Prison service fobbing me off again

Remember in January when I said that the prison service was refusing to answer my request and may do by today (feb 1^st)?

Well at 5pm they had not answered it so I sent an email off to them telling them that if they did not give me the information by tomorrow I would complain to the Information Commissioner. This must have spooked them because just 10 minutes later they sent me an email (and I felt like a right dick for sending the other email until I read the email that they sent):

I am writing further to your previous information request relating to ‘How much is spent on digital TV (Sky, Freeview, NTL etc), and games consoles (Xbox, Playstation and games etc) between January 2002- October 2006’. This has been processed in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act:

We continue to consider your request and we apologise for not responding to you by 2^nd February 2007, as previously stated.

Incase you are not aware February 2^nd has not even happened yet so they must have had this already typed up to respond to me whenever they were going to respond. Basically they are lying to me and fobbing me off hoping I will forget.

But wait it gets better. They go onto say:

As a result, we will not be able to provide a full response within the stipulated period. Your request is being dealt with as a matter of urgency and now aim to respond by 2^nd March 2007.

Incase you don’t know the prison service has been fobbing me off since November and last time I threatened to go to the Information Commissioner if they didn’t give me an answer. It looked like it only worked a bit so I have sent this back to the guys in government:

That is not good enough. I have been patiently waiting for months. I will be emailing the Information Commissioner if I don't have the information by tomorrow.

I hope they do give me the information by then. I don’t feel like going through another whole heap of bureaucracy and going to the Information Commissioner but I will if they don’t answer by tomorrow.

Blog of the month

The blog of the month for October is The Spicy Cauldron with 21 votes. Barnsley Nationalists came second with 15 votes. Deakin is blue came third with 8 votes and Cynical Chatter From The Underworld came last with 3 votes.

This was a close race. For most of the poll Deakin is blue was winning then suddenly Barnsley Nationalists was winning then Spicy Cauldron came from third to beat everyone.

A solution to political party funding

Why do politicians want tax payers to fund political parties? I have a solution and Labour have just made that solution available in the last few days.

They can create their own super casinos and make millions per year.

Prison toilets to become Islam friendly

It seems that prisoners are getting whatever they want these days and Muslim criminals are getting even more. Toilets in Brixton prison are being redesigned so they don’t face Mecca to make the Muslims happy so they don’t have to sit sideways.

Prison bosses are refusing to say how much this will cost but my guess is that the cost would help fund more prison places which apparently is not needed as much as redesigning of toilets.

52 prisoners take bribe to leave prison

Only 52 of the thousands of foreign prisoners clogging up Britain's jails have taken a £2,500 'bribe' offered by John Reid to return home.

The scheme's failure is a hammer blow to the Home Secretary's hopes of solving the prison overcrowding crisis.

Why are we asking these people to leave? Infact why are we giving them any money at all? They should be made to leave once they have served their entire sentence. They lost the right to make decisions for themselves once they commit a crime in this country.

Prisoners now control Belmarsh

GUARDS at top security Belmarsh jail have been told to call inmates by their first names and back off in violent situations to create a "cosy, friendly atmosphere".

The jail holds some of the country's most notorious prisoners including terrorists, killers and gangsters.

Hook-handed hate preacher Abu Hamza is among those locked up there.

But in a stormy staff meeting governor Claudia Strutt banned the use of control and restraint techniques - known as C&R - unless there's a riot.

In a further effort to "improve relations" some staff have also been issued with name badges and told to wear polo shirts instead of traditional uniforms after some inmates complained they found them "too intimidating".

Previously, officers could restrain an inmate if they believed it would prevent a fight, if they refused to go to their cell, or for their own safety.

The source explained: "A prisoner may create absolute hell and come up into officers' faces and act in a threatening manner. Usually officers would restrain them using minimum force and put them in their cell. Now officers have to simply walk away.

The insider revealed: "The governor said, 'I want no questions or complaints, there have been too many C&Rs. You're not allowed to do it anymore. From now on you must back off'.

"It got quite stormy, officers made it clear they weren't happy, but the governor wouldn't listen."

The source claimed: "This is all about manipulating figures. A report goes to the Prison Service HQ every month detailing how many C&Rs there have been.

"If that figure goes down it will look like Belmarsh is under control and all of the prisoners are behaving themselves."

It’s nice to see that the prisoners are in control of the prison.

It seems to me that the governor is only doing it to manipulate the figures. Why does he have to reports these C&Rs anyway? What useful purpose could they serve? There is no need. Get rid of the paperwork and you save money too.

33% of Muslims want sharia law

According to The Sun just over a third of Muslims want sharia law introduced into this country. When I read this today I knew I heard this before and indeed I have. It was reported 11 months ago but then it was reported that 40% want sharia law introduced into this country so the numbers have actually gone down from 40% to 33%.

Here are some more comparisons:

Last year 20% had sympathies with the "feelings and motives" of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July 7, killing 52 people. This year one in ten of the 16 to 24-year-olds polled “admire” Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and other terror groups.

I don’t know if all terrorist lovers admire bin laden but it seems to me that the numbers have actually decreased here too unless last year they talked to muslims of all ages and not just 16-24 year olds.

I dislike Islam as much as the next nationalist guy but I feel truth must come first and I think we should be told the whole story. Is it bad that I have a long memory?

Update: According to the Daily Telegraph it is still at 40% so nothing has changed in the passed year.

