JACK STRAW, the Home Secretary, has ordered an inquiry into whether two black officers shot during an undercover drugs investigation should have been recommended for gallantry awards. The two Metropolitan officers were trying to infiltrate crack cocaine dealing in Birmingham in October 1994 when they were shot by a gang trying to steal their car.
West Midlands Police, to whom the officers had been seconded, has been criticised for its failure to recommend the pair for a George Medal, the second highest civilian award for gallantry after the George Cross.Mike Bennett, Metropolitan Police Federation chairman, said he was “disgusted” by the way the men had been treated.The officers concerned, who have both been invalided out of the service, believe the decision was due to racism They are suing West Midlands police over the incident. He came in with a cattle prod in one hand and a stun gun in the other I went with him to his house He had built a bomb in his kitchen He took it outside and gave me a gun to fire at it. There was an 80ft fireball.”The film shows the use and abuse of every drug from the era, as well as allusions to violence, intimidation and under-age sex. Yet some critics found its unrelenting lack of variation in tone and pace tedious. But the presence of the popular actor and sex symbol Johnny Depp – who put in a good performance – should guarantee it wide distribution.Yesterday, Terry Gilliam was asked whether he was worried that drugs in the Nineties have far more negative connotations than they had in 1971 He replied: “There’s such hypocrisy about drugs It’s all shock horror But as a world we’re dependent on drugs I drink very strong coffee.

Because of the legal action the force has refused to comment on its decision over the gallantry award.The officers are unhappy that they had no armed back-up during the operation and that they were given no armed protection in hospital.The chairman of the Black Police Association, Inspector Paul Wilson, welcomed Mr Straw’s initiative but said: “I would also urge the Home Secretary to begin an inquiry into the whole affair, which has been handled appallingly.”Mr Straw revealed the new inquiry in a letter to Mr Bennett in which he said: “The gallantry issue should be treated separately from the claims for damage … I’ve been feeling, since the Eighties, that we’ve gone through such a constricted time when everything has kind of tightened up. Prozac is acceptable.”I think the drugs of the Sixties and Seventies were expansive drugs for better or worse Yes it’s dangerous, but driving a car is dangerous. We’re so obsessed with avoiding danger and it can be avoiding life.”It’s nonsense the way people talk about drugs People should talk about them openly … Depp, a heavy smoker, only noticed after three days that there was a keg of gunpowder in the basement.Describing his first meeting with Thompson (who has a small cameo in the film), Depp said: “I first met him in a bar.

Yesterday, the film’s director, former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, defended its powerful drugs imagery and said it was time to take a more grown-up view of drugs.
The 1971 book told of journalist Thompson’s journey with a friend to Las Vegas in an orgy of drug-taking as the dream of the Sixties faded. His reportage style, told through the device of fiction with heavy lacings of psychedelia, gave birth to a new genre, “gonzo journalism”, and bequeathed the phrase “fear and loathing” to the language.The movie, which had its world film premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last night, stars a shaven-headed Johnny Depp in the Thompson role. Depp told yesterday how he had spent three months getting to know Thompson in the fortified compound where the latter lives For five days he lived in Thompson’s basement. Several past attempts to make the film have failed partly because of its explicit passages relating to good and bad drug trips.The making of this version has its own bizarre tales. ONE OF the great cult novels of the past 30 years, Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has finally been brought to the screen in a version unlikely to escape controversy. But ministers are growing alarmed at the continued resistance of the family doctors, who are essential to making the changes work.Mr Milburn made a conciliatory move yesterday by warning health authorities they had to consult GPs before establishing the primary care groups.”I am shocked when GPs write to me and say they have never ever met the chief executive of the health authority,” he said.. The GMSC leaders are facing a censure motion at the BMA conference in June for being more militant against the changes.Mr Milburn has warned the BMA that the doctors would be making a serious mistake if they resist the changes.

“They are either for us, or against us, but they won’t stop the changes going through,” he has told them.The White Paper laying out the changes expressed hopes that GPs would be in the driving seat of the new NHS, and after Labour’s landslide victory, it was believed the GPs were wholly behind the plans.Mr Milburn privately doubts the extent of the rebellion, and there is no prospect of GPs leaving the NHS in large numbers to go private, like dentists under the Tories. They fear that patient care is going to be affected if they cannot refer and prescribe in a clinically justifiable way in the interests of their patients.”Mr Milburn has reassured the GPs that they will retain their status as independent contractors in the NHS, they will keep their clinical freedom and they will be allowed to overspend on their annual budgets, in spite of cash limits.But the Government has so far refused to move over demands by the GPs to ring-fence the money GPs receive for computers, increasing the size of their surgeries, and hiring more staff, which is counted as part of their annual income.They fear that they could lose the money if they join groups of other GPs who have other priorities. This would be simpler than the present system of taking decisions on each individual case, which has led to massive backlogs and anger over claims.. Mr Blair insisted there had been more spent on education and the health service than by the Tories.

But Mr Skinner, MP for Bolsover, said he wanted wealth redistribution from rich to poor by increasing the total spending beyond the sums previously agreed under the Tories.The only item on the Labour backbenchers’ shopping list for the next Queen’s Speech which seemed to gain acceptance from Mr Blair was a call for a Bill on rights for the disabled.Ministers also at the meeting privately gave assurances that although the CSA will not be abolished, it will be reformed, by taking a fixed percentage of salary from errant fathers. ALAN Milburn is holding crisis talks with leaders of 27,000 family doctors to head off a revolt over the Government’s plans for reforming the National Health Service. The Government has made it clear there will be no attempt to restore the link between earnings and pensions, and ministers are wary of becoming embroiled in the controversy over fox-hunting caused by the private members’ Bill by Michael Foster (which has in effect been killed by Tory opponents through lack of time).At the meeting Mr Blair was challenged by the veteranleft-winger Dennis Skinner to abandon the Tory spending targets. There were warnings that it could lead to bigger defeats for Labour in next year’s elections.The meeting was intended to allow the backbenchers to sound off on the issues they wanted raising in the Queen’s speech, but those who attended said it showed there was more support for “Old Labour” policies than appeared the case in the Commons chamber, where discipline was strictly adhered to.Labour MPs said there were at least three calls for legislation to improve the state pension, including one demand to restore the link between pensions and earnings over a 10-year period.The MPs also called for the Queen’s Speech to include Government Bills on: banning fox hunting; human rights, and the protection of immigrants’ rights; a rolling programme of updating the local government electoral register; the abolition of the Child Support Agency; and free television licences for pensioners.Mr Blair is unlikely to take up many of the ideas, which smack of old- style Labour. The Prime Minister assured backbenchers at a packed meeting that he recognised that there had to be a “balance between New and Old” Labour, but he gave little ground to the old Labour left.
Some MPs voiced concern that in last week’s local elections voters failed to turn out in Labour’s traditional heartlands, in spite of the claims by ministers that the low poll showed there was little unrest.