Chalkhills Digest Volume 5, Issue 221
Date: Tuesday, 8 June 1999
Chalkhills Digest, Volume 5, Number 221
Tuesday, 8 June 1999
Today's Topics:
Re: The Ugly Underneath
whatiwannaknowman
Lazy Summer Kid
Nice one, Centurion !
travels in netherlands
Duran Duran
Re: Root Canal
Re: The Commercial Album
Shagadelic opportunity missed
Re: Thank You (and another plug)
John ("Johnny Appleseed") Chapman
Re: John Gardner's Big Day...
Pie knocks stench into them, man. Be high, and... thicker tan!
re: HF
Re: Nuggets
Drugs
Go ask Alice
Remember what the doormouse said
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2033 / Cannabis in tea.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <000f01beaf69$a57b4a20$26010101@dave> From: "david robson" <hodad@ozemail.com.au> Subject: Re: The Ugly Underneath Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1999 01:39:48 +1000 Chalrkergationists...... John Gardner wrote.... >Hey XTC Clan~ >I went to a wedding this weekend, and I tell you...I could not stop hearing >the words and the song in the tiny grey cells in my head of *The Ugly >Underneath.* >Then there's the wedding >The co-ordinated bedding >And the fairy tale shredding >Boy it's Ugly Underneath! >And, boy, was this couple just right for this song; they were the wrong >match for each other, they really shared nothing in common, that I could >tell, as Andy has: That song is one of Andy`s finest ever songs and is IMHO up there with "Chalkhills and Children". The hypnotic, unsettling beginning and then the superb "Pet Sounds" reprise "did you ever etc.........is a masterful piece of melodic sensibility. I HATED it for awhile after I bought "Nonsuch" but it really grew on me.......typical Mr Partridge.......seeing all the masks us humans wear....brilliant! Dave Robson
------------------------------ Message-ID: <375A0B44.2AC24E1E@risd.edu> Date: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 01:46:47 -0400 From: gene <gyoon@risd.edu> Subject: whatiwannaknowman > From: Ted Harms > > Here's the two things that always get me about Harvest Festival: > > 1) I'm always surprised by the lines > > And what a year when the exams and crops all failed/ > Of course you passed and you were never seen again/ > We all grew and we got screwed and cut and nailed/ > Then out of nowhere invitation in gold pen/ > > Because I always want to last line to say > > Then out of nowhere invitation in the mail. Hmm, do Brits use the term "in the mail" or do they say "by post"? A triviality, but I'm genuinely curious. Please Mr Postman. Harvest Festival has my favourite lyrics off of AV1, hands down. I like Andy best in his wistful, understated, thoughtful mode. I've never been fond of Your Dictionary, in either demo or final version, for that reason. Gets a little too obvious and smarmy for my taste. Still, I find a few of his many lyrically-in-your-face songs to be his real Master Strokes, like Melt the Guns, This World Over or Dear God. On the opposite end of that list I'd put President Kill and Funk Pop-a-Roll --they have this cynical, sophomoric tilt about them that just rubs me the wrong way. June is the month for weddings, and I went to a friend's two weeks ago. Colin's song was swirling around in my head, on autorepeat over and over and over. The bride was so wrought up (i.e. near-tantrums) about her dress, the ice sculpture, the fishbowl centerpieces, the flower arrangements, the dj, etc etc, she seemed to forget that she was marrying a *person*, not the silly ceremony. Even during the exchanging of vows we could tell her mind was elsewhere... there's a lesson to be learned... ah well, big day come and big day go. I caved in and bought my first Ben Folds Five CD, their new one "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner", and am really really pleased with it. Augmented the trio with nice string and horn arrangements, and the songwriting is of very high calibre. I've generally not been a fan of Ben Folds' voice, but his singing has taken on a slightly gentler, almost Art Garfunkel-like timber on a few tracks. In fact, the song "Mess" reminds me of a long-lost Simon and Garfunkel tune [this is a good thing in my book]. Recommended. chalkout. Gene
------------------------------ Message-ID: <375AAE80.7BA7@gte.net> Date: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 10:23:12 -0700 From: "May O'Mahoney" <may5272@gte.net> Subject: Lazy Summer Kid It was 1987 and I was a lazy summer kid in awe of the frequencies I could catch on my piece of shit radio (older brother had all the good equipment). Radio stations broadcasting 350 miles away out of San Diego and even the further reaches of Tijuana Mexico would come floating through the room at night. On one particularly warm evening, I routinely tweaked the knob until it hit 91.1 (91X San Diego) and heard the announcer say that coming up, Andy Partridge would be discussing Skylarking with so and so..... I scrambled out of my state of being sprawled on the floor and grabbed the first tape that I could