kind of party. But he was not separately prosecuted for his drugs use. I guess the police figured that he was punished enough by losing his well paid career.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
An interesting and entertaining read. I particularly like the story of the guy disguising himself in a high-vis jacket and van. Doubtless some of them are masqeurading as Covid Marshalls.
Of course, we all know that the Albanians cornered much of trade some years ago in their own ruthless way. The police, as ever, seem to be a little behind.
Well to the extent that the Yardies and their families voted, they probably voted for New Label and mass immigration. So, unintended consequences.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
‘The Government certainly agrees; last week, it was revealed that it plans to launch a middle-class “information campaign” to make “snorting cocaine as socially unacceptable as drink-driving”. So, more of our money wasted. It did occur to me a long time ago that a campaign with the headline ‘Drugs kill’ and visuals of the young people etc shot dead in Mexico might have some impact. But probably not.
We have had a number of knifings (most are probably drugs related) in Reading. There is a shock-horror report in the local media, then life goes on. Like World War 1 casualties in quiet sectors of the front – “normal wastage”.
That is because animals are innocent and do not choose to become drug addicts. Such a dog is a victim of his/her feckless human owners. Animals do not have free will.
Humans have FREE WILL and are therefore guilty of whatever bad choices they make and guilty of choosing to take drugs.
I do not buy into the theory that people are victims of whatever it may be. Free will, again. No one is forcing anyone else to take drugs – or drink alcohol. You makes your choices and you pays the price.
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago
“our police forces’ flawed racial profiling which dictates that only black people sell, buy and consume drugs,”
You make it seem non-natives buy it, and enterprising, entrepreneurial, migrants sell it. I have rarely read a more troubling article on UK because the whole, between the lines, message. From the dialect and descriptions you used for dealers one would also wonder if the Police would have grounds to be as you say they are.
“In seventies and early eighties London, Rastas were to selling weed what the Royal Mail was to postal delivery services; they had a near monopoly on the trade, certainly at street level.”
That’s odd because I lived in London during those times and never knew Rastas selling, it was white guys, and I knew a bit, I think the writer embellishes. And The East Europeans being unknown for their violence and crime?
“as to why Eastern European dealers have been so successful; they were, for a long time, absent from their crime narrative in Britain.”
The Sun, 11 Aug, 2019 “At least 40,000 villains from Eastern Europe have crossed the Channel, turning the county — and neighbouring Kent — into terrifying crime dens.” https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9697274/albanian-gangs-south-east-england-europes-crime-hotspot/ they say the Eastern Gangs are even getting the local criminal gangs pay them protection money they are so ultra-violent, and run the majority of Prostitution, Albanians are 1 in 10 of the foreigners in British Jails….The article says the police leave them alone to street deal (I know they fear them). The Guardian writes on such too.
I wonder if the writer is too close to his topic to be unbiased.
But then I have been around a great deal, enough I have seen the drug world, and criminal world/mindset, enough to find them very disturbing and to have a much more law and order view. I have more affinity to the thinking of Duterte than Cressida d**k so may not be the best to review this somewhat sympathetic article..
Dustin Needle
3 years ago
The West are losing the War on Drugs, as they are losing the War on Terror. The US & UK politicians from the late 90’s onwards who waged those wars so unsuccessfully have now moved on to the War on CoVid, sensing more money to be skimmed off.
The fact that they were so incompetent is one thing. We vote them out, and get another lot in. However they hang around like a bad smell, treated as Wise Elders by our media, when they should be tarred and feathered for the permanent damage that have caused to the West.
Last edited 3 years ago by Dustin Needle
Deb Grant
3 years ago
Drug addiction makes people poor, keeps them poor, creates chaotic parents whose children often turn into delinquents and worse, criminalises generations of young people. Then the cycle continues, trickling down the generations. If we want to tackle extreme poverty, we need to tackle drugs.
Unlike alcohol, the quantity of drugs in circulation can’t be measured and there is no tax contribution to help fund the problems caused by drugs, health or social. Legalisation has to seriously be considered.
