Nick Hogan, the publican who let his drinkers smoke, is a free man tonight, back behind the bar rather than behind bars, thanks to blog readers and libertarians who raised the £8,664.50 to spring him from jail.

Anna Raccoon has the full story, Old Holborn organised the fund raising and Guido was more than happy to publicise it.  Within hours co-conspirators had raised thousands to spring him from jail.

Nick Hogan is once more in the bosom of his family, able to support his wife Denise and their children, instead of being locked up with violent criminals.

A happy ending thanks to the generosity of blog readers…

UPDATE : Guy News was there and has footage of the cash being delivered to the jail by Old Holborn.  (Contact Emily.Nomates@GuyNews.TV for syndication rights).

Rumours are swirling around about the near daily smell of fine Cuban smoke emanating from the loos on the fourth floor of Portcullis House first thing in the morning.

Who is this iconoclastic lone law flouter willing to start the day in style?

Guido has his suspicions…

Anyone else see the irony in the same politicians who support the banning of Islam4UK supporting the Green Revolutionaries in Tehran?  If they support Democracy4Iran, why not at home? As far as Guido knows Islam4UK have no members who have been charged with terrorism or advocating violence

Freedom of speech is what we are supposedly fighting the “war on terror” to defend.  If these nutters advocate violence, lock ‘em up, if they just advocate a change of regime, that is their right in a democratic and free society. Freedom of speech can offend, but that isn’t a reason to do away with it…

Pauline Howe, 67, wrote a letter to Norwich Council objecting to a local gay pride march. She used the word “sodomites” and objected to “perverted sexual practices”.  A tad old fashioned, something you would perhaps be embarrassed by if your aunt blurted it out at Christmas.

Subsequently two police officers turned up on her doorstep to warn her that she had committed a “hate crime”.  Guardianistas cheer on the police.

The comic Jimmy Carr told an audience of 2,500 at the Manchester Apollo: “Say what you like about servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a f*****g good paralympic team in 2012.” Daily Mail leader writers are outraged.

Get a grip. There is no right to not be offended.

If somebody offends you in your own house, you can throw them out.  if somebody offends you in a public space, without inciting violence or defaming you, tough.  Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words should not be legislated.

It may be ill-mannered, it may be vulgar and offensive, but it should not be illegal. People going to a Jimmy Carr show can’t expect not to wince and laugh, venturing into the comments on this blog is not for the thin-skinned either. People need to grow up and keep a sense of proportion, or else life could get very boring and sterile. You don’t want to end up like Sunny Hundal, a man so right-on as to be a walking parody. Once in a fit of rage, yet so conflicted by political correctness, all he could do was call Guido “you bloody human!”

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown leads these dangerous radicals. Allahu Akbar…

Of all the right-of-centre think tanks the libertarian-leaning Adam Smith Institute has always been a bit more spikey and willing to push the envelope than rival think tanks in Westminster wonk-land.

In economics the ASI was the mid-wife of Thatcher’s privatisation strategies which were exported around the world (the separate consulting arm spun-off from the institute advises foreign governments worldwide to this day). In the last decade it has (to little  avail) been putting the case for not just lower taxes, but flatter and simpler taxes.  Until now the wider libertarian social agenda was seemingly off limits and left to the various pressure groups and single-issue campaigns.

Madsen Pirie has never dodged the drugs liberalisation question in the past but the ASI has never pushed the policy until now.  Madsen Pirie told Guido he felt that the “war on drugs” approach had now been tested to destruction and that the political environment was more “convivial” to drug liberalisation.  Guido asked him “Do you mean that because we have a former self-confessed coke-head in the White House and a former stoner heading for Downing Street we might see change?” Diplomatically he replied “Well, it is fair to say, this generation of ministers will be more familiar with the issues.”

Zero Base Policy has 32 other manifesto recommendations…

UPDATE : Claudia Rubin from the Release campaign says

the last significant drug policy measure in the UK was implemented by Margaret Thatcher with the introduction of the needle exchange programme and it is fitting therefore that the ASI should be taking this view. Were he to become Prime Minister next year, David Cameron could mark 40 years of the failure of prohibition by doing something really necessary and sensible.

Phillip Oppenheim, a former Conservative Treasury minister in charge of Customs says in an interview out today that in office he tried to push government policy in a progressive direction.  There is nothing progressive about locking people up for smoking weed…

David Rowland, the property developer tycoon says of the million he has bunged the Tories this year:

“I made the donation as a result of my passionate concern for liberty and the economic future of Britain. We need fresh ideas, national renewal and above all a Government that sets the people free. I feel strongly that the Conservatives under the leadership of David Cameron are the party that will deliver that. They are the best hope for this country’s future.”

Guido is hard pressed to think of any Tory policies that will set the people free. The only outstanding libertarian commitment they have made is to abolish ID cards.  Cameron rarely speaks about freedom, the Tories sound more like technocratic managerialists than freedom fighters…

If things had gone slightly differently for David Cameron instead of being on the verge of becoming PM, he could be yet another former public school boy who ended up squandering his privileges and doing jail time for possession of cannabis and cocaine.  The current President of America could just be another black ex-con from a broken home.

If there is one message that comes through from The Wire, it is that the war on drugs can not be won and that it corrupts all of society – not just those in the drug gangs – the police and politicians as well.  It is far from fictional, apart from the corrupting effect the police waste time which could be better spent fighting crimes of violence and against property.  It costs a couple of billion a year to seize half a billion worth of drugs.  The jails are full of young people who could, if they had not been criminalised, gone on to become leaders like Obama and Cameron.  If drugs were decriminalised we would waste less money and lives than we do now.

The criminal justice system would be freed up to deal with pressing problems greater than students smoking pot and ravers taking ecstasy.  Addicts would be treated within the healthcare system, not the criminal justice system.  Addicts deserve pity, not incarceration.  Decriminalising drug use and treating it as a health problem would in a stroke undermine the gangsters and drug trafficker just as ending prohibition undermined the mafia.  The biggest beneficiaries of drug prohibition are the crime bosses.

Have had a few requests to speak at fringe events at the party conferences, so just to make the position clear – Guido is willing to do so, preferably in relation to areas of interest covered on this blog.

First come first served.  Will be in Bournemouth with the LibDems on the Sunday and the Monday, will be with the Tories from Monday to Thursday. No one has actually asked Guido to speak on the Labour fringe yet…

Email guido.fawkes@order-order.com.

Lovely to see dozens of co-conspirators last night.  No doubt there will be embarrassing pictures.  Thanks to everyone who bought Guido a Guinness, it went better than you think with the Pimms.  The Karoake later in the evening was legend.  Guido then found himself in a nightclub full of teenagers in Soho at one in the morning, realised he was the “Disco Daddy” and left.   Mrs Fawkes was very understanding about the lack of keys and directed her husband to the spare room.