Should UK Be Next to Decriminalise Marijuana?

The United States had already approved the use of medical marijuana in their country and I couldn’t be happier enough for those living in Colorado and Washington. Maybe we in the UK should be next to decriminalise it, and for obvious reasons, the government will still want to keep marijuana in this country in check.

In the UK, marijuana is still classified as a class C type of drug. Anybody found possessing just a small ounce of cannabis could be pressed for fines, but not imprisonment. It seems that those supporting the anti-cannabis approval haven’t been properly informed.

Decriminalising marijuana also puts many things into an awkward position. Why would dangerous substances, such as alcohol and tobacco, be easier to approve than a plant that has no preservatives and dangerous chemicals? Companies all over the world work with governments to create profit. Also, many parts of the world have land fertile for growing tobacco leaves. Marijuana is yet to be tax-mapped, but many are growing their own illegally.

If the government cannot earn anything out of marijuana yet and the stigma remains there, the UK is powerless to have a decriminalised marijuana industry. Stigmas are everything, and no politician is willing to touch upon the public’s sentiment that marijuana and other drugs are dangerous substances.

The Possible Extent of the Modern Slavery Bill

Home Secretary Theresa May had recently proposed a Modern Slavery bill, which would protect those abused by their employers, victims of human trafficking, and those forced to engage in criminal activities, and according to analysts, its benefits may materialize for some time this year. However, their media description is most likely the ideal, because I know the local police and courts of justice will have different implementations of these new laws.

According to a recent speech by the Queen of England, the UK’s new legal bill will protect victims from traffickers, especially those forced to engage in criminal activity. The new bill, she said, will have them compensation from any of the assets seized from their traffickers. She added that the new bill will further strengthen the punishments for human traffickers.

Drug formulation and cannabis growth is illegal in many parts of Europe, and the United Kingdom is one of them. However, some European countries allow the consumption of cannabis. Many organised crime rings make use of foreign migrants, including women and children, to work in production, and most of them end up being associates or collaborators to the scheme when they were really victims.

Any law or bill that protects those whose stories are not told properly, especially confused collaborators, is welcome for me in the United Kingdom. However, it is important that UK officials, both on the domestic and national scale, will live up to the promise of benefits and rights the law indicates.

UK Still Has Slavery, Also Has Laws to Fight It

Home Office Secretary Theresa May recently passed a Modern Slavery bill that will allow victims of slavery to seek compensation and reparations from their traffickers, or employers, especially those who had had them work illicitly in improper occupations. 

I can’t believe that our country still has slavery. Sure, there are human traffickers, who sell people, including children, to brothels, black market companies and other organisations, but what I’m talking about is localized slavery. Yes, your dear neighbour.

I had a neighbour once, and their family had a domestic helper named Tina. She was from Morocco as I recall. Every day, the family will leave, but Tina was locked up from behind the door. She was told never to shout or cry for help outside. One time, I was walking beside her employer and she was following us. I could notice that she was malnourished.

I wanted to take it to authorities, but some colleagues said there was no law that protected domestic helpers. In the UK, it was always the citizen first, the migrants secondary, despite the fragrant words the world hears on television.

Maybe this law, along with other laws, will help these migrants, who came into the country to support their own families back in their country, have a right to the UK justice system. Nobody deserves to be treated like a slave, either through human trafficking or domestic imprisonment.

Clare’s Law and the Sanctity of Relationships

Now, before you think this is a “holy” type of post, I’d just like to clarify that sanctity in the title meant “honesty” or “values” in a relationship. I just want to point out here that the new Clare’s Law, or the Domestic Violence DisclosureScheme, while it protects individuals, it may also breed mistrust. 

I am all for the safety of our women and girls, but researching about the history of your partner, with his or her own knowledge, is a way of degrading the “honesty” and “genuine-ness” of relationships. Sure, it could be a romantic and less-than-practical notion, but why bother partnering up in a relationship if you could not even trust each other?

Potentially, the law can save lives, but is this law really necessary? Maybe it is, for people who look for partners in online dating and matchmaking websites. It will also be helpful especially in divorce cases, but the previous example is already an irony.

