LONDON NEWS

The borough of Lambeth has launched a crackdown on street trade of marijuana, TUPNews can report. Under the ‘No Deal’ initiative, anyone caught buying, selling or smoking marijuana in Lambeth will be automatically arrested. This follows the previous “Go ahead, smoke up in the street” pilot initiative of a few years ago, which was widely regarded as a failure.

Of course, when I say “automatically arrested”, I mean “automatically arrested, unless you are a member of the middle-class.”

TUPNews was enjoying a post-gig marijuana cigarette in a Brixton back alley on Wednesday night when the boys in blue turned up. Actually, they weren’t in blue, they were plainclothes, and one of them was a girl. They read the riot act to TUPNews’ companion, who happened to be holding the jazz fag at the time, searched him good and informed him that he faced automatic arrest under the new policing initiative. My companion basically shat himself.

As the search of the unlucky loser of “pass the parcel” went on, however, the rest of us fell into some good-natured banter with the other officer. It soon became apparent to both officers that we were in fact rather posh. The deal was sealed when the arresting officer asked my companion whether he had been born in London. “No, Bath.” “Really? That’s a nice place”. Having established that we were in fact middle-class, tax-paying, Oystercard-holding yuppies, they let us off without a caution.

Britain: one law for the rich, and one law for the poor. Thank fuck for that!