The Guardian Lapses Into Self-Parody – Fair Trade Cocaine!

She stayed with me until she moved to Notting Hill
She said it was the place she needs to be
Where the cocaine is fair trade, and frequently displayed
Is the Buena Vista Social Club CD

Half Man Half Biscuit : The Light at the End of the Tunnel (Is the Light of an Oncoming Train)
from the album ‘Cammell Laird Social Club’ (2002)

Just when you think The Guardian newspaper cannot lapse into any greater self parody.

The sooner the plug gets pulled on this joke rag, or at least the delusionalists running it, the better.

They have become such a liability to liberalism and socialism, they’ve got to be a Conservative Party front!

Elaboration is required: It has become almost standard practice at Guardianista HQ that whenever they publish a piece likely to make even the most swivel eyed of their readers say ‘hang on a moment…’, it is accompanied by a letter on the same day strangely reaffirming the same columnist or editorial line – you have to hand it to The Guardian, no one promotes the hive mind quite like them, although if you lost 25% of your readers in only a few years you’d pull whatever psychological mind tricks it takes to keep those you have left. Usually their pet left hipster scum Keith Flett is up for this sort of shit.

On the same day the ‘fair trade cocaine’ letter appeared, The Guardian had the above article from Iman Amrani, part of their ‘if you are white and middle class and went to Oxbridge you should be ashamed of yourself (unless you happen to be white, middle class, went to Oxbridge and employ interns at The Guardian)’ series of self-flagellation pieces for their readership.

It pushes the standard narrative that Latin America would be some peaceful utopia were it not for the west’s appetite for drugs. Or oil. Or fruit. Or anything: rather than a thousand years of local tribes run by brutal warlords at almost continual conflict with one another for slaves and resources – not least of all for the coca leaves chewed to relieve the pain of back breaking soul destroying manual toil – exacerbated by the arrival of the Spanish, even more when the conquistadors revolted against their parent state, and once that was all over, there were civil wars in Columbia to pass the time: 1863, 1899–1902, 1948 to 1958, and has suffered localised insurrections from the 1960s onwards – a mere fifty years continuation what they were doing the previous millenia before El Gringos arrived.

The mental gymnastics continues where it is the wealthy’s fault for wanting cocaine, but the lower orders are ‘seduced’ by ‘the lifestyles’ showbiz sherbet represents and thus (it is implied) blameless for selling it or taking it themselves. Similarly the poor benighted peasant serfs of the local drug barons helping to grow the stuff are ‘victims’, rather than those deciding to make a living from it. Such is the rose tinted spectacles for the fetishized working classes and voodoo lily tinted ones for the financially better off that has made many former Guardian readers give up on its descent into perpetual student journalism.

As for cocaine costing £100 a gram – sorry, but in my sojourns to London over the last few years (where there’s always someone trying to offer you one drug or another at some stage) £10 to £20 is the standard. Yes it is cut with flour, powdered laxative, dissolving aspirin and Frith knows what else (always has been, as with any illegal drug), but it is cheap: which is the real reason for the explosion in its use. Same as the heroin boom of the 1990s or cannabis becoming popular again with Millenials, usage rockets when it became cheap and easily available, like any other product in the global market.

Despite the grisly death toll from stabbings in London, I can’t blame the mainly Afro-Caribbean youngsters who are selling it. Those who approached me were a million miles away from the seedy individuals from television documentaries: they were polite, did not try to ‘push’ (if you pardon the pun) and when told thanks but no thanks would smile with a polite farewell of some description and walk away – and that was not only in areas where they had to ensure they weren’t attracting attention from CCTV cameras (if only all salesmen and women were so well behaved, especially those internet and phone network bastards in shopping precincts!).

Far from organised gangs controlling areas (although this occurs to a certain extent), most of the street dealers buy their supplies from a ‘hands off’ trusted contact and what they do with it afterwards is up to them. Some spend all day travelling all over London, selling to whoever and wherever – which has the added advantage of making it far more difficult for the police to identify them and make arrests. When the alternative is unemployment or some grotesque job with pay barely making the obscene rent rates London has to offer, a tax free self-employed job where you can make several thousand a night at minimum real risk needs little recommendation. An underworld is a reflection of the society it exists in.

Tanking over caffinated drinks during the day, taking Charlie to keep themselves going when out having fun with friends has become so normalised in society, a number of football players have got into trouble the last few years for pretending to snort the pitch’s white lines as elaborate goal celebrations become part of the game culture. The days cocaine was a problem caused by the appetites of the celebrities and the rich vanished a long while back. Only those living in a little Guardianista bubble, a moronic Metropolitan Police chief trying to distract attention from their Keystone leadership of London’s Finest, and Class War’s Ian Bone, believe it to be anything else.