How Do I Get Prisoners To Paint My House?
I have a cupboard in my bedroom that needs stripping and painting. Obviously, some might think I’m the sort of person who should benefit from some sort of scheme, as I’m a widower, who has had a stroke.
After all Jacqui Smith, the former NuLabor Home Secretary got two prisoners to do some painting at her house according to this report in the Guardian.
But then as I said, I’m a widower and I’ve had a stroke. I’m certainly not sick or mad enough to want to be a Member of Parliament.
I Thought He’d Given Up
I thought we’d heard the last of the Naked Rambler, but today he was arrested again outside Perth Prison according to the BBC. I suppose I hadn’t heard of him lately, as he would appear to have spent the last ten years in jail.
What I find strange is that in England, the authorities don’t seem to mind his antics, but it is bit different north of the border?
Surely, we have better things to do with taxpayers money, than use it to lock this idiot up! At £37,500 a year that is quite a sum.
Incidentally, I once had a Scot dressed in his kilt at a dinner party, prove to everybody that he was a real Scot. Did we complain? Of course not, but we never went near the hospital, where he worked.
The Facebook Two
Two men have been given substantial prison sentences for trying to organise a riot in Chester by using Facebook. as the BBC reports here. But they must have been two of worst riot organisers in history as no-one turned up.
Perhaps, the good people of Cheshire, have more morals, than these two have common sense.
You don’t send people to prison for this type of crime, especially when it would appear that nothing got damaged and no-one got hurt.
What they need is some form of creative community punishment. Perhaps, there is a derelict site that could be converted into a garden! Or some coal that needs painting white!
One is certainly appealing, and I’ll be very surprised if the sentence stands.
Disposable Nappies
From a scientifically green point of view, in many places I’m against using disposable nappies, as they clog sewers, end up in landfill and I’ve even seen them in litter bins in parks. We used real nappies for all our three children in the seventies, washing them ourselves in a machine for the first and then using a nappy service for the last two. Here‘s Islington Council on real nappies.
As an aside to this post, I’ve been over a prison, where they had an extensive site-recycling project. It was the training scheme that prisoners wanted to work on most, as they found it satisfying and felt that it might get them a job on the outside.
So is washing real nappies and other similar schemes, the sort of work for prisoners or those on community service?
Returning to real nappies, there is also a London-wide organisation supporting them.
If you think, what right has a man to comment on nappies. Then remember that probably a third or so of the nappies changed on our three children, were changed by me! Not sure if I could still do it and wouldn’t want the responsibility!
C and I tried hard to get our son and daughter-in-law to use them on our granddaughter. Sadly we failed, despite offering to pay for the nappy service!
Roy Jenkins’s Lunch in Holloway Prison
Roy Jenkins is best known for being a prominent Labour politician of the 1960s and 1970s. I suspect he was someone who knew his food and drink, as many of those educated in one of our oldest Universities do.
In the early 1970s, C used to visit Holloway Prison as part of the Cameron Group. She often described the group in the way the inmates did and that was “The Ladies in the Pink Hats”. It probably applied to some of the group, but not to C.
One night she came home and told the story about the new Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins and his visit to the prison. He said that he wanted to go everywhere and this didn’t go down well with the governors and the guards. But remember Roy’s father had been in jail because of a riot during the 1926 General strike, so quite rightly, he probably had strong views about how inmates should be treated. He certainly wasn’t a hanger and flogger.
After the tour, the governor suggested lunch and had probably prepared a lunch to impress the Home Secretary. But Roy said he wanted to eat with the prisoners.
After a heated argument, he pulled rank and did so.
Halfway through his meal, he pushed it away muttering something like, “I wouldn’t give this to my dog.”
Being Home Secretary is not an easy job.
We Could All Learn From This
India has just released their oldest prisoner, who was 108. He looks extremely dangerous as he is carried from jail by his relatives in this story on the BBC web site.
How many prisoners in jails in the UK and around the world should be released as they are ill or demented and well past an age at which they can do anybody harm?
Drugs in Prisons
A prison officer has been sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to smuggle mobile phones and possibly drugs into Feltham Prison.
Read about it all here.
The report quotes a Prison Service report which says.
The unpalatable but inevitable conclusion is that corrupt staff constitutes a significant supply route for drugs into prisons.
As many people end up in prison because of a drug problem, surely we should have a major rethink about crime and punishment. Prison should rehabilitate and not be a place, where drugs are freely available.
Clarke Says Prison is a Waste of Money
On Saturday this was the lead story on the front page of The Times. It was also in the Guardian.
He is so right!
I first met a prison governor at University in the 1960s and he said the same thing.
So why if this has been generally known for many years, do we still lock up so many people for long periods of time?
Is it just that politicians are so frightened of the tabloids and the vengeance tendency who read them?
Perhaps we should have a referendum on capital punishment, corporal punishment and a three-crimes-and-its-life law? All those who voted in favour would have a 90% rate of Income Tax to pay for the policies.
Tony Hancock and Guy the Gorilla
I’ve just watched a documentary on BBC2 called The Unknown Hancock. Note that they used just Hancock, as he is one of the few people known by just his surname to most people.
One thing that he used to do was visit Guy the Gorilla in his cage in the London Zoo. At the time Guy was kept by himself in an iron cage, which today would be considered unsuitable for great apes. Despite this he was considered to be a gentle soul and not in the least bit dangerous.
I mention this because the documentary would have been watched intently by C, who was one of Tony Hancock‘s biggest fans.
By now she would be telling me this tale of one of her clients.
He was obviously not a nice man, as regularly he was sent to jail for a couple of years. On release, he would go straight round to the London Zoo and visit Guy in his cage and say something like.
Hello Guy! I’m back out now. But you’re still inside!
There probably has never been such an iconic animal in the London Zoo as Guy.
Prisoners and Votes
This is a difficult one as I said earlier and I suspect that when the Commons vote tonight, they’ll make the worst of a bad job.
The general population and the tabloids and especially those of the vengeful tendency are all for a total ban, but perhaps what we need is a radical approach.
After all the number of people in jail, is probably more than have the right to vote in many constiuencies. So why not have another parliamentary constituency and they can vote for who they want? You might put restrictions on those who could stand, so such as the Yorkshire Ripper couldn’t. And obviously anybody serving a current sentence would find it difficult. But then no-one could argue that we weren’t giving prisoners representation and voting rights.
It is not for me to call lawyers greedy, but if we don’t give prisoners some rights in this area, my learned friends will have a lot of work to do, dealing with compensation claims against the government. And then if the prisoners should win compensation, their victims would then have some assets to fight over!
So voting not to give prisoners the vote could be a beanfeast for lawyers.
The Anonymous Widower 