The media avoid the subject, preferring instead to deflect it by demonising pensioners who drink alcohol. Notice how the role of recreational drugs in Covid sufferers is never mentioned. Dare I say this is because many of the media, once clubbers, regularly indulge in recreational drugs themselves? At least we’re beginning to recognise the role of middle-class drug users in fuelling the problem of county lines gangs and deathly violence.
We can’t solve the problem if we don’t acknowledge it so it’s welcome that this Government and the Leader of the Opposition realise the stakes.
Drug addiction criminalises generations of young people? Surely it’s drug laws. I and many of my contemporaries were criminalised for smoking cannabis, which hardly led us to respect the law, especially when we saw police and courts almost approving of drink-driving on the ridiculous grounds that alcohol is not a drug.
Mike Michaels
3 years ago
I was never convinced the premium was any better than the regular.
Vasiliki Farmaki
3 years ago
Another angle is that we are all hypnotized.. those overperforming are parents. Every time I am going to the park, underage students are smoking cannabis in plain sight.. I am shocked.. Political parties, teachers’ unions, MPs, doctors, and the so-called professionals have only one project: to keep corona for longer as excuse to control our lives, bully us all, enjoying real time tortures. Meanwhile the students are being treated as useless and unwanted, and Must be controlled thus the masking, testing- tracking… as for parcels, to get used to the idea that their body is NO longer personal and private, behaving as sick makes better public health for those receiving salaries.. Is it only me I see the hypocrisy?
Andrew Thompson
3 years ago
What those in power need to acknowledge is that Prohibition in the USA proved, one could say, a bit of a minor flop. Also it aided considerably the American mafia to gain their all consuming, all controlling, tentacle strangling grip; a grip they still hold today almost a 100 years after prohibition was dumped. Just a thought.
Sophie Korten
3 years ago
How fooled was I by the headline?
When I saw the headline appear in an email, I first thought that it was about Big Pharma. So, I clicked on it only to discover that it is not!
Or is it?
mike otter
3 years ago
Now there is no risk to liberty and career via convictions for possession the ABC1s are good customers, pay well and don’t whine for credit. Back in the day when hash, junk, coke etc would cost someone their jobs/kids they were not such a good bet – far more likely to grass and not very good at being discreet, especially if off their heads. I expect in time most states will follow Portugal, Norway, Oregon etc and start taking the harms of drug misuse seriously. Even Jamaica de-criminalised weed recently. Britain will be among the last to do so because we need all the funny money for our financial services sector.
peter lucey
3 years ago
“Yet in many ways, today’s itinerant drug dealers, able to roam from door-to-door, are perfectly suited to life in lockdown — and that’s a thoroughly modern phenomenon.” Not really that modern – what about Tom Lehrer’s “old dope pedlar”? (“Doing well, by doing good”)
peter lucey
3 years ago
I wrote a facetious reply to this. On a more serious note, go any of these drug users take any interest in or responsibility for the problems caused by their large-scale illegal drug use?
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
How on earth do Albanian gangs manage to operate here so openly? They shouldn’t be here!!! Deport and/or jail anyone selling, supplying, dealing drugs. Cut off the supply. Harshly. Maybe it is time to legalise weed in the same way as alcohol. The Govt gets the tax, it takes the illicitness out of it, it has medicinal properties. Focus attention on the hard drugs that really do ruin lives. And zero tolerance for sellers and suppliers. I am sick and tired of this idea nothing can be done, it can, it’s just that the solutions are unpalatable in our politically correct world. If it were me I’d go medieval on their asses, but that’s maybe why I am not in charge 😉
As for the Albanians and perhaps others, they have Greek/EU passports and Greek-like names, and that is why many of them are over here. There are though, hardworking family people among them, and they baptize their children with Greek names. Of course many can be done to preventing addictions .. I would like to give an example to somehow portrait the mindset of those ruling our lives. We all have witnessed the ongoing campaign against cigarettes.. But.. what is the aim?.. is it not to turn the youngsters’ attention to evermore addictive drugs and habits? And by making them fashionable trends? What is the connection with the entertainment/music industry? How the inner mind images we are forming right now, due to the 24/7 injection-violence misrepresented as public health? affecting our mental health as we get used of needles as equal to food? Why injection is distorted as the means to our freedom?!! ..ha ha ha.. Another example.. how much can we expect or at all.. from teachers and other ‘professionals’ to help young people, when they do agree, obey or obliged by law to teach 11-year-olds of the many sexes .. and making them stand in front of their peers in assemblies etc, shouting ‘I am trans….’… and so forth?
