The Times reports an incident that occurred when Sarah Teather went canvassing in the Bromley & Chislehurst by-election:

ST: Hello! I’m calling on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Who will you be voting for?
Man: Who do you think?
ST: I don’t know.
Man: You’re not very observant are you?
ST: (Scanning windows for posters) Aren’t I? Who?
Man: Can’t you guess?
ST: (A touch desperately) Should I take the lead from a blue shirt?
John Spellar, Labour MP for Warley: Oh for God’s sake. (SLAM)

In the words of the children’s book series, Where’s Warley?

The lead story in today’s theguardian reports that the Government is planning to introduce relatively low limits defining what is considered “possession” of illegal drugs and what is “intent to supply”.

I’m not a lawyer so was a little confused when the article said

When the ACMD’s technical committee considered the issue in April, it was pointed out that even Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, had misunderstood the proposals: “Many people still think that the provisions are about setting levels that are reasonable for personal us,e and that if they are caught with amounts below the thresholds they will not be arrested for possession with intent to supply. The reality is contrary to this.”

but didn’t clarify the matter. I’m not sure whether the courts will be required to find someone guilty of dealing if the drugs they are caught with are more than the limit or whether it is simply a guideline to prosecutors, although it sounds like the latter.

Either way, it’s a recipe for wasting police time, CPS time and judicial time prosecuting for dealing people who have drugs for personal use – time that could be spent pursuing, you know, actual drug dealers. It sounds like a backdoor route to banging up more people for possession, by treating them as dealers even if they’re not. In an ideal world, sentencing guidelines shouldn’t depend on the prison population, but joined-up government means this has to be taken into account to: sending more people to prison for drug posession isn’t going to help the overcrowding crisis.

I don’t know about this sort of thing, of course, but a limit of “enough cannabis for 10-20 joints” sounds rather small; is anyone with a couple of packets of fags automatically selling on the black market? This doesn’t tally with the view of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs who know a thing or two about this issue.

The proposed thresholds are so low that the advisory committee, which discussed the issue on May 25, is believed to have warned the Home Office that they would cause policing problems. The committee suggested the cannabis threshold should be set at 28g, or 1oz. The experts also told ministers that the five tablet limit for ecstasy was low – given that they can be bought for 50p each in some areas, and some users take up to 10 in one session.

In other drugs news, the police have smashed a cocaine ring in Kent – and, unlike the Forest Gate raid, it seems they actually found something. Good for them. What caught my eye was that the bust was called Operation Alpington and is a spin-off from Operation Anuric. I’ve often idly wondered where such operations get their names. Alpington appears to be a village in Norfolk; anuric means unable to urinate. Is that a side effect of cocaine then?

Gordon Brown is to “re-examine” the £3,000 cap on student top-up fees – i.e., increase it. Universities need more money and apparently charging people who aren’t available for full-time work and who are already paying thousands into the system is attractive to the Chancellor. Top-up fees haven’t even come into effect yet and already the Government is talking about increasing them.

He said the principle of top-up fees, which come into effect this autumn, was “the right one”, because it ensured that students who benefit from higher education must make a financial contribution towards its cost.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but those who benefit financially from higher education do make a contribution towards its cost. It’s called income tax and it works like this: if you earn more money, you pay more tax. So if, over your lifetime, you earn an extra £400,000 as a graduate – a figure Labour trotted out time and again and a premium that is likely to fall – you pay roughly £90,000 more income tax over the same period. Surely that’s more than enough to fund one three-year course?

“People do not value free goods or services,” say report authors Richard Lambert and Nick Butler.

“It will be less easy for young people to think about higher education as a convenient way of filling time.

“Instead, they will have an incentive to complete their course at a less leisurely pace and they will have to think harder about the costs of dropping out.”

University isn’t free, and it wasn’t before fees were brought in. I left with a degree and student loans alone of £7,000, and that was before tuition fees were introduced. Living costs alone are thousands of pounds a year. Just because we didn’t pay the university directly, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a cost associated with university, and that’s before you consider the opportunity to cost of not going straight from school to work.

As for dropping out, financial hardship is the biggest reason people leave university. The reintroduction of grants was an important step in helping out those from poorer backgrounds, but any system in which a 22-year-old is assessed on the income of their parents has something wrong with it.

This all applies to England, of course: the Chancellor doesn’t speak for the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales.

Today is World Environment Day and via Rob and the Liberal Democrats comes an excellent scheme from the Environment Agency. You sign up for certain environmentally-friendly actions that you can take (thinking globally, acting locally, etc.), and their website keeps track of how much you’ve helped. Suggested green pledges include reusing shopping bags and conserving household water.

You can also refer other people, building a pyramid of pledgees, all of whom commit to reducing their environmental footprint. Click here to see how you can help.