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Well, hang on, some employers do conduct drug tests. The last proper job I had, there was such a policy: being under the influence was grounds for dismissal, refusing to undergo a drug test could be grounds for dismissal, that was in the contract I freely signed. And I never got tested, because my boss knew damn well I’d rather walk out the door than provide a sample. On principle. He also knew that I’d never, ever turn up for work even slightly tipsy. Again, on principle. Schools are allowed to have rules. This is a proposal to change the guidance for headmasters, so that they can request a drug test. Nobody’s proposing the power to insist on it.
Police don’t have the power to insist you take a breath or urine test if you’re stopped driving. You’ll be fined for refusing to provide a sample, but you’ve still got the right to refuse. And no-one’s suggesting headmasters are going to start fining pupils, either for possession of drugs or for refusal to be tested: this isn’t a revenue-generating exercise masquerading as social policy, like with the coppers and their bloody breathalysers. So, you still haven’t explained why you think this is likely to happen, Dizietsma. Where’s the political interest, where are the votes in spending a lot of money to uncover concrete evidence of a problem that’s going to cost a whole load more money to address? Just think about it for a second, maybe it’s a refusal to spend middle-class voters’ money on nasty poor kids that leads to there being a growing ‘drug problem’ in the nation’s schools. There are votes to be won in talking tough and picking fights with lefties, but no votes for Blair in actually spending money on this.
The right at stake here is a touch more fundamental than that, it's about personal privacy and under what circumstances we let the state infringe upon that privacy.
That I agree with. But I just think it’s the wrong fight, it makes Blair look like he’s protecting the nation’s cuddly-wuddly children from the evil left-wing hippies: you’re wasting breath arguing about voluntary fucking drug tests in schools when they’re progressing with plans for a national DNA database. It’s directly comparable to getting distracted by an argument over the rights and wrongs of breathalysing drink-drivers, when all the while coppers are stealthily retaining all the DNA samples that they’ve got the power to take from people who haven’t been convicted of anything. There’s a cuddly, common-sense ‘issue’, and hiding behind it there’s a hard-nosed scary thing going on. And I can’t believe I’m arguing about this with Invisibles fans...
Oh, and Anna, I know it tastes nasty, but I think the right-wing middle class is the only voting constituency that counts for anything in this country. It’s not a good thing, but it just *can’t* be fought head on. It’s their interests that have co-opted the Labour party, it’s this same constituency you simply must address if you want to formulate any kind of strategy that’s going to actually work. This is my theory, FWIW. And there’s as many libertarian instincts on the right-wing as there are on the left; The rich have just as many of their precious liberties to lose as the poor, they’re just different kinds of liberties. Whatever your principles are, you have to figure out a way of spinning them that’s going to be effective. And that's an entirely separate thread, really.
And I’m ever so sorry, I realise I’ve just spent 3 tedious posts long-windedly saying the same thing each time, ie that this isn’t worth arguing about. Gah. I am Barbelith’s Paranoid Gasbag. I’ll shut up now. |
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