Whilst I can appreciate the light heartedness of the piece, I think it rather underestimates the impact on lives and the knock-on impact on society. It also seriously underestimates the violence used by the Albanians in particular. In addition, the huge profits they make are invested in undermining other parts of civilised society. The UK has no relationship with Albania so why these people are even allowed to be here is a mystery (many came as native Albanian refugees from Kosovo and started chain migrations). Every major UK port of entry is controlled by them with one exception, Liverpool, which is protected by the IRA. Also, whilst I agree that middle class coke users are an easy target to poke fun at, why does nobody ever poke fun at the gay “chemsex” users who are an enormous part of the market? To keep things light hearted, who can forget the prodigious drug consumption of the Reverend Flowers, chairman of the Co-Op, whose chemsex orgies included every known drug under the sun.
Yes, I have often made the point that the Albanians did not even have the right to be here, Albania not being in the EU. But New Label wanted to rub our noses in, well, coke I suppose, so here they are. No less than 700 of them are to be found in our jails, an astonishing number given the overall number of Albanians in the UK. And wasn’t it an Albanian woman who killed that little girl in a park in Bolton quiet recently?
As for the light heartedness of the piece, if you didn’t laugh at what the governing and media classes have done to the country, you would have to take your own life.
There’s a HELL of a lot of people here who don’t have the right to be here. And even Our Legal Aid [sic] system protects them from deportation.
No less than 700 of them (Albanians) are to be found in our jails
Do the warders fear them in prison as much as the police on the street?
Balkan men tend to be a bit different despite the insistence of the 1990s media in calling the Yugoslav conflict a war in the heart of Europe.
We were having a family dinner in our Belgrade garden one evening when we heard several gunshots nearby. Sounds like someone being murdered, my wife said. She was right we discovered next day.
The father of one of my children’s nursery school friends was blown up by a car bomb. It was treated as “stuff happens”.
It may come as a surprise to you but car bombs and executions were also common place in this country up until the 1990s, particularly in the corner known as Northern Ireland. Always amazes me how little people know. We have a city in our country with a wall running down the middle to separate religious factions.
Best of luck to any of our police who are up against that mob.
I have no idea why we tolerate these people the way we do. It makes my usual centre left tendencies fly out of the window when I think about these scumbags.
I was shocked with the Reverend Flowers case. The aspect that upset me most was the betrayal of trust. If you can’t trust a drug addicted rent boy who can you trust?
Ah yes, Mr Flowers the Chemical Methodist! A few years the deputy headmaster of St Benedict’s School in London was busted for the illegal photos on his computer. He was also a keen party goer, mostly of the coke’n’sodomy kind of party. But he was not separately prosecuted for his drugs use. I guess the police figured that he was punished enough by losing his well paid career.
An interesting and entertaining read. I particularly like the story of the guy disguising himself in a high-vis jacket and van. Doubtless some of them are masqeurading as Covid Marshalls.
Of course, we all know that the Albanians cornered much of trade some years ago in their own ruthless way. The police, as ever, seem to be a little behind.
Well, they have thought crime to deal with, which is soooo much more important
I heard that the Yardies used to run the show until the Albanians moved in. The Yardies tried to resist and then black corpses appeared around London.
Well to the extent that the Yardies and their families voted, they probably voted for New Label and mass immigration. So, unintended consequences.
