What would you think if it came to light that a 69 year old man had been smoking cannabis for the past 50 years with the full knowledge of his children and grandchildren, and had a number of convictions for possession of the drug? The tabloid press would have a field day with headlines like “Grandfather Junkie” or “Pensioner Drug Dealer” and would want him placed into an old people’s home for his own protection.

Paul McCartney announced recently in a Rolling Stone magazine interview that he has been smoking the drug on a daily basis for 50 years and is now going to quit for the sake of his 8 year old daughter Beatrice as he is worried what sort of example he would be setting her. It all seems a bit strange to me… why has it taken him so long to reach that conclusion?  He has never appeared too bothered about the example he was setting his other children who are now adults, and of course there are his grandchildren as well.

Please don’t get me wrong here! I’m one of Macca’s biggest music fans, I’m of his generation and I love his music.

However, I suspect the real reason that he is quitting the drug is that he is becoming more and more paranoid or even developing schizophrenia. Studies have shown that the likelihood of developing the illness is high in those who smoke the drug long term, and 50 years is long term by any stretch of the imagination.

Government-commissioned reports have also found that taking the drug regularly more than doubles the risk of serious mental illness. Smoking marijuana on a regular basis increases the high levels of depression. Is the real reason why Macca is quitting drugs is that he is losing it mentally?

I find myself reluctant to express these opinions! But if it were the man next door I would say this and so in order to be true to my convictions I must, even though he is a national treasure! I have to ask myself ‘am I like the small boy in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale who told the truth about the Emperor’s new clothes?’   Are we blinded by his celebrity, and because of who he is, we condone his behaviour? Uncomfortable thinking!

Yet there has been a tenfold increase in the number of late-middle-aged people who smoke cannabis or take other drugs by comparison with the previous generation,  and one wonders if it is their desire to obtain eternal adolescence.

Arguments are noised regarding the alcohol v cannabis debate but in that debate where cannabis will always win on the violence issue it is forgotten that cannabis can have untold effects on mental health and the example of mum or dad smoking the drug will very often lead to curiosity on the part of the children when they are aware that it is not just a cigarette that mum is smoking in the evening. It becomes a social norm, not just a brief rebellion and other more toxic substances are available at school, in the street, at parties and outside the local Premier shop! One third of children are introduced to drugs by their parents. I will repeat that. One third of children are introduced to drugs by their parents. The parents often really believe that they are ‘protecting’ their children by allowing them to have it in the home but in my Youth Offending Team days I was besieged by such parents who were bewildered that their ‘plan‘ to be the ‘child’s best friend’ could go so terribly and sometimes fatally wrong.   But back to the older men who smoke the drug and try and live the life of a 15 year old air guitar playing youth at a Status Quo concert!

They live in a world of Peter Pan. But it is not the innocence of childhood that they seek, but the rebellion   of adolescence. Increasing numbers of people – especially men – on the verge of old age dress as in their youth, as if reluctant to acknowledge that those years are gone forever; their lizard skins are wrinkled by too much sun or smoked filled rooms. They are not so much young, but immature at heart. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. What are they giving the next generation? Not wisdom!

Everyone who has to deal with the old knows that in general they are a delight: gentle, dignified and undemanding. But the problem lies with those of us who refuse to grow old gracefully. There are more people over the age of sixty five who have been made subject to A.S.B.Os in this country than those who are under the age of twenty. And are some of us saddling our children with psychotic parents because of long term drug use? We can become an embarrassment and many children who have gone through these stages themselves at an early age shudder when they have to deal with mum or dads problems at an age when they have young dependents themselves and do not need the worry of the errant grandparent who may be thought of as a ‘bit of a character’ but who actually is not trusted to take care of the grandchildren and is not taken seriously.

Come on guys lets enjoy the blessings that old age brings us, such as grandchildren if we are blessed enough to have them. If not, there are ways that we can contribute by offering help and advice to the young not smouldering jealousy!  Let’s be an example to our children and the next generations and not be in competition with them.

Question; what do you need more of when you see a Human Rights Solicitor up to their necks in concrete?
Answer; not enough concrete!

Yes, that is a bad joke and in appalling taste but you get the point …

In the past year there have been 3,000 prisoners or ex-prisoners with claims into the Criminal Injuries Scheme for physical or psychological injuries which cost at least five million pounds in compensation and legal fees. And guess who is paying for it?

