A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post

Why doesn’t cannabis have any effect on embryonic politicians?

I ask this because every single MP who admits to having dabbled with the drug insists that they only tried it once and “it did nothing for me.”

Isn’t that odd? Not everyone appreciates or enjoys the mind-altering attributes of cannabis, but for it not to affect a single would-be politician is quite remarkable.

Why hasn’t someone been honest and said: “Yeh, it was brilliant. I skinned up a fat one and settled down with six packets of Munchies and Dark Side of the Moon”?

I say every politician, but the NuLabour lot have been banned by Mr Blah from answering questions on the subject. What a bunch of abject cowards.

Even the craven Gordon Brown went to great lengths on arriving in Bristol to avoid a howling mob of pensioners. All four of them. Well those cardboard placards can give you a nasty knock when they’re wet, you know.

So we’ll never know if Red Dawn Primarola had a puff of the old waccy baccy in an Easton squat, or Jean Corston danced naked at the Isle of Wight festival after overdoing the magic mushrooms. Perhaps it’s for the best.

Speaking of mind-altering substances, I have to admit that the soap-dodging scum who are forever moaning about new roads and air pollution might be right in their claim that diesel fumes damage your brain.

I cite, for evidence, the management of First Bristol Buses, who apparently hadn’t noticed that thousands of students flock to the city every autumn. And, having finally noticed following public uproar and enormous queues, decided to do exactly nothing to ease the situation.

Stay out of that bus garage, lads. It’s obviously affecting your mental health.

So who catches the bullet in the siege of Coronation Street tonight? My money’s on Alma.

You see, Ashley’s just a nice lad, Fred Elliot is a comic genius, Baldwin and Barlow are on long term contracts, and Curly – well Curly’s just there to be made miserable. No, Alma it is.

I bet she didn’t think when she stepped out of that bath of ass’s milk in Carry on Cleopatra that she’d finally meet her maker in the frozen tripe aisle at Freshco’s.

We’ve still not heard if Jack Straw’s driver is going to be prosecuted or not. My mole in the constabulary tells me that the Crown Prosecution Service is trying to drop the case on the grounds of “lack of evidence.”

Avon and Somerset cops aren’t having that, arguing that everything was done by the book and that they’re not going to bear the brunt of public abuse. It’s an interesting little tussle. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, the Nanny State extends its grip on our lives with NuLabour planning to further victimise the largely law-abiding motorist by increasing speeding fines by 50 per cent at the same time as introducing more and newer speed cameras.

The money from that “initiative” will presumably help pay for the madcap £250,000 campaign telling people not to give money to beggars.

I’ll decide whether or not to give to beggars, not Tony Bloody Blair. If I want to drop a few pence into the hat of a tartan-trousered tramp then I’ll do it. And if I don’t, I won’t. Just don’t tell me what to do.

They’d have been better off giving the £250,000 to homeless charities. I’ve long argued that Bristol’s beggar problem could be solved at a stroke for a fraction of what we spend on them now.

Just round them up, give them a bottle of cider each and buy them a first class, one-way ticket to Bath.

Professor Sir Michael Barry of Bristol University has been “awarded” a prize for the most useless piece of research of the year.

His paper, Of Flying Frogs and Levitrons, reveals how frogs can “take off” in the right kind of magnetic field.

They take off when you flick them over next door’s hedge with a hoe, but you don’t need a publicly-funded research grant to tell you that. No wonder graduates can’t spell.

– Barry Beelzebub

* The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this newspaper, of the naïve and nonsensical Kevin Keegan, of the charismatic Howard Wilkinson, or the fans who sang “Stand Up If You Won The War” at the jubilant Germans on Saturday. That’s the way to show them, lads.

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