In Britain, we like to think of ourselves as fairly rational. However bad we are, at least we accept overwhelming scientific evidence. We might fly more than anyone in the world, but we feel slightly guilty because we know that we’re burning the atmosphere up. Our education system is a shambles, but at least some of our children have heard of Darwin. With regard to the war on drugs however, this week our government abandoned such principles by sacking David Nutt - previously their chief scientific advisor - for criticizing the government approach to drugs classification. No longer is drug policy based on science. Instead, it has become an article of faith that drugs are bad, and policy works from there. Anyone who says otherwise is a heretic, even our most respected scientists. Mr Nutt’s sin in this case was simply stating was has been obvious to most young people for years anyway. Outside of crack cocaine and heroin, most illegal drugs are much less harmful than our legal drugs ...

So I’m in my second year, and I’m sure I can’t be alone in finding myself feeling slightly stranded mid-way through my course by the impression that everyone I know is doing much better than me. I’ve been out-ambitioned, since I haven’t applied for any internships and I don’t want to be a lawyer or a banker and it seems as though everyone else does. I’m a pretty lazy person and suddenly it’s emerged all the people I know are just an awful lot keener than I am to grow up. And I can’t help but wonder, does no-one just want to drift through Oxford any more? When you look at the middle aged people dominant in our newspapers, in the Houses of Parliament, on television, it doesn’t seem like very many of them were particularly proactive whilst they were at Oxford. Tony Blair was too busy being in his band. David Cameron was probably too busy being smashed, yet one managed to become Prime Minister whilst the other probably will soon. The point is that both were able to d ...