One case that really makes my blood boil is the case of John Hirst who bludgeoned his sixty five year old landlady to death with a hammer for which he served twenty five years. He claimed that while he was serving his sentence his Human Right were infringed as he was denied the right to vote.

In my view that had nothing to do with his Human Rights, if anything it was about his Civil Rights, and surely that is the thing that you immediately forgo if you are a serving prisoner. Voting or rather not voting is a part of that punishment.

Hirst, however, managed to get his case before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the court up held his claim.

Hirst is far from being the quickest bunny in the bush. I’ve watched him in a television interview with Andrew Neil where he was unable to string a coherent sentence together and all he was able to do was hurl abuse at the presenter.

No one could seriously convince me that he was able to write a letter, let alone be able to put together a convincing argument that he was denied the right to vote while he was serving a prison sentence, and then be able to present his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

I’ve been involved in prisons for over forty five years, both as a prisoner, and as a Probation Officer, and in all that time not one prisoner has said to me ” worse thing about serving time is having the right to vote taken from me, I’ll tell you that not being able to vote has made me think twice about committing offences in the future. It has really taught me that crime doesn’t pay”!

So how did Hirst manage it? Obviously, some Human Rights Lawyer found a way to milk money out the legal aid budget. A few years ago there were very few Human Rights Lawyers, but now they are like rats – at any point we are only ten feet away from one!

The same goes for accident claim lawyers – the “no win no fee brigade”, known as ambulance chasers. The number of bogus whiplash claims is at epidemic proportions. They offer something for nothing, and the public fall over themselves to gain insurance pay-outs. The accident lawyers claim that they are acting within the law. But is their behaviour effectual? By encouraging people to bear false witness with the promise of money, what they are doing is wrong morally and perhaps ethically.

Insurance companies will not take the financial loss. You and I, my dear readers and supporters will pay for this scam! It is estimated that each of us will pay £90 extra a year on our car insurance. Our already overburdened pockets are the ones that will have to cough up for these dubious practices.

In recent months there has been concern expressed in the news regarding the high level of alcohol consumption amongst the elderly.

Many years ago you can imagine my surprise and delight when l walked into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to discover one of my school dinner ladies sitting there! When Lil saw me she stood up and threw her arms around me in a warm embrace.

I got to know Lil well over the years up until her death. I remember her well, she was a typical South London Matriarch, the backbone of her family – the salt of the earth and more importantly to us as kids she was always kind.

Her drinking didn’t start until after she retired; she had lost a son in a car crash, and the other emigrated to Australia in the early 1960s. She then nursed her husband until his death.

Without a job and with no family around her she became very lonely; apart from going to the shops she didn’t set foot outside of her home. Having spent her life caring for others she was now totally on her own, and felt unwanted, and unloved. She stated that she felt ‘invisible’ and that no one would really care if she ceased to exist.

She became more and more isolated. She was having problems sleeping and so began to have a drink at bedtime to help her to sleep. After a while that one drink turned into two and so on and before long she was drinking over a bottle of gin a day. She started to let herself go, she wasn’t eating properly and began to have memory loss. On at least two occasions this formerly highly respectable woman was brought home by the police for being drunk and disorderly when she was trying get to the Off Licence to get her gin. She started to contemplate suicide, then out of desperation one evening whilst drunk she phoned Alcoholics Anonymous.

That was the turning point in her life. She found people who helped her with her drinking, she attended meetings and she made a large circle of friends. Apart from attending meetings she would socialise with her fellow recovering alcoholics, and began to live a much more fulfilled life. She told me that the years she attended AA meetings were some of the happiest in her life.

What was the key to this change? She felt needed. She was respected and was part of society again – not on the fringes needing alcohol to fill the gaps in her life.

When I knew Lil back in the 1980′s her story was quite unusual, but today more and more of us are living much longer. Within 20 years half of the adult population in this country will be over 50. One in four children born today will live beyond 100. Half a century ago, only one in ten children born would expect to reach 100.

As a consequence, the balance between generations is changing. We now have more people aged 65 and over in this country than there are children under the age of 16. These are dramatic shifts that have far-reaching consequences for us all.