Definitely, it will really be nice to know that you have a good premise during divorce because you know that your partner has a violent history, but do you plan to get into a relationship just so you could get a divorce?

There is nothing wrong with Clare’s law, but intimate trust, understanding, patience and good values will always make a good relationship, not a back-end solution. There is nothing wrong with the law being passed, but if people use it to concern themselves of their partners, they were already planning to fail the relationship.

BMJ Report Accuses Several UK Medical Universities of Racism

A British Medical Journal report “Academic Performance of Ethnic Minority Candidates and Discrimination in the MRCGP Examinations Between 2010 and 2012: Analysis of Data,” claims that MRCGP examiners discriminate in the exams of Asian, Indian and Black doctors compared to white doctors. According to the authors, General Practice Professor Aneez Esmail and Biostatistics Professor Chris Roberts, medical universities have a bias when giving out their MRCGP examinations.

Today, the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) has filed a legal case against UK’s Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and the General Medical Council (GMC) for the MRCGP examinations biased against minority ethnic candidates. This legal case puts medical practitioners minorities in the UK on the spotlight.

Esmail and Roberts’  report showed that Black and minority ethnic graduates trained in the UK were likely to fail than their white UK counterparts in their first attempt at a clinical skills assessment exam. Black and minority ethnic candidates who trained abroad also had a greater likeliness to fail in the exam. The likeliest to fail are minority candidates who did not train or study in the United Kingdom.

According to the lawyer of BAPIO, Attorney William O’Neill, should BAPIO win the case, it will mean good quality medical graduates from universities regardless of ethnicity, which would give the NHS the boost it needs to provide quality medical service.

Source

No Win No Fee: Is It Really Bad For All Of Us?

In January this year, the UK Legal Ombudsman had ordered lawyers to repay more than £1 million in compensation for misleading consumers regarding the No Win No Fee confusion, or the Conditional Fee Arrangement (CFA) used by most lawyers, solicitors and claims handling companies.

According to the Legal Ombudsman, it said that it “begun to see cases where the fundamental promise, which underpins the marketing of these arrangements- that the consumer will not have to pay for losing cases-is being broken.”

Truthfully, no win no fee is something I’d prefer because it enabled me to reclaim refunds from my bank without much trouble. I did not mind paying back 25%. However, most claims handling firms now concentrate on the viability of a client’s success rather than fulfilling their duties to represent any client in court.

The viability of success, coupled with legal intelligence, had resulted into widespread disasters for the insurance industry. Insurance premiums have skyrocketed in rates, deeply affecting younger drivers applying for car and personal injury insurance.

No win no fee can be misleading because in the end, clients will need to pay undisclosed fees. If legal representatives will not make their statements clear to avoid hidden costs or misleading information, then it would be better to banish no win no fee from the legal system once and for all.

Don’t Take It to a Lawsuit at Once, Be Fair

We might say laws are meant to be broken, but being fair is more important. 

A neighbour of mine recently told me her story regarding her neighbour who moved out because she filed a litigation against their family without even warning them about a petty little thing. Since this country, the UK, has a compensation-culture society, anybody could get affordable legal help even if the legal aid cuts the government can implement any time.

But, this litigation culture can also damage personal reputations, particularly one’s social connections and well-being. My neighbour demand that their neighbours avoid looking indecent when sunbathing; they sunbathe naked without minding the passers-by across the area.

Sure, sunbathing naked is quite offensive and obscene right? I told her she could have sent a warning or a letter to them explaining why she found it indecent. However, she directly for a lawsuit.

A litigation is intimidating because it pits another person to definite terms in the law that he or she violated. Instead of appealing to their common sense, taking them directly against the wall can be offensive or unnatural.

My neighbour said that if she hadn’t done it, our area’s property values would have fallen. She asked me what could have happened if a media spectacle or a Youtube video was posted of it. I just said that it is still fair that she should have sent and explained these things to her neighbours first.

Fairness and ethics is important to retain in one side even if the other party does not bother to have or to learn them. This aids the law in defending who is truly right.