find. Unfortunately this tape had been abused with layer upon layer of recordings, album recordings over radio recordings, etc. until there was this fine sprinkling of background noise (!!). It ended up being quite a treat. On it Andy explains what the title Skylarking means (to me a pretty term with absolutely no notion of the meaning at the time - a US kid), how he prodded Dave into singing more back-up vocals on the album using a sharper, more pointed stick, as well as describing Man Who Sailed Around His Soul as a soundtrack of a beatnik existentialist spy film from the early 60s that that never was. Good stuff. The background noise was bizarre at best. What was I thinking?! Oh, thats right, I was 15. Nothing more to be said. Note to Iain on Stranger Things.... Please go buy that Duran Duran album! I need a good laugh! - May
------------------------------ Message-ID: <19990607015835.55674.qmail@hotmail.com> From: Andrew Gowans <ratwhacker@hotmail.com> Subject: Nice one, Centurion ! Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 11:58:34 EST Tyler Hewitt wrote in Vol 5 #219 about "guests" of the Residents, one being the late Snakefinger. I remember Snakefinger touring Australia with The Residents a long time ago, around when he released "Night of Desireable Objects" which was his last album before he died of a heart attack. Anyway, he got seperate billing on the tour, and I believe on their albums too. In TV interviews The Residents gave for the tour some dude would turn up in "eyeball" costume and Snakefinger would be there with them and act as mouthpiece. "Night...." is a great album. His take on jazz with "Bad Night in Bombay" really highlights his guitar style for me and the track on the scottish cannibal family of the 17th-18th century (I just cannot remember the track name...damn my memory) is worth the price of admission. ............................................................. Re: LSD urban legends, There was a late sixties film called "Wild in the Streets" that used this LSD in drinking water premise as the plot device by which the "young generation" usurp power in the US. The film doesn't stack up well today, but perhaps is a tell-tail on "conservative" US perceptions on the 60's counter-cultures. Also, I'm not entirely sure, but I believe LSD predates the CIA and is almost as old as the USSR revolution of 1917. I seem to recall it was originally describes chemically @1919. Aldous Huxley wrote of the effects he experienced pre WW2 in testing the drug for medicinal use with psychiatry. ............................................................. Martin van Rappard considers the prime reason for leaving this listing is that "Andy probably thinks we're idiots". Well, so what Martin ? He is also anti-motor car and most of would probobly own one of those. ............................................................. Coffee breaks over, so it's time to stand on my head again. The Rat
------------------------------ Message-ID: <375B5DBC.90AC397A@sd.znet.com> Date: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 22:50:52 -0700 From: Bob Estus <bobestus@sd.znet.com> Subject: travels in netherlands Friends in XTC, My wife and year-old son recently returned from a trip to Holland. During this trip I had the pleasure of meeting up with two dutch Chalkers. We traveled to the city of Alkmaar to visit Andre de Koning and family. Andre, wife Linda and beautiful children Daniel and Merel made us feel at home. Some time was spent talking about XTC and related bands. Goods were swapped. I was given a rather nifty collection of "Colin's Mouldings" by Andre. A very special handmade and packaged CD. It's really quite nice to have a retrospective of Colin's work and it plays great! Then off to town to tour the old center of Alkmaar with: a very charming square, folk dancers, narrow cobble stone streets and big wheels of cheese. Back to Andre's place for a barbecue. Then sad good-byes at the train station. The kindness and generosity of our new friends will not be soon forgotten. The next week we met the illustrious Mark Strijbos at the Vondel Park tea garden in Amsterdam (near our hotel). My wife was very patient as Mark and I gossiped about XTC like two old ladies. I got to quiz Mark on his Guitargonauts project. I very much appreciated him taking the time to meet up with me while being very busy finishing up this ambitious work. Mark presented me with a cd of XTC performing live at Amsterdam's Paradiso (an FM stereo broadcast). This is amazingly good! Not only in clarity of recording (which is stellar) but the performance itself is fantastic. It really does better half of Transistor Blast. Our meeting concluded with a long walk around the perimeter of the park. All in all very stimulating day of XTC chatter. So far it has been my experience that XTC fans are fabulous! Meet one today. -Bob