There are more and more elderly people living in isolation, who are turning to alcohol for solace. Our local authorities are becoming responsible for caring for the most vulnerable in our society, those who are children and the elderly.

The elderly are the least respected and revered in our so called caring society. And yet, they often deserve the most! Many have survived poverty, often without state benefits – just hard work and yet they are often frightened to go out of their own homes because of the culture that subliminally says that youth is powerful and being old is weakness. We, as a culture are obsessed with youth, appearing younger, acting younger and we have bred selfishness into these last generations by suggesting that they must have it all and enjoy themselves and in many cases that means that the so called burden of an elderly relative does not fit in with the job or lifestyle that is thrust at us suggesting that endless hours at the gym are more beneficial to us than visiting a needy member of the family.

They do not have a voice, and are the most abused amongst us, and what are the local authorities doing to protect them? Very little! There is hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear of an elderly person dying of hypothermia, or lying dead in their flat before they are discovered, or being abused in care homes.

Yet that same local authority that is responsible for the care of the elderly, will pursue us to the ends of the earth if we don’t recycle our household rubbish; they send people out with cameras to photograph dog owners who allow their dogs to foul the pavement. These Local authorities are haemorrhaging money on chief executive salaries and some are making more than the Prime Minister.

They are being rewarded for failure to protect the most vulnerable amongst us!

For over thirty years I have been working with people who have been suffering with either alcohol or drug dependency, or in many cases both. I have worked both in residential and community settings.

In my early career the ethos was that when working with people who abused substances they would be placed on a ten day reduction programme to help with their withdrawals. The user was then put on a reducing detox programme, using the drug known as Heminevrin. Following the ten day detox period, the focus of the treatment was then to move them on to abstinence, then progressing to lead a more productive and happier life. Support was given as they entered this difficult period of re adjustment to society.

Now, sadly, the emphasis has shifted from eventual abstinence to maintenance or harm reduction programmes using methadone – a synthetic opiate manufactured for use as a painkiller and as a substitute for heroin as it has a similar effect.  The street name is ‘bubble’.

Someone who is addicted to heroin will often be prescribed methadone to take as a replacement for heroin. Opiates are sedative drugs that depress the nervous system – they slow down body functioning and reduce physical and psychological pain. They induce a feeling of detachment from the world and can make the user feel as though he or she is no longer involved in society and the consequences of their behaviour.

The real purpose of methadone is that it is to be utilised as a ‘weaning’ drug and should be gradually reduced with constant support over time. This means that the person can give up heroin avoiding acute withdrawal symptoms, mental, physical and emotional. The cost of prescribing methadone to drug addicts has soared by 84 per cent over the last five years, it has emerged.

Last year, it is estimated that around 170,000 people, were given regular, controlled doses of methadone as part of a community prescription plan, costing the N.H.S £398m which is an estimation of 2.4 million methadone prescriptions written. Let us consider here that the reason that is given for the reduction of real help – as in ‘person to person’ counselling and support for the addicts, their families is that there are no funds … no budget … in the 80’s there were many well run ‘rehabs’ that had to close because of lack of financing. Many many thousands of people were helped to live rewarding lives – stayed clean and sober because effort was made in the right way. Yes, it’s expensive. It is also morally RIGHT to help those in trouble – to give them a chance to change their lives.

There was a similar programme operating in the mid 1960s. If someone registered with a G.P as a drug dependant they would be prescribed Heroin and this practice was discontinued because it was proved that the addict was trapped in a cycle of using.

And this is the case today with maintenance programmes! I have known a lot of people to be on methadone for over ten years with no intention now of moving forward. Some started their recovery journey with hopes of change but slipped back into the dark vortex of blunting their feelings with synthetic drugs instead of heroin, these people made a supreme effort at the beginning, and with support, could have moved on completely.  Many others I know are subsidising their methadone with heroin. Also, some of the methadone ends up on the streets.

I often run into people I have worked with and they tell me that they are ‘clean’ because their drug worker has convinced them that because they are on a maintenance programme they are. I am not dismissing the courage that these people have had to seek help and make efforts to change their lives. This is to be applauded.  However, in my opinion it is a negligent act to encourage people to believe they are drug free. Of course they are not, they are still trapped in a cycle of drug use with often no prospect of breaking free.

