Between 1919 and 1933 in the USA the Volstead Act prohibited the sale, manufacture, consumption and transportation of liquor anywhere in America. Brought on by pressure from the temperance movement the Noble Experiment did little to stop Americans from drinking. In fact it's reckoned that in 1925 there was between 30,000 and 100, 000 speakeasy clubs in New York alone. The biggest single effect that prohibition had was to allow organised crime to flourish. It was in this period that, what we now know as the Mafia, really came of age, born and assisted by the huge amounts of money they could make from selling illegal booze.

Are you listening at the back!!?

In 1969 President Nixon (yes him) coined the phrase 'War on Drugs' to describe the action that the US was, for forty years, to take to prohibit the sale, manufacture (can you see where I'm going with this?), consumption and transportation of illegal drugs internationally. Brought on by pressure from...

Prohibition doesn't work. That's what I'm trying to say. It didn't work in the 20's and it hasn't worked in the 70's, 80's, 90's and the Noughties. Prohibiting drugs, booze, sex, gambling is never going to work, for the simple reason that people want to do these things - possibly and probably at the same time.

The US government has spent 33 BILLION dollars on the War on Drugs (though Obama doesn't want the phrase used anymore) this year. The drugs trade, globally, is worth $320 BILLION a year. If we were to legalise and regulate the drugs trade tomorrow, that's $353 billion you could give to the banks. (The $33 billion, by the way, doesn't include the money that's spent taking the 1 million plus Americans through the courts for drug offences every year). Legalisation would be more likely to ensure a safe product, cutting the chances of snorting coke cut with strychnine or dropping dead after swallowing an adulterated pill. Take the money and the control out of the hands of the dealers and you create a revenue stream that would be very welcome at the moment and stop shit drugs flooding the streets. There was a senior police man on the radio the other day who was explaining that the amount of shite or deadly cocaine on the streets presently was the result of successful operations against traffickers. He was contributing to a phone in about dealers making low supply last longer by cutting their gear up with boric acid and worming powder. The War on Drugs creates a twisted reality, to match the effects of the drugs themselves. Go back to the 20s for a moment, where they brewed up moonshine, when supply's got short and made every fucker blind.

The other parallel to be drawn is evil bastards with guns. In the 20s you had Al Capone and the like, roaring around spraying each other with tommy guns from the windows of Caddys. Now you've got gangsters hosing each other down from the back seats of beamers. In the words of the Propellerheads 'it's all just a little bit of history repeating'. We really should learn from stuff like this, it would save us a lot of time and money. Also if anyone wants to hose down the Propellerheads, feel free.

Why are we banning drugs at all? It can't be because of the risk factor.Last year 3000 people died from drugs. That's legal and illegal drugs. In the same period 7300 people died from alcohol related causes. 106000 people each year die from smoking related illness. What about a War on Fags (easily misconstrued?), what about a return to the Noble Experiment? If it's a question of taxation, then tax drugs. How's about we all sit down, skin one up, drop a little 'un or two and talk sensibly about how to get ourselves out of this mess. Stop banning everything! They're banning legal highs now. It won't stop me from doing drugs even if I end up going to a house where three men, in vests and tats, are sitting on deckchairs (the only furniture), watching a black and white telly, sipping super strength beer, while I shakily give them twenty quid for an eighth of shit slate resin. Lets take the discussion away from people who have no fucking clue about drugs and sort out a solution. Stop throwing money down the drain.

Anway - rant over. Sorry it's not more coherent, but I've been sitting in a room with an open fire all night and I think I may have got carbon monoxide poisoning.

Final thought. We're burning poppy fields in Afghanistan while at the same time experiencing a global shortage of opium for morphine. Ho hum

Some tunes

Burns - 'Teknique'

The Gossip - 'Love Long Distance (Fake Blood Remix)'

ALAN ALAN ALAN AL!

Funny Marmot

I love the Coen brothers, let me just start by saying that. Their films are consistently clever, funny, thoughtful and laced with the sort of dialogue I'd kill to be able to write. Beginning with Blood Simple, way back in '84 they've followed up with ever stronger films that I'll always find time to go and see. If you take a look at the roll call of their films, they could populate a list of Must See Before You Die movies on their own - Millers Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, my personal favourite The Big Lebowski, Fargo, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, the underrated Lady Killers and No Country For Old Men. A lot of film makers would be pleased to have one of these films in their canon and I'm sure that behind those Hollywood smiles there's a few gritted teeth barbs thrown whenever the brothers walk in the room. No one likes a smart ass, after all. For me they're the movie equivalent of Soulwax, in that they just don't seem to be able to do any wrong and they do it with apparently effortless cool.