------------------------------ From: CCooli9575@aol.com Message-ID: <3dcfbe89.248cf91f@aol.com> Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 06:29:51 EDT Subject: Duran Duran >The "stranger things" referred to here must be a CD I saw (but didn't have >the nerve to buy) last week in a store here in Canberra. It was a Duran >Duran album called (I think) "Thank You". It's an album of covers - I can't >remember most of the tracks listed, but the one that really stuck out, and >*almost* made me buy the album, was a cover of Public Enemy's "911 Is A >Joke". It's hard to imagine Simon le Bon singing this - I might have to go >back and see if anyone's picked up that album yet (ho ho). >Iain If you see it used for a couple of dollars it's worth getting. I bought it for my wife who's a major Duran Duran fan(as you may have guessed by now, she likes POP), and she didn't actually show much interest. I also found their most recent album used for three dollars, and she has yet to play it, it's resolutely uncommercial and actually rather challenging, a sort of punk/pop/techno hybrid. As for Thank You, some of it is actually quite listenable; the covers of Led Zep's "Thank You" and Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" and Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" are actually pretty good. On the other hand, the covers of Public Enemy and Grandmaster Flash are worth listening to once for a joke, and their cover of Elvis C's "Watching The Detectives" is so awful I'm amazed they saw fit to release it. As long as Simon LeBon just croons he does all right but if he has to actually show some nuance and dynamics he botches it. I'd have liked them a lot better if Lebon weren't convinced he was a great singer and poet, even better if he weren't the lead singer, but despite him the rest of the band has shown some musical talent over the years, especially the current lineup; guitarist Warren Cucurullo played with Frank Zappa for several years in the early 80's. Chris
------------------------------ From: CCooli9575@aol.com Message-ID: <18cef289.248cf923@aol.com> Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 06:29:55 EDT Subject: Re: Root Canal >RE: >It's like trying to have an orgasm during root canal; can't be done. --- >You haven't seen "The Little Shop of Horrors", have you? As a matter of fact I have; Jack Nicholson, very young, as a masochistic dental patient. I assume you mean the original. Haven't seen the reportedly rather cartoonish remake. Roger Corman rules! Of course it's only a movie, such things aren't REALLY possible. Chris
------------------------------ From: CCooli9575@aol.com Message-ID: <411d7489.248cf927@aol.com> Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 06:29:59 EDT Subject: Re: The Commercial Album >The Residents are not always completely secretive about guests. In the >case of The Commercial Album itself, a couple of guest musicians were >credited on the sleeve (the ever-present Snakefinger, Fred Frith, Chris >Cutler, among others). There's also a credit for 'Special Secret >Appearances' followed by a question mark. This seems to be an >invitation to look for the appearances. I know of two: Andy's vocals on >'Margaret Freeman', and Lene Lovich's vocals on 'Picnic Boy'. Anyone >know of any others? Debbie Harry on "Nice Old Man." Barry Andrews and Robert Fripp make appearances too, you can probably hear Barry's cheesy treated organ on his track. Chris
------------------------------ Message-ID: <3AE4C7B8CC1BD31194140008C7B14DE804260D@hfd-exch008.aetna.com> From: "Witter, Karl F" <WitterKF@aetna.com> Subject: Shagadelic opportunity missed Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 13:27:11 -0400 Good article in the NEWTIMESLA this week on Michael Penn and Aimee Mann. Familiar themes to many of us. And it seems the two of them are working together. "The Spy who Shagged Me"? Any summer comedy that invokes Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" makes my short list of movies to see. However, there's a great big gaping hole in the cosmic karma where XTC should have been on the soundtrack. Buncha 20-somethings think they can do '60s acidy fuzz'n'pop? Sounds like the perfect place for The Dukes. >From the house in Doubleback Alley, Karl
------------------------------ Message-ID: <375BFE45.29D7@ix.netcom.com> Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 10:15:49 -0700 From: Rich Bunnell <cbunnell@ix.netcom.com> Subject: Re: Thank You (and another plug) >>It was a Duran Duran album called (I think) "Thank You". >>It's an album of covers.... > >If memory serves, that's the release the All-Music Guide said was the >worst album Duran Duran ever released. I'll have to argue with the AMG--"Big Thing" is clearly their most terrible album to me, but yes, "Thank You" is AWFUL. Pretty much just a bunch of songs that were better in their original incarnations. "911 Is A Joke" done by Duran is amusing but amusing does not necessarily equal good. Since I don't wanna be flamed again for bringing up or adding to a Duran thread on Chalkhills, I guess now's as good a time as ever to advertise a new XTC review page I've put up (no, not the one on Prindle's page). It goes through -every- XTC album except Rag & Bone and the Dukes albums, and gives song-by-song ratings. Yes, I went through every song on XTC's major album work, gave descriptions to each of them, and rated them. Just thought I'd tell everyone since all the work would sorta go to waste if the page just sat there. http://members.xoom.com/taoster/xtc.htm is the URL for the XTC part of the page. (I've reviewed all of TMBG, the B-52's, and albums by other bands so far too.) Rich Bunnell