‘The Government certainly agrees; last week, it was revealed that it plans to launch a middle-class “information campaign” to make “snorting cocaine as socially unacceptable as drink-driving”.
So, more of our money wasted. It did occur to me a long time ago that a campaign with the headline ‘Drugs kill’ and visuals of the young people etc shot dead in Mexico might have some impact. But probably not.
Young people being stabbed to death in London doesn’t seem to have much impact, so I agree probably not.
We have had a number of knifings (most are probably drugs related) in Reading. There is a shock-horror report in the local media, then life goes on. Like World War 1 casualties in quiet sectors of the front – “normal wastage”.
But imagine the impact of a dead dog which had found some cocaine and accidentally sniffed it. Front page of every newspaper.
That is because animals are innocent and do not choose to become drug addicts. Such a dog is a victim of his/her feckless human owners. Animals do not have free will.
Humans have FREE WILL and are therefore guilty of whatever bad choices they make and guilty of choosing to take drugs.
I do not buy into the theory that people are victims of whatever it may be. Free will, again. No one is forcing anyone else to take drugs – or drink alcohol. You makes your choices and you pays the price.
“our police forces’ flawed racial profiling which dictates that only black people sell, buy and consume drugs,”
You make it seem non-natives buy it, and enterprising, entrepreneurial, migrants sell it. I have rarely read a more troubling article on UK because the whole, between the lines, message. From the dialect and descriptions you used for dealers one would also wonder if the Police would have grounds to be as you say they are.
“In seventies and early eighties London, Rastas were to selling weed what the Royal Mail was to postal delivery services; they had a near monopoly on the trade, certainly at street level.”
That’s odd because I lived in London during those times and never knew Rastas selling, it was white guys, and I knew a bit, I think the writer embellishes. And The East Europeans being unknown for their violence and crime?
“as to why Eastern European dealers have been so successful; they were, for a long time, absent from their crime narrative in Britain.”
The Sun, 11 Aug, 2019 “At least 40,000 villains from Eastern Europe have crossed the Channel, turning the county — and neighbouring Kent — into terrifying crime dens.” https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9697274/albanian-gangs-south-east-england-europes-crime-hotspot/ they say the Eastern Gangs are even getting the local criminal gangs pay them protection money they are so ultra-violent, and run the majority of Prostitution, Albanians are 1 in 10 of the foreigners in British Jails….The article says the police leave them alone to street deal (I know they fear them). The Guardian writes on such too.
I wonder if the writer is too close to his topic to be unbiased.
But then I have been around a great deal, enough I have seen the drug world, and criminal world/mindset, enough to find them very disturbing and to have a much more law and order view. I have more affinity to the thinking of Duterte than Cressida d**k so may not be the best to review this somewhat sympathetic article..
The West are losing the War on Drugs, as they are losing the War on Terror. The US & UK politicians from the late 90’s onwards who waged those wars so unsuccessfully have now moved on to the War on CoVid, sensing more money to be skimmed off.
The fact that they were so incompetent is one thing. We vote them out, and get another lot in. However they hang around like a bad smell, treated as Wise Elders by our media, when they should be tarred and feathered for the permanent damage that have caused to the West.
Drug addiction makes people poor, keeps them poor, creates chaotic parents whose children often turn into delinquents and worse, criminalises generations of young people. Then the cycle continues, trickling down the generations. If we want to tackle extreme poverty, we need to tackle drugs.
Unlike alcohol, the quantity of drugs in circulation can’t be measured and there is no tax contribution to help fund the problems caused by drugs, health or social. Legalisation has to seriously be considered.
The media avoid the subject, preferring instead to deflect it by demonising pensioners who drink alcohol. Notice how the role of recreational drugs in Covid sufferers is never mentioned. Dare I say this is because many of the media, once clubbers, regularly indulge in recreational drugs themselves? At least we’re beginning to recognise the role of middle-class drug users in fuelling the problem of county lines gangs and deathly violence.
