ceedee’s posterous

New criminal offences to outlaw the practice of extraordinary rendition – secretly transporting terror suspects to places where they are likely to be tortured – have been drawn up by a cross-party parliamentary committee.

They will close the gap in English law that has allowed the use of UK territory for the purposes of extraordinary rendition in the past, Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester, said today.

The all party parliamentary group (APPG) on extraordinary rendition, recommends criminalising various acts, including the use of British facilities for extraordinary rendition flights and the failure to prevent extraordinary rendition flights using those facilities.  The proposal will also ban so-called "circuit flights" – using UK airports for flights passing through the UK to enable a rendition but without a detainee on board at the time.

THE Government's anti-drugs initiative is in chaos after a boffin was sacked for claiming drink and cigarettes were more dangerous than E and cannabis.

Two of Professor David Nutt's colleagues have quit in protest.

Some have lashed out at Nutt, accusing him of saying necking a disco biscuit or puffing a joint is harmless. But that's miles off the mark.

It should be clear to anyone who LISTENS to what the guy said that he was simply sick and tired of Parliament's two-faced attitude to the two drugs that do more harm on a daily basis than any other.

Sadly, that's a stance that will win no friends at No10 - or at least, not while bevvy and fags are just about this country's two biggest tax earners.

Trust me, if some genius came up with a way to distill unleaded petrol into an alcopop, Gordon Brown would have him knighted.

This hypocrisy is the single biggest reason why no Drug Czar can ever do his or her job properly.

They either need the support to fight ALL addictions or none.

Or Broon can do what this column has been suggesting for years.

Realise the pushers are winning, legalise everything from E to heroin, trouser the duty and put the country back in the black inside six months.

via thesun.co.uk

Since it was turned on for all users late last week, everyone is talking about Twitter’s new Lists feature. Most people seem to like it, but some have no idea what it’s good for. Perhaps those people will understand a bit more about Lists potential with a new widget that Twitter has launched today.

The List Widget is exactly what you’d expect: A widget that you can place on your blog that displays a list of your choosing. One nice thing is that this can be a list you made or one any user has made (that is public). If you simply type in a user’s name, it will show their lists in a drop down menu. You then give the list a title, a caption, customize its look and feel, and you’re good to go.

But here’s why this widget is pretty cool: It basically is a way for you to create your own curated Twitter stream anywhere on the web. Obviously, you won’t be able to do things like tweet from it (though there is a reply button that comes up when you hover over a tweet — this directs you back to Twitter), but people are already making some great Twitter lists (like us and Scoble) and this is a great way to put them to work without having to go to Twitter itself.

You can choose how many tweets to show, set the intervals, hide hashtags — there are a good number of options. Best of all, these widgets offer something that Twitter itself doesn’t: Realtime auto-updating. Basically, this widget is kind of like a better, more customizable version of Twitter.com.

The List widget joins Twitter other widgets for profiles, search, and favorites. Find them all here. I’ve embedded our TechCrunch team list below. (erm, above)

But will it work with Posterous?

David Nutt tried to tell Labour that our drugs classification system was obsolete – but the political die was cast long ago

As a former head of drug legislation and Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) secretary in the Home Office, I worked for some years with the estimable drug experts Professor David Nutt and Dr Les King. They may have been too modest to declare it publicly, but I can say they are certainly among the most respected figures in their fields.

This deep crisis of science on drugs and politics has been a long time coming. The political takeover of the ACMD (Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs) started with the former home secretary, David Blunkett, in 2001. His unshakeable assertion that cannabis should be downgraded to class C fortunately coincided with the scientists' perspective, but the political die was cast.

The U-turn on cannabis was long telegraphed by the Brownite faction; Ed Balls, speaking on election night 2005, said Labour had to learn from its mistakes, which were, "cannabis … Iraq". One assumes that short list was not in order of priority.

Ministers have blundered into this complex arena with a tabloid view of how to "fix a policy", oblivious of pesky irritations like scientific evidence. According to an old hand at the Home Office, the advisory council was "historically the driving force behind the drugs strategy". By 2007, the council was deliberately marginalised by Jacqui Smith and its secretariat pushed out to an area far from influence on drug legislation.

Since the publication of the disputed cannabis and ecstasy reports, officials have been "banned from speaking to council members". They are forced to meet officials surreptitiously in bars and restaurants around Westminster. No wonder Nutt and his colleagues are resentful; ministers had created a form of intellectual apartheid.

The ACMD felt sufficiently embolded by this slight to mock the government's 10-year drug strategy launched in 2008, describing the highly-selective use of statistics as, "self-congratulatory and disappointing". It is the refusal to accept the objective assessment of a drug's harms that has long infuriated the council members.

I travelled as an official with Professor Nutt and Dr King in 2005, to visit Dutch drug experts in The Hague. Nutt and King were trying to address the total lack of a scientific framework for placing new drugs as Class A, B or C. The process was – still is – arbitrary.