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 13:37:59 -0400
From: Dorothy Spirito <spiritod@techmail.gdc.com>
Subject: John ("Johnny Appleseed") Chapman
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.00.9905260130410.1546-100000@esun2028>
Ralph Simpson DeMarco <sawpit@hotmail.com> lumped Johnny Appleseed in
with fictitious characters The Green Man and Earth Mother. As a native
Buckeye (i.e. Ohioan) knowledgeable of the historical person John Chapman,
I leap on each such occasion to correct the misinformed.
John Chapman (1774-1845), a/k/a "Johnny Appleseed", was a real person. He
was born in Massachusetts but went west around 1800 bearing apples for
planting and books for teaching, spending the rest of his life traveling
Ohio and Indiana, growing healing herbs and caring for settlers and
natives, who regarded him as something of a saint.
My personal opinion? What a neat guy. The midwest back then mayn't've
been modern-day Calcutta, but he ranks right up there with Mother Theresa
in my estimation.
XTatiCally,
--Dorothy.
------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 14:25:01 -0400 From: Dorothy Spirito <spiritod@techmail.gdc.com> Subject: Re: John Gardner's Big Day... Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.00.9906071406070.2121-100000@esun2028> To what can I compare the feeling generated by reading the wedding post? It was like looking at a hairball freshly horked up by a cat in the middle of a party. The cat then sits back, satisfied. And I laugh at the absurdity. --Dorothy.
------------------------------ Message-Id: <199906071841.OAA28698@hammurabi.nh.ultra.net> Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 14:39:15 -0400 Subject: Pie knocks stench into them, man. Be high, and... thicker tan! From: "Duncan Watt" <kanuba@nh.ultranet.com> Tripping Sherwood attempts to talk us down: >But Andy Partridge don't know >Nuthin' about Nuthin'. > >Andy Partridge ain't got A. J. Weberman: http://www.dylanology.com/ ...now I can't get fucking "Candle In The Wind" out of my head... ps maybe Sherwood's right.
------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 11:55:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Misty Shock <mccrtny@u.washington.edu> Subject: re: HF Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.4.10.9906071151550.21936-100000@saul6.u.washington.edu> <<I agree with your comments from 5-219,Ted. Isn't HF one hell of a song. You know, AP and lots of listees go on about how good ET is ( fair enough), but for me HF is a far better song and I think it's one of the best he's ever written. It never fails to uplift me and it has a celestial beauty. The lyrics are superb and whilst I find ET to be a bit too clever and in part bitty and forced to be really great, HF is effortless.>> I don't know if HF is a better song, but I think that, in its AV1 incarnation, it is about as perfect as it can be. I'll repeat an earlier comment and say that this should've ended the album instead of the boring, depressing "The Last Balloon." It would've ended the album on such a positive uplifting note, where it begins so ominously with "River Of Orchids." Hell, I'd rather have TLB at the beginning (as the alternate order posted here several times dictated) if HF could be saved for the end. Misty Shock "No round of drinks can extinguish this feeling of love and engulfing bliss." --Andy Partridge
------------------------------ From: fheaney@erols.com Message-ID: <002201beb10e$33487e40$18c1accf@default> Subject: Re: Nuggets Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 13:50:13 -0400 David Seddon wrote: > ...the Nuggets album. Snippets "from the first psychedelic era". I > note that this double album is now out on 4x boxed CD, and I will be > buying it. Anyone got it or heard it? Is it as good as I hope? > The double from the late 70s was awesome! The Nuggets 4 CD box is indeed pretty fine, though I think the whole thing could have been cooked down to a 2 CD set, and probably everyone else who buys it will agree, but they'd have a different opinion about the songs that should've been kept. I suppose that's the problem with trying to create a definitive anthology. -- Francis "Sociability is hard enough for me." -- Blur
------------------------------
Message-ID: <375C147F.AB81EE1F@accesshub.net>
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 18:50:42 +0000
From: timid <timid@accesshub.net>
Subject: Drugs
Yes, the Pythons are mysterious in this way...