Each prisoner costs £39,000 per year

Whilst reading this column in the Daily Mirror I found that it costs £750 per week to house a prisoner. That means it costs us £39,000 per year just to house one prisoner. I thought it only cost £18,000 per year. Seeing as we have 80,000 prisoners it means that we are spending over £3 billion on our prisoners and this will become more as we house more prisoners.

This makes me think that paying foreign countries to put our prisoners in their prisons is still a better option than we have now. It would probably cost us less than half and the poor countries would still be making a profit. Everyone wins. They get money and we save atleast £1 billion pounds per year that could be diverted to sectors like healthcare or policing.

Of course we wouldn’t send all our prisoners to foreign countries. There is no point in sending them if they are serving less than 6 months. We would actually have the resources to put those serving less than 6 months into rehabilitation programmes.

Police won't chase criminals incase of lawsuit

A mother said she was outraged after police refused to chase thieves who stole her sons' motorbikes - because the riders were not wearing helmets.

Pauline Nolan, from Greater Manchester, said officers told her they could not pursue the offenders in case they fell off and sued them.

Criminals should have no right to sue anyone never mind the police if they were hurt in the process of committing a crime.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Apparently today is Holocaust Memorial Day. While the holocaust was a terrible episode in human history there are far worse genocides that don’t have their own memorial day.

Instead of a holocaust memorial day we should be having a genocide memorial day to remember all genocides and not just one.

Government unveil boarder police

Our government likes to look like they are acting on what the people want. Today they unveiled their new boarder police with a shiny new uniform and some powers for them.

The government must think we have a short memory though or they must have a short memory because just two months ago it was revealed that more than half of these boarder police won’t be anything more than administrators and won’t actually ever leave their offices. So much for a brand new boarder police.

Vote Labour or no police

It’s not just healthcare, education and the environment that is being destroyed in constituencies that don’t vote Labour. Now those that don’t vote Labour are having their police stations shut down.

If you live in a Conservative or Lib Dem constituency you will be glad to hear that Blair couldn’t give a toss about you. So if you get robbed, murdered or raped because you don’t have a police station anymore you know who to thank.

January 2007- Who should be blog of the month?

It’s voting time for the blog of the month. Who do you think should be blog of the month?

Should it be Barnsley Nationalists?

Should it be The Spicy Cauldron who was so offended having me link to him that he blocked my site from linking to him so if you want to go to his site to rate it you will have type http://www.spicycauldron.com/ into a new browser.

Should it be Deakin is blue or even Cynical Chatter From The Underworld?

Vote on the pole on the side bar. The choice is yours…

Blog of the week

The blog of the week this week is Cynical Chatter From The Underworld.

Respect Zones

When is respect not respect? When it is done by Labour.

Chicken Yoghurt has the story.

Omar Bakri says Muslim police will revolt

According to Omar Bakri Mohammed, moderate British Muslims in the police, Armed Forces and Civil Service will one day revolt against the system to "crush it from within".

Aren’t they already doing that in the police force? I blogged about it last year after it was revealed that Muslim police officers are ten times more corrupt than white officers. Maybe it has already started?

Estonian troops better equipped than ours

Blair loves lying to our troops and making them suffer. First he said troops will get “whatever they need” and then he changed that to “we will listen carefully to any requests that are made of us”.

Apparently Blair isn’t listening carefully enough as he has turned down requests for attack weapons, vital tools, night vision equipment, mine protected vessels and helicopters.

We now have no working mine protected vessels in Afghanistan, a country where there are an estimated 10 million mines. We only had 4 to begin with.

Even Estonian troops who are working alongside the Royal Marines are better equipped than our own troops.

Hat tip: Cynical Chatter From The Underworld

Power to the people!

A man who was fed up with paying massive bank charges decided to give one of the high street giants a taste of its own medicine.

When Royal Bank of Scotland refused to refund £3,400 charges that Declan Purcell believed he was owed, he sent in the bailiffs.

Stunned customers at his branch of RBS watched as debt collectors seized four computers, two fax machines and a till filled with cash.

The branch manager was told that the items would be sold unless RBS came up with the money owed to Mr Purcell.

Only when the manager gave an undertaking that the debt would be paid did the bailiffs leave.

The move, which will raise a cheer from millions of other bank customers, is part of a consumer fightback against bank charges, which net an estimated £4.5 billion every year.

Every time a current account customer goes overdrawn by as little as £1 most banks will charge around £28, even though the administration cost is only about £4.50.

Then every cheque, direct debit, or card transaction that goes through or is bounced incurs another charge of up to £38.

I hope that means the banks start acting fairer now. If they don’t we can always do what this guy did. I would have loved to see the managers face. I bet he was pissing himself. LOL.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Hat tip: Cynical Chatter From The Underworld

Comparing two asylum stories

Did you hear that 100s of failed asylum seekers have been allowed to reapply after they were turned down after their appeals? They include 80 repeat applications from Afghanistan and 30 from Turkey.

Compare that story with this story about a white man from Zimbabwe whose grandparents were British who has had his application for asylum rejected.

Prisoner sues for failed suicide bid and wins

THE Prison Service was accused of a cover-up yesterday as it maintained a veil of silence over a massive compensation payout to a suicidal inmate.

It has repeatedly refused to give details of the incident that led to a £575,000 out-of-court settlement to a young prisoner at Northallerton Young Offenders' Institution.

The Northern Echo exclusively reported how the payout was made after the unknown prisoner, aged between 18 and 21, attempted to take his own life and was saved by prison officers. It is believed that his claim centred on an alleged breach of human rights.

Next time this happens we should let the person die. We should not be paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for saving someone’s life. It is utterly ridiculous. We should give him the death penalty if he wants to die that much.