We can’t solve the problem if we don’t acknowledge it so it’s welcome that this Government and the Leader of the Opposition realise the stakes.
Drug addiction criminalises generations of young people? Surely it’s drug laws. I and many of my contemporaries were criminalised for smoking cannabis, which hardly led us to respect the law, especially when we saw police and courts almost approving of drink-driving on the ridiculous grounds that alcohol is not a drug.
I was never convinced the premium was any better than the regular.
Another angle is that we are all hypnotized.. those overperforming are parents. Every time I am going to the park, underage students are smoking cannabis in plain sight.. I am shocked.. Political parties, teachers’ unions, MPs, doctors, and the so-called professionals have only one project: to keep corona for longer as excuse to control our lives, bully us all, enjoying real time tortures. Meanwhile the students are being treated as useless and unwanted, and Must be controlled thus the masking, testing- tracking… as for parcels, to get used to the idea that their body is NO longer personal and private, behaving as sick makes better public health for those receiving salaries.. Is it only me I see the hypocrisy?
What those in power need to acknowledge is that Prohibition in the USA proved, one could say, a bit of a minor flop. Also it aided considerably the American mafia to gain their all consuming, all controlling, tentacle strangling grip; a grip they still hold today almost a 100 years after prohibition was dumped. Just a thought.
How fooled was I by the headline?
When I saw the headline appear in an email, I first thought that it was about Big Pharma. So, I clicked on it only to discover that it is not!
Or is it?
Now there is no risk to liberty and career via convictions for possession the ABC1s are good customers, pay well and don’t whine for credit. Back in the day when hash, junk, coke etc would cost someone their jobs/kids they were not such a good bet – far more likely to grass and not very good at being discreet, especially if off their heads. I expect in time most states will follow Portugal, Norway, Oregon etc and start taking the harms of drug misuse seriously. Even Jamaica de-criminalised weed recently. Britain will be among the last to do so because we need all the funny money for our financial services sector.
“Yet in many ways, today’s itinerant drug dealers, able to roam from door-to-door, are perfectly suited to life in lockdown — and that’s a thoroughly modern phenomenon.”
Not really that modern – what about Tom Lehrer’s “old dope pedlar”?
(“Doing well, by doing good”)
I wrote a facetious reply to this. On a more serious note, go any of these drug users take any interest in or responsibility for the problems caused by their large-scale illegal drug use?
How on earth do Albanian gangs manage to operate here so openly? They shouldn’t be here!!! Deport and/or jail anyone selling, supplying, dealing drugs. Cut off the supply. Harshly. Maybe it is time to legalise weed in the same way as alcohol. The Govt gets the tax, it takes the illicitness out of it, it has medicinal properties. Focus attention on the hard drugs that really do ruin lives. And zero tolerance for sellers and suppliers. I am sick and tired of this idea nothing can be done, it can, it’s just that the solutions are unpalatable in our politically correct world. If it were me I’d go medieval on their asses, but that’s maybe why I am not in charge 😉
As for the Albanians and perhaps others, they have Greek/EU passports and Greek-like names, and that is why many of them are over here. There are though, hardworking family people among them, and they baptize their children with Greek names. Of course many can be done to preventing addictions .. I would like to give an example to somehow portrait the mindset of those ruling our lives. We all have witnessed the ongoing campaign against cigarettes.. But.. what is the aim?.. is it not to turn the youngsters’ attention to evermore addictive drugs and habits? And by making them fashionable trends? What is the connection with the entertainment/music industry? How the inner mind images we are forming right now, due to the 24/7 injection-violence misrepresented as public health? affecting our mental health as we get used of needles as equal to food? Why injection is distorted as the means to our freedom?!! ..ha ha ha.. Another example.. how much can we expect or at all.. from teachers and other ‘professionals’ to help young people, when they do agree, obey or obliged by law to teach 11-year-olds of the many sexes .. and making them stand in front of their peers in assemblies etc, shouting ‘I am trans….’… and so forth?