[Who is he talking to? That's it, I'm off]
Considering the scene from which they emerged, LSD
must have been introduced to their minds sometime
in late 60's, though there is no written proof of
this. Terry Gilliam recently was quoted in a Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas interview as saying that
the extent of his drug use was: hash and pot a few
times, cocaine twice and amyl nitrate once. He has
made it clear that his imagination is scary enough
without hallucinogens. I believe him. Dali made a
similar claim, though fellow surrealists Francis
Picabia, Luis Bunuel and Max Ernst did use hash -
and Ernst was profoundly inspired by mushrooms I'm
convinced! John Cleese threw in the word "LSD"
during a nonsensical jumble during a Flying Circus
sketch, and he plays a thoroughly stocked drug
connoisseur (Sherlock Holmes) in Joe McGrath's
short film, The Strange Case of the End of
Civilization As We Know It. Michael Palin and
Terry Jones were in on some sort of surreal
secret, that much is clear. They were doing a
children's show in 1967...
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were in on it by 1966
when they publicly promoted the drug on both TV
("The LSBumble Bee") and vinyl ("Psychedelic
Baby").
Peter Sellers was introduced to marijuana in '62
while shooting "The World of Henry Orient" and he
was a habitual user ever since. He did trip later
on but when? I cannot tell you. Spike Milligan
must have been just as scared as Gilliam and Dali.
Harry Secombe? Michael Bentine? No idea.
As for XTC, we know Andy loves slandering drugs
because of his early valium addiction. On the
other hand, in an old Little Express Colin listed
his (musical) influences as "LSD and dope".
There we have my brief injection.
You should all see Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
by the way, EVEN if you've already seen it. It's
quite an intricate, remarkable work.
Matt "It's not ever gonna stop" Kaden
------------------------------ Message-ID: <19990608005646.28167.qmail@hotmail.com> From: Duncan Kimball <dunks58@hotmail.com> Subject: Go ask Alice Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 17:56:45 PDT Dear Chalketeers I'm back. (Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce). May '99 will not live in memory as one of the happier or healthier times of my life, but what can you do? On with the show, good health to you ... Harrison: you are a very silly man. But - we love you. (Of course we do) CHECK YOUR FACTS, Part 235c: A correction if I may, to those know-it-alls who poo-poohed the practicablility of dosing a water supply with LSD, on the basis of it's supposed insolubility. According to a number of sources I checked today, including: <http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/tihkal/tihkal26.html> LSD is fact highly soluble and stable in water. I quote: "As a salt, in water, cold, and free from air and light exposure, it is stable indefinitely." The real difficulty lies in the fact that LSD is destroyed both by light, and by contact with chlorine so, ironically, putting it into a chlorinated water supply would be a complete waste of time. However it is still a worrying thought - let's not forget that LSD is the most powerful pychoactive agent yet discovered, and can induce effects in doses as low as 10 micrograms (that's ten MILLIONTHS of a gram kids), so emptying big vats of it into the water supply at night might not be as useless as one might think. There is, of course, a chance that this whole thing was an urban myth, but I have a very clear recollection of reading about the story of the police raid in the papers at the time (ca. 1978-79) and I am sure that there was a British miniseries or telemovie made about the case. Does anyone else know anything about this? FYI The infamous operation jointly run by the CIA was called MK-ULTRA and was: "...concerned with research and development of chemical, biological and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior." "MKULTRA formally began in April 1953 as a special, clandestine funding mechanism for Department Of Defense human behavior research. The program was the subject of investigations by the Rockefeller Commission in 1975, the Senate Church Committee in 1976, and hearings by Senator Kennedy in 1975 and 1977" "Through the course of MKULTRA, CIA sponsored numerous experiments on unwitting humans. After the death of one such individual (Frank Olson, an army scientist who was given LSD in 1953 and committed suicide a week later), an internal CIA investigation warned about the dangers of such experimentation. Ten years later, a 1963 IG report recommended termination of unwitting testing; however, Deputy Director for Plans Richard Helms (who later became Director of Central Intelligence) continued to advocate covert testing on the ground that "positive operational capability to use drugs is diminishing, owing to a lack of realistic testing. With increasing knowledge of the state of the art, we are less capable of staying up with the Soviet advances in this field. "The Church Committee noted that "Helms attributed