A Serious Man is released in October

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I signed up for Twitter last night. I suppose the incessant media coverage of it has infested my brain, like an annoying radio jingle. Radio One DJs must mention it at least two or three times an hour and everywhere you look someone is inviting you to add them on Twitter (or is it that Facebook?). I know when you post something, it's a Tweet, which conjures up an image of a trapped avian, calling for food. Which might not be too far from the truth.

At first glance it seems a bit pointless. I never do enough in my life to make it worth updating my Tweets on a regular basis and the people I'm following, a selection of DJ's and producers, all seem to lead depressingly interesting lives. This just leaves me feeling sad and unfulfilled. Is that what it's meant to do? I've tried my hardest to think of interesting Tweets, but 'Cleared more slug carcasses off the raised beds.' 'Had two bowls of Golden Balls for breakfast AND some toast', just doesn't compare favourably to say, for example. Brodinski's last Tweet 'BrodinskiOn the plane for Creamfield Andalucia w/ @ciaotiga, kevin saunderson & jeff mills.'. Why aren't I on a plane to Andalucia, with Jeff Mills? I could well be the first Twitter induced suicide. I wonder if Miss SS and the kids could sue them for Corporate Liability. Something to think about...

EDIT -In its current carnation, I give Twitter a year, tops.

Fukkk Off - 'More Than Friends (Omni's Vocal Remix)'

Erik Hassle - 'Don't Bring Flowers (Yes, Giantess Remix)'

I Wonder Why...

This is a prime example of letting the music take you.

Boys Noize

This is the first time I've heard this all the way through and man, it's been worth the hooplah. Fantastic tune from two of the best in the biz

Brown Noise

Or near as damn it.

Out now on Beatport. General release 7th September

Things you need to know about the countryside:

• It smells like sweet death. By that I don't mean sweet death in an Emo 'Oh God wouldn't it be great to be dead' kind of way, but an all encompassing vaguely saccharine smell of decay. There's a lot of dead stuff lying around in the country, usually closer than you think, so it's hardly suprising. Sheep are popular. I've seen about three or four recently, in various stages of decomposition. They stink. Add to that dead leaves, dead birds, roadkill, dead flowers, horse shit, cow shit, sheep shit, dead rabbits, dead hedgehogs, dead pheasants. You get my point, the country smells like a carrion strewn battlefield.

• You can drive along a straight stretch of country road for an hour and not see another vehicle, but the second you head into a blind corner, you're going to meet a gigantic wheeled tractor. Usually towing an oversized trailer. You will normally leave this encounter with a branch of some sort sticking out of your passenger window, a strange grin on your face and a stronger than usual smell of crap in your car. This will always happen - it's one of Murphy's laws. Fucking Murphy

• Slugs are bastards. In fact all insects are bastards. I'm aware that a slug is a mollusc, but I'm corralling all garden pests under the Insect Umbrella, just so it's easier to WIPE THEM ALL OFF THE FACE OF THE PLANET. Before moving to the country, I held aloft a naive Buddhist philosophy that everything was one, living in perfect harmony, that could be my nan reborn as a moth. Now I'm Kilgore - ' I love the smell of slug pellets in the morning'. The first time I laid them and saw the resulting slug carnage in the morning, I jumped round the garden like I was holding the golden ticket to Willy Wonkas chocolate factory. My vegetable patch now is blue with pellets, with tiny shoots of green poking out amongst them at short intervals. It's like a cluster bomb dotted village in Lebanon.

• People in the country are very friendly. It must be a shared sense of isolation, knowing that the only sucker that's going to dig your house out of a ten foot snowdrift is your neighbour, so best get the preserves out straight away and get round there sharpish. I had a welcome card off a woman I'd never met before, within the first twenty four hours, delivered in possibly the heaviest rain storm I've ever seen. I was showered with jam and chutney and complete strangers were lending me hedge cutters, for no better reason than I've got a MASSIVE friggin' hedge to cut. Coming from an urban situation I was quite freaked out by it all.

These are my first observations, after a month. I'll be sure to regale you with more when they strike me.

For now though, here's some tunes that have been drilling my seedlings recently

Tom Deluxx - 'Reactivate'

Acid Girls - 'The Numbers Song'

Riton & Primary1 - 'Who's There (InFlagranti Rmx)'

Jupiter One - 'Countdown (Designer Drugs Remix)'

Thieves Like Us - 'Your Heart Feels (Designer Drugs Remix)'