The Dutch had evolved a highly sophisticated model of risk assessment, but it was prevented from being adopted in the UK because it would open "a can of worms". Officials and ministers were right to fear it, like medieval popes fearing astronomical truths. It would have ripped the obsolete classification system asunder.

There is an even wider pattern of denial on Labour's approach to drugs policy. Labour instituted Cabinet Office rules for measuring the consequences of every legal change on courts, businesses and so on. These "regulatory impact assessments" were, oddly, not carried out when the drugs strategy was consulted on. Danny Kushlick of drug reformers Transform has lobbied Gordon Brown directly on this point: "Of course, they suspect and fear the results; they can't deal with the reality."

The tension is palpable among the traditionally phlegmatic members of the ACMD. One told me Professor Nutt's sacking was an "astonishing act reflecting Johnson's absurd position". He added plaintively: "talk about the death of an administration".

It is often overlooked that the ACMD is a legal body; if ministers wished to abolish it, they would need to write a new set of laws. In the short term, Alan Johnson will struggle to find more than a handful of scientists who agree with him on cannabis classification.

The Home Office has certainly underestimated David Nutt's media skills, as well as his tenacity. As a psychiatrist, Professor Nutt may be trying to get his patient, the general public, past the hysterical irrational stage into a calmer state of reflection. This task has been made impossible by politicians and columnists who appear still to prefer panic to reasoned argument.

Johnson himself, in a letter to the Guardian, said in the context of ecstasy, "In my constituency … there are thousands at risk of being sucked into a world of hopeless despair through drug addiction." Thousands in his constituency know that ecstasy is hardly addictive and will be thinking "there goes another home secretary who knows precious little about drugs".

So we still labour under the current system where mild hallucinogens such as "magic mushrooms" are deemed as harmful as highly addictive drugs such as heroin and crack. Cannabis is again grouped with potentially lethal drugs such as amphetamines and barbiturates. Professor Nutt and his colleagues know you cannot base credible messages to young people on those classifications, but I fear the government's deaf ear to the council's attempts to inject rationality into the arguments on drugs may have forced their capitulation.

A firework display at the top of the BT Tower in central London marks the 1,000-day countdown to the start of the 2012 Olympic Games.

Alan Johnson faces prospect of 'collective action' over David Nutt sacking. Photograph: David Mansell/Guardian

The home secretary faces mass resignations from the government's drug advisory body over his decision to force out its chairman, who accused ministers of distorting scientific evidence on cannabis.

Two members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned todayin protest at Alan Johnson's treatment of Professor David Nutt. Another member told the Guardian that the experts were "planning collective action" against Johnson, adding: "Everybody is devastated. We're all considering our positions."

Nutt said today that there was "no future" for the council in its present form and it is thought the group's members may use a meeting next Monday to announce a mass resignation.

In a letter in tomorrow's Guardian, Johnson accuses Nutt of "campaigning against government policy" but insists he was not forced out because of his opinions.

"Professor Nutt was not sacked for his views, which I respect but disagree with," he writes. "He was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy."

The collapse of the panel, which provides ministers with evidence about the harm caused by different drugs, would be a severe embarrassment for the government and deal a heavy political blow to Johnson, who has so far steered clear of the controversies that dogged many of his predecessors at the Home Office.

As the controversy intensified today, Nutt said he had been contacted by more than half the council's members who had shared their "horror and disgust" over the manner of his dismissal and were now considering resigning en masse.

Dr Les King, a former head of drug intelligence at the Forensic Science Service, was first to act, followed by Marion Walker, head of the substance misuse service at Berkshire NHS foundation trust.

King said he had decided to step down because he felt Johnson had denied Nutt his "freedom of expression".

He said that while the government had "a right" to reject the panel's advice, its attitude towards the advisory body had changed.

Nutt said he could "fully understand" why his two former colleagues had chosen to resign. "The government has interfered with the scientific processes of the panel for several years and it has caused significant resentment," he said.

"People are very much considering their positions and they have made it clear they will not continue under the current regime. There is no future for the advisory committee on the misuse of drugs in the current way it operates."

Although Johnson would not comment on today'sresignations, he went on television to step up his attack on Nutt's conduct, insisting he had "crossed the line" with his remarks.

In an angry interview with Sky News, he said: "You cannot have a chief adviser at the same time stepping into the public field and campaigning against government decisions. You can do one or the other, you can't do both."

Johnson said it was not the job of scientific advisers to "just keep coming back and back and back" to overturn ministerial decisions. He also stressed that the decision to force Nutt out had been his alone and he had not consulted the prime minister, Gordon Brown.

He said: "I've got enormous respect for the advisory council. I want to meet them very soon. I've got enormous respect for the scientific community. They've got to understand that Professor Nutt crossed this line between offering advice ... and then campaigning against the government on political decisions."