the cessation of the unwitting testing to the high risk of embarrassment to the Agency as well as the moral problem. He noted that no better covert situation had been devised than that which had been used and that 'we have no answer to the moral issue '". "And I think to myself ... what wonderful woild ... oooh yeah" XTC Content? I think it would be nice if Andy participated in a forum once in a while, or provided a site or address where a moderated set of questions could be addressed to him. Would it kill him? We don't bite. I appreciate that he is a (fairly) private person, and that some of the more enthusiastic or caustic comments might make him a bit uneasy, but surely there's a way of managing it that would be comfortable for him? And let's face it, *we* are the ones who buy his damn records year in and year out. He was not averse to doing a bit of a "meet-&-greet" around the US to promote the new album, so why not give us poor schmucks in the Antipodies a bit of a break, huh? BTW "Storefront Hitchcock" will be featured at this year's Sydney Film Festival, and Hitch himself will be here to introduce it. Cool, huh? The SFF brochure dropped a bit of a clanger though - they wrote him up as being a former member of "The Pet Shop Boys" (ooops!) Dunks
------------------------------ Message-ID: <19990608052449.68734.qmail@hotmail.com> From: Duncan Kimball <dunks58@hotmail.com> Subject: Remember what the doormouse said Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 22:24:48 PDT XTC content? Nil. LSD content? 100% Just so you know I'm not totally insane ... I did find the information I sought re the famous UK acid bust ... and no - I was not having a flashback. The case I referred to *did* happen (although the truth of the "dosing the reservoirs" bit is questionable). And it was indeed made into a 1985 UK telemovie: it was called "Operation Julie", and starred Colin Blakely. "Operation Julie" was the investigation and busting of a major international LSD manufacturing and distribution ring, which involved members of the (in)famous drug ring "The Brotherhood Of Eternal Love", which included one Ronald Stark, an alleged CIA informant and a notorious figure on the drug scene from the late 60s until the late 70s, when he was eventually busted in Italy. The operation had a secret laboratory on a remote farm in Wales, which was busted in 1977. Interestingly, the case was also a landmark in ongoing efforts by the British government to seize assets derived from criminal activities. I quote here from a 1993 report on Asset Forfeiture by Australian barrister Clive Scott: <http://www.ozemail.com.au/~themis/churchill/> "The case which provided the necessary impetus to create a more comprehensive asset forfeiture scheme was "Operation Julie" which occurred in 1977. This case involved an investigation into a major criminal enterprise involved in the manufacture of LSD. In the course of the investigation investigators traced many millions of pounds which were the proceeds of years of trafficking in LSD. Some of this money was traced into real estate and some into bank accounts in European countries. An application was made by the Crown to forfeit a monetary sum equal to the assets of the defendants after they were convicted. This application was made pursuant to s.27 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The application was successful and the forfeiture orders sought were made. However, appeals were lodged against the forfeiture orders upon the ground that s.27 could only be used to forfeit assets actually used in the commission of the offences of which they were convicted. The section could not, it was asserted, be used as a wide ranging device to forfeit assets in which no nexus between the asset and the offence of which the defendant was convicted had been established. With considerable reluctance the House of Lords agreed with this submission and set the forfeiture orders aside ..." "Needless to say a furore erupted when the House of Lords handed down its decision in R v. Cuthbertson and shortly afterwards the Hodgson Committee was appointed to report upon: The Profits of Crime and their Recovery. This report was produced in 1984 and recommended that the criminal courts be empowered to confiscate benefits derived by a person from an offence of which they had been convicted ..." "The legislative consequence of the Hodgson Committee's report is the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986. As its title suggests this Act is concerned only with the confiscation of the property connected with narcotics offences. In 1988 legislation similar to the DTOA but applicable to property connected with other indictable offences, was passed. This legislation is called the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (CJA)." See - you learn something new every day. (I promise this is my last word on the subject, Mr Strijbos!) MMM the Orange Sunshine is kicking in now...
------------------------------ End of Chalkhills Digest #5-221 *******************************
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