Tuesday 20 January 2009

”This is Norman Stanley Fletcher, broadcasting to you on 88.3FM…”

The government is planning a radio station exclusively for the entertainment of Britain's prisoners, which will cost taxpayers £2million, according to reports.
What’s wrong with the existing ones? If Terry Wogan and Jeremy Vine are good enough for the public, they’re good enough for criminals!
The Prison Service, which came up with the scheme, claims the £2million need to start up the station would be raised from existing budgets. It has been dubbed 'con air' like the Nicholas Cage film.

A charity might also contribute to running costs, it is thought.
A ‘charity’, eh…?
A Prison Service official told the paper that the station would carry "messages and educational programmes".

He said: "It can be used to communicate to prisoners in the event of an incident."
Only if they have it switched on, naturally….
Mr Garnier, MP for Harborough, told The Sun: "This government has presided over the worst prison overcrowding in the history of the Prison Service.

"Now it tries to pretend that pumping radio programmes into cells makes everything all right. It would be comic if it were not so tragic."

Mr Garnier added: "It would be better to have prisoners doing something useful like working rather than lying on their beds listening to Jack Straw twittering at them over the radio."
Oh, I don’t know. Frankly, I think that sits quite well with those of us who think they don’t get punished enough

7 comments:

Letters From A Tory said...

Holy crap. Shouldn't we be putting that £2 million towards paying off our national debt instead? At least that might do some good in the long run.

Anonymous said...

Given the current size of our national debt I would hazard that £2m would barely cover the daily interest on it.

JuliaM said...

Fair enough. If one day's coverage of the interest is all we can get, let's get this.

After all, I can't see any reason why, if there's a potential £2mill spare in the budget for nonsense ike this, we can't spend it on that instead...

Old BE said...

If it can be covered by existing budgets, then the existing budget is at least £2million too big. I've got a novel idea: let's make prison *even more fun* and reduce that deterrent juuuuuust a little bit more.

Not quite sure how rapists, thugs and thieves can possibly learn anything in prison anyway - they aren't in long enough for that.

Anonymous said...

Two million pounds will buy a lot of rope. Imagine how many public sector parasites we could hang with it.

North Northwester said...

Here's where some of this madness must come from.

"Sir John will today launch an election manifesto by the Howard League for Penal Reform, which will call on the courts to make greater use of community penalties instead of imprisonment."

Can we all stop being soppy about John Mortimer, now?

Every man's death diminishes me, and all that, and he was much loved; not least, I suspect, by the criminals his endless dopey liberalism set free - or kept out altogether.

He was on the wrong side of the culture wars.

JuliaM said...

Ahhh, the Howard League for Penal Reform. Their fingerprints are often found on these kinds of 'initiatives', it's true...