(quote) In my second week in Saughton jail, a prisoner pushed open the door of my cell and entered during the half hour period when we were unlocked to shower and use the hall telephone in the morning. I very much disliked the intrusion, and there was something in the attitude of the man which annoyed me - wheedling would perhaps be the best description. He asked if I had a bible I could lend him. Anxious to get him out of my cell, I replied no, I did not. He shuffled off.
I immediately started to feel pangs of