They call it harm reduction!  And yes, it can reduce the harm to the addict, and reduce the harm of committing offences to support their habits. But not always!   Some drug workers tell me that they have people on maintenance programmes that are holding down jobs, however, they are few and far between in my experience, and they are still in the mind set of using by keeping a foot in both camps.  The vast majority are on benefits, often turning to alcohol – a legal high! – and drinking heavily plus their methadone.

It is EMOTIONAL CASTRATION by the state.

And there is no political will to end this misery. I appeared in the Daily Politics Show, where I accused Carolin Flint, then the Housing Minister of lying about the crime figures.

Following the programme I was contacted by the Lib Dems who invited me to talk at a fringe meeting on law and order at their conference. Following my talk I was introduced to Chris Huhne (who had the Home Affairs brief at the time) and was invited to join him on the stage in the main hall.

Following the conference he invited me to Westminster for a meeting to discuss my views on law and order in more detail. At that meeting we covered a wide range of subjects including harm reduction and maintenance programmes. He told me that people on these programmes were less likely to commit offences and that is what the pubic want to see. In other words, the people who are in this sorry state of being fed synthetic drugs are just being ‘kept quiet’ so that the figures appear acceptable. This is a sad reflection on our society; a society that claims to care for needs of the individual.

When a crime is committed it is deemed to be committed against the state. The victim goes one way, and the perpetrator goes the other way and never the twain shall meet.

Thus, the offenders have no obligation to their victims.  In most cases they do not have to give an account of their behaviour to the court for if they plead guilty, which many do, it’s called plea bargaining. They do this in the main in order to gain a reduction in their sentences and an even further reduction can be reached if the court agrees to take other offences into consideration (T.I.C).

They will be represented by solicitors or barristers, who will do all the talking for them. The victim will have no part in this process, apart from a ‘victim impact’ report written by a probation officer that the magistrates or the judge will see, which will then be taken into account when sentencing.

If the victims offence is one of those which are T.I.C. they will not even get a mention in court. Yet that offence could be one the most traumatic events of the victims lives.

They are frequently left with fear and unresolved issues that can last for years. I took part in a phone-in on the Jeremy Vine show where the subject was burglary. Many victims called in, there were some heart rending stories, one man that phoned had been burgled over twenty years ago and his late mother’s jewellery was stolen. He and his wife have been trawling second-hand jewellery shops in the hope they might find their property. Clearly, this gentleman and others felt disenfranchised by the court process and are left bewildered and frustrated.

Like many other victims of crime he had no ‘closure’, I could feel his feelings of frustration as I told him in the most subtle and tactful way that I could that there was little or no chance of him ever recovering the property and that he would really benefit from moving on with his life and not letting the events of the past dominate the thoughts and feelings of today.

I feel that victims should play a much more active role in the criminal justice system. Not in the sentencing – that should always be left to the courts!  But there is a role for them in the sentence and that is in the form of Restorative Justice, where the victim and the offender are brought together, the offenders will come face to face with their victims and they have to tell their victims not how they committed the offence, but why they did. This is voluntary on the part of the victim who will be counselled on what to expect and fully supported throughout the whole procedure.

When confronted with their victims most offenders have to take a sharp intake of breath. But more importantly the victim gets closure and it can be a life transforming event for some of them which will allow them to move on.

In a lot of cases of burglary the offender will try and dehumanise their victims, some have been known to turn the photos face down of the occupants of the house. In most of the cases I have dealt with the offender has been driven by addiction issues to alcohol and drugs. I’m not offering an excuse for their behaviour, far from it, but it might offer an explanation for it.

There is a saying “people dancing look ridiculous to those who can’t hear the music.”   Some people haven’t grasped the full picture or have not ‘heard the music’ of Restorative Justice; they actually believe it means that if the offender apologises for their behaviour, they are then forgiven and no more is said or done!

This was the opinion of Amanda Platell, she got very hot under the collar in a television debate she had with me about Restorative Justice, she could not be further away from the truth !  Restorative Justice is PART of the sentence, and not a STAND ALONE sentence. 

As a Probation Officer I’ve convened Restorative Conferences, both in prisons and in the community. They are not like the Jeremy Kyle Show, where the victims shout at the offender. It’s done in a calm way, where the victims express their feelings, and tell of the impact that the offence has had on their lives.