But the home secretary found himself under fire from members of the scientific community. Lord Winston, the Labour peer and professor of science and society at Imperial College London, said he was "very surprised and disappointed" by Johnson's actions.

"I think that if governments appoint expert advice they shouldn't dismiss it so lightly," he said.

"I think it shows a rather poor understanding of the value of science."

On Nutt's claims that ecstasy and LSD were less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes, Winston said: "The overwhelming evidence is probably cannabis is actually less harmful than tobacco or alcohol, that's what the chief scientist is saying."

He added: "I think that's a very reasonable scientific point to make. And of course, science is not about absolutes."

The sacking follows the publication of a paper by the Centre for Crime and Justice at King's College London, based on a lecture Nutt delivered in July.

He repeated his familiar view that illicit drugs should be classified according to the actual evidence of the harm they cause and pointed out that alcohol and tobacco caused more harm than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis. Alcohol should come fifth behind cocaine, heroin, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco should rank ninth, ahead of cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, he said. He also argued that smoking cannabis created only a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness.

The Lib Dem science spokesman, Dr Evan Harris MP, who spoke to scientists over the weekend, accused Johnson of "political thuggery". He said the home secretary's actions could create a crisis in government policy-making if the drugs advisory panel was left unable to function or if experts on other panels resigned.

The BT Tower has been crowned with Europe's biggest LED screen, as part of the build-up to the 2012 Olympics. Floors 36 and 37 are now wrapped in a 59-metre-long screen built from more than half a million individual LEDs spread over an area of 280 square metres.

The screen is so luminous it can be seen from space at full brightness, the organisers say, and the words it displays will be legible throughout the city's West End.

The architects behind the project, Imagination, used a lightweight design that houses the LEDs in hundreds of rods spaced about 10cm apart. Had they used a solid screen construction, the weight would have affected the balance of the building, which wouldn't have been a great start to the countdown...

The "1000 Days" campaign kicks off tomorrow night at 8.45pm, when the screen will be switched on with much pomp and pyrotechnics. The tower will then count down each day to the Olympics, and broadcast various inspirational messages intended to excite the public in the run-up to the Games.

Wired.co.uk has also been assured to be on the look out for "something quite special" unveiling involving plenty of colour and movement, obviously intended to show of the vibrant new screen.

But we know what you're thinking: can I send it a tweet? Not yet, but the BT Tower's new clothes are permanent, and the management team want to rally London around the iconic landmark. So in their own words: watch this space.

Construction of the screen has involved:

 – 2,700 separate trips in the lift to transport materials to the top of the tower 
 – Designing the scaffolding by computer and erecting more than seven miles of scaffolding components
 – Installing nearly 2.5 miles of power, lighting and electrical cable
 – 11,000 scaffold components
 – Making nearly 1,500 wind checks, as no installation work could take place in winds of more than 15 knots
 – 114 construction workers and engineers
 – A total of 30,600 man hours to complete the work
 – 11 weeks of construction

Harm caused by alcohol compared with some drugs may be underplayed. Photograph: Danny Joint/Rex Features

Alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis, according to a paper from a drugs expert.

Professor David Nutt, chairman of the government's advisory committee on the misuse of drugs, criticised politicians for "distorting" and "devaluing" the research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs.

But he also said some "top" scientific journals had published "horrific examples" of poor quality research on the alleged harm caused by some illicit drugs.

The Imperial College professor argued for a new way of classifying the harm caused by both legal and illegal drugs.

"Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth.

"Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively," said Nutt in the paper from the centre for crime and justice studies at King's College, London published tomorrow .

Nutt clashed with Jacqui Smith when she was home secretary after he compared the 100 deaths a year from horseriding with the 30 deaths a year linked to ecstasy. Smith also ignored the recommendation of Nutt's advisory committee that cannabis should not be reclassified from class C back to class B, leading to heavier penalties.

He criticised Smith's use of the "precautionary principle" to justify her decision to reclassify cannabis and said that by erring on the side of caution politicians "distort" and "devalue" the research evidence.

"This leads us to a position where people really don't know what the evidence is," he said adding that the initial decision to downgrade the classification of cannabis led to a fall in the use of the drug.

Nutt acknowledged there was a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness linked to cannabis use. But he argued that to prevent one episode of schizophrenia it would be necessary to "stop 5,000 men aged 20 to 25 from ever using" cannabis.

Nutt also renewed his support for reclassifying ecstasy from a class A drug to class B, saying the advisory committee "won the intellectual argument" over the issue but obviously didn't win the decision after the home secretary vetoed the move.

He said the quality of some research papers about cannabis and ecstasy was so poor the articles had to be retracted. Richard Garside, director of the centre for crime and justice, said Nutt's briefing paper gave an insight into what drugs policy might look like if it was based on the research evidence rather than political or moral positioning.