Nonce Humour

One of the guys was obsessed with his appearance, his clothing, and a manic gym attendee. Someone asked him Why he made all this effort? He said that he wanted to look good to attract women when he was released.

A passing wit chipped in, "Haven't you heard of Rohypnol..?"

God Help Us...

The Governing Governor - "the No 1" - retired the day I left here. He has been replaced by a temporary stand in, whilst some bean-counters work out what the future of Shepton holds.

This new Governor signs himself on Notices not as "The Governor", or even as "Acting Governor". God help us, but he signs himself off as being the "Acting Head of Community." Perhaps he doesn't want his friends and family to know what he does for a living?

Fire!

The nick is having a mad drive on health and safety, the Fire Officer working himself to the bone to piss us off.

The latest rule is that we must remove the draught-proofing we improvise around our cell doors. As these doors have a gap approaching half an inch all around, and our windows are ancient and ill fitting, this draught proofing is not just a crazy affectation.

And - tell me if I'm wrong here - if there was a fire on either side of the door, isn't preventing either smoke or oxygen moving a good thing? Just a thought.

Happy Ever After

A screw - a dog handler - was having a retirement party in the screws’ Mess.

The dog got far more cheers than his handler.

More Work

I recall, not long ago, when Ken Clarke was declaiming about the "rehabilitation revolution" and, particularly, the dream of giving prisoners genuine work and training.

That was at the Tory Party Conference. The Green Paper later issued is a miserable, threadbare version. It is a travesty, lacking in either aspiration or inspiration for genuine change.

What is planned for us is more work. Not good, useful work though - only work that won't be done by workers outside prison. There is no interest in enforcing minimum wage legislation in prisons. Added together, this is an invitation for companies to use prisoners as cheap labour to do work no-one with a choice would touch.

This, it seems, it meant to help us inculcate a "work ethic". Um, slave labour and the "work ethic" are hardly good bedfellows, except in the feeble minds of Ministry of Justice bureaucrats. It is insulting.

Added to this, a chunk of our meagre wage will be subtracted at source to be put into some Victims Fund. So...more crap work for crap money, on pains of punishment, with some money also being taken from us.

As now, it will be possible to serve a lengthy prison sentence and leave having learned no useful skill and without a pot to

piss in.

If this is part of the Rehabilitation Revolution, it's time the sans-culottes put the cover back on the guillotine and buggered off home. It was a false alarm - no change is happening.