As for the offender they are inclined to then take responsibility for their offending, all indications point to the fact that those offenders who have taken part in this process are over 40% less likely to reoffend. There is an old saying – ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’- it’s clearly successful, let’s do more of it !

I’m sure that like myself most of you were horrified to hear our news bulletins over the Christmas break. As you wrapped presents, made your home warm and inviting for family and guests you heard of the two stabbings; one fatality in Oxford Street, and the shooting of Anuj Bidve in Manchester, and in East London the murder of a babysitter on Boxing Day.

 A week later a young mother Kirsty Treloar was kidnapped and murdered and on New Year’s Day Michael Atherton gunned down three women, seriously injuring another, before shooting himself.

Within hours of the shootings friends of Atherton had set-up a Facebook page and posted tributes to him. Things like “he was a great lad who will be sorely missed.” The list goes on.

The question I always ask myself, is what has brought us to this point? We see increasing levels of violence played out on our streets; just before Christmas a child as young as three attacked another in a nursery.

I feel that we all have to take some small part of the responsibility for the violence because we have allowed our society to end up like this. We have let violence creep into our lives through the media and into our homes on our television screens, and computer games.

We no longer have people like Mary Whitehouse who would tirelessly speak out about the drop in standards in our media. Those who still do have their voices drowned out by so-called liberals, who, for underlying reasons of their own, encourage a ‘free’ society. Sadly, others who have tried over the years to make changes have become de sensitized themselves and now ‘play the game’. What they are unaware of is that many many people have decent values and would love to have this flow of rubbish stemmed. These are the people who WILL talk with their children, take them to the park on Sundays, instead of allowing them to stay in the half light of their bedrooms watching killers mindlessly blow each other to bits on their monitors.

I’ve been involved in many radio and television debates, regarding the impact that violence has on our screens and whether it can influence some people’s behaviour.

Psychologists will claim that what we view has no connection to our actions. Their argument is that the sex or violence is only a small part of the overall programme.

Millions of us watch football, and what is the point of football? It’s the goals, and yet they are only a small part of the game, but we watch in anticipation of our team scoring, and we will discuss endlessly who scored what goal.

Why do advertisers spend millions of pounds each year just to get their products on our television screens if only for a couple of minutes if it has no effect on our behaviour? Of course it does!  

Case in point; I never much liked coffee, and twenty six years ago made a decision for a good reason of my own never to drink it again. I am fully committed to that decision. If I were to watch clever appealing adverts for coffee all day it wouldn’t encourage me to drink it, far from it! I would just push the off button. But there are many people who like coffee, and they would more than likely go out and buy the brand that was being advertised. But food … now that’s a different story! For health reasons I try and watch my weight. My exposure to adverts for a new chocolate bar, a new crisp flavor will make me ‘feel’ something. I may not go out and buy the product immediately but it will be in my thoughts.

Likewise, a person, who, for reasons of their own, has unresolved issues or perhaps was brought up in a home where violence was the norm could have a propensity toward violence and constant exposure will provide that trigger.

Games like ‘Grand Auto Theft’ contain graphic scenes of violence, sex and drug use. A vulnerable mind could absorb these images and for some, fantasy could slip seamlessly into reality.

These games are part of a very lucrative industry making billions of pounds – far outweighing the money that Hollywood makes. Who profits? Certainly not our society.

So back to the initial and fundamental question. Who do we want to educate our children? Is it the producers of computer, film and television programmes? If the answer to that question is yes then we get all we deserve.

We live in a society where anything goes.  We have created a culture, or passively sat by whilst a culture has been created around us, in which many of us glorify dysfunction. It has become the new ‘God’ of our day. People who beat up their spouses, neglect children, are given a platform where they have their five minutes of fame – to be discussed endlessly, no doubt, at the pub, where others will secretly envy their brief brush with the green room. Programs like the Jeremy Kyle show, where he verbally attacks vulnerable people, cheered by the studio audience, are scenes reminiscent of the gladiator fights in Rome hundreds of years ago.

Kyle is the undisputed champion of day time television. Most of his viewers are made up of the very people he abuses, yet they sit at home cheering him on. At their feet are future generations of this country, seeing their parents worshipping at the altar of dysfunction.