So this morning, when the dog disappeared from the garden. I tried to think of the reasons why the window cleaner would have not shut the gate. Maybe it was too stiff for him to shut, maybe he thought I wanted it open or maybe he thought the dog needed free reign of the whole street and I must admit the dog was very happy.
Then I read the papers and found more mis-guided thinking. People are very cross with Chris Grayling (they often are) and I'm not surprised. He has banned prisoners receiving parcels of things from family and friends, which includes books. This has made lots of people (especially writers) very cross and they have reported it as a ban on books for prisoners. Everyone knows that reading is the salvation for most prisoners and that they should be encouraged to read, they also know that literacy levels in prison are poor. Maybe he was trying to stop the smuggling in of things that prisoners weren't allowed to have but surely parcels could be opened and inspected before they were given to prisoners. A fake book containing a gun and a kilo of heroin would be easy to spot, surely?
The government insist that they are not trying to ban books. They say that prisoners have access to the library, are allowed 12 books in their room and can buy books from their £10 -£15 allowance. Maybe it's because I'm a book person but that doesn't seem enough. I have more than 12 books in my room and although I still haven't read everything in our local library, if all I had to do was read then I might quickly exhaust the books I was interested in and if my literacy level was poor then I may prefer to read a car magazine that my great Aunt sent me in the post. Some prisoners complete degrees while serving their time and I can't imagine any prison library stocking the specialist books required and that allowance isn't going to go very far. Maybe Mr Grayling also thinks that prisoners should be properly 'punished' and that allowing them to read is a privilege they shouldn't have. I agree that reading is a treat but if you could foster a love of reading and improve literacy levels then you might just do some rehabilitation.
Then I read about women not being allowed to serve the meals at the Nuclear Security Summit in the Hague. The reason being that they want to create a uniformity of look and don't want to distract the world leaders from their important work with beautiful women. This has to be the most misguided thing I've heard in a long time and if it's not then I want new world leaders. I do not want the Nuclear security of the world to be in the hands of men who can't concentrate if a fully clothed woman hands them a bread roll. I want someone who could concentrate even if a naked model was giving them a lap dance or popping ping pong balls out of their female orifices. This is serious stuff.
And finally, I took the dog for a walk to a local field where lots of people walk dogs. Someone made my dog even happier. He ran round the field with a huge piece of baguette bread in his mouth and was joined by several other greedy dogs, while I ran round desperately trying to pick up the other bits of french stick. Someone had obviously decided that the dozen slightly stale sticks were no good to them anymore and thought that breaking them each into 4 parts and throwing them on the field would be the best way of disposing of them. Maybe they thought the birds would like the bread. This is misguided and people should know that they should leave it in their own gardens if they want to feed the birds. Don't these people remember that a bird shut down the large hadron collider in 2009 by dropping a baguette it could no longer carry?
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