Chocolate Tart And Cool Stuff From The Times

[poliphilo]

I don't often crave chocolate, but yesterday I did, so I baked a chocolate tart with a whole bar of dark Belgian chocolate in the mix. Serendipitously, Odi, Peter and Azi showed up on the doorstep just as it was coming out of the oven.

Two newspaper articles caught my eye this morning- both in The Times. The first- by Hugo Rifkind- is about the drug laws- and how everyone knows that moderate drug use is harmless but no-one is prepared to say so in public. The second- by David Aaronovitch is about immigration - and how our fear of it is simply fear of change.

Comments

[tf-1.livejournal.com]

It's not fear of change itself, that would imply that we don't have an idea what the changes will be. It's seeing the specific effects and fearing them. After all, immigration is not something that has happened over night.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it is necessarily fear of unknown change, either. It can be that people understand that there will be less to go round if there are more people in the country. And there are possibly/arguably less units of housing than can house everyone who needs housing. Overcrowding generally and competition for fewer unskilled jobs can also create fear.
Therefore the fear is based on quite concrete worries.
Jenny

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Re drugs, thought of you when I saw Professor David Nutt on Sky News tonight after he was fired for saying cannabis should be declassified and alcohol is more dangerous than E or acid.

Prof Nutt is my new hero.