Come and protest against ‘Your High’
We need lots of Bandon Hill parents to stage a protest outside the ‘Your High’ shop on Stafford Road on Monday 9th June at 11.30am. There will be press & a photographer to record our protest. Please come along for half an hour to highlight your concerns about the shop. Please pass the word around. Tom Brake MP & I will be there.
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About me
As a Liberal Democrat I believe that the work of politicians should be open & transparent. By detailing some of the work I am engaged with I can be accountable to the residents of Wallington South who voted me to be their representative on Sutton Council.
My blog also gives me the opportunity to express opinions on local issues; however the opinions expressed on this blog are personal and do not necessarily reflect the policy of the Liberal Democrats.
Cllr. Jayne McCoy
Published and promoted by Roger Thistle on behalf of Jayne McCoy and Sutton Borough Liberal Democrats, all at Kennedy House, 5 Nightingale Road, Carshalton SM5 2DN
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Diary of a Sutton Councillor 
Not a very liberal protest, surely?
Can you provide a bit more info to a nonplussed visitor to your blog why you you seek to protest and what this shop does?
I’m sorry, but I thought you and Tom Brake were LIBERAL democrats.
Have you protested outside any pubs, clubs, or licensed premises yet, what about craft shops that sell home brewing equipment?
Everywhere I’ve lived (including Lerwick in Shetland) has a shop like this, unlike pubs and clubs none of them have to have bouncers because of fights, none are the cause of a single admission to A&E, or even a single teenager trying drugs.
Drug paraphenalia used by junkies is home made because they spend their money on their habit and will use anything they find to fashion pipes and other equipment from.
I would wager that drug paraphenalia sold to 90% of customers in any of these shops is never used for anything stronger than flavoured tobacco.
Finally there is the issue that it’s actually party policy to decriminalise cannabis, and unless I’m very mistaken these shops don’t sell crack pipes or equipment for injecting drugs or sheets of tinfoil (oh my god! protest outside tescos!) for chasing the dragon.
Seriously, are you and Tom secret tories, or looking for a ‘Daily Mail’ vote or what?
I appreciate that I posted this entry before I posted the background to the issue. As this is a ‘diary’ I was trying to keep it chronological. I have now rectified this.
As a ward councillor I have a responsibility to represent my residents and 95% of parents at the school are concerned about the location of this shop. I am empowering them to voice their concerns.
I would say though that I was not aware that it was Liberal Democrat policy to actively support the use of illegal drugs. I would be grateful if you could direct me to where this is included in our policies.
In response to Aaron I am not aware that there is a great demand for flavoured tobacco in Wallington, so in this case I expect the shop to go out of business very quickly for lack of trade.
So, will the protest be simply about the presence of what is effectively a novelty and trinket shop or about the fact that because it is selling nothing illegal or licensed anyone can go in and have a look and be somehow “seduced” into thinking drugs are cool. The liberal response, as far as I can see, to your constituents’ calls for a protest (or did you start the petition?) would be to protest that the drugs laws kill even more than the drugs do and that such shops should be allowed to sell the “real deal” but be located away from schools, regulated and licensed and not allow children in at all.
But you are possibly right to be concerned about “legal highs” – they do work, the chemists are always going to be one step ahead of the law, yet we do not have the millennia of experience and century of data about the legal concoctions that we have about most illicit drugs that tend to show them to be safer than most people believe, and pretty certainly safer than the booze and fags the kids are taunted with at the local sweetie shop!
Seems to me that Jayne is concentrating more on the second part of the name Liberal DEMOCRAT and is supporting her residents….
We don’t have an active policy to support the use of alcohol or tobacco either, but we are liberal and support the right of people to live there lives as they choose.
I have two problems with what’s happening in your ward
– The MP is trying to make a bad law worse, with no actual gain – it’s pure “gesture politics”.
– A small business (and it’s owner) is being harassed and persecuting despite following regulations and the law – despite there being no actual danger to children at either school – they can’t buy drugs at the shop, nor any other harmful substance
The parents and you seem concerned that somehow there being some kind of “shop for druggies and hippies” close to a school, rather than real credible risks for schoolchildren, which are cigarettes, gambling machines, alcohol and mums in 4x4s.
I think it would be entirely reasonable to look at having a by-law preventing premises from selling smoking products, gambling and and alcohol related products.
It would also be reasonable to require any shop that sells products of an adult nature (such as those above, and others) to not allow patrons under 16.
The idea of closing the shop because “Drugs are bad” seems plainly hysterical.
Jayne,
Whilst I respect your right to protest against this shop, I’m not sure that you represent Aaron’s first comment in an accurate or fair manner. Party policy is to decriminalise possession of cannabis for personal use, although it would still be an offence to deal.
Nowhere has anyone suggested that the Liberal Democrats are actively supporting the use of illegal drugs, nor is it helpful if that position is misrepresented by our own side as being our policy. Heaven knows that the Conservatives will be perfectly happy to misrepresent it for you…
Mark, the point of my tongue-in-cheek comment was to highlight the fact that the Liberal Democrats do not have a policy of supporting the use of illegal drugs, as I am well aware that our Tory colleagues like to try to make out that we do. Thank you for clarifying our policy for my readers.
[…] signed a petition to put a stop this sort of thing on just one Saturday morning while others were encouraged by local nominal liberals to gather to protest outside this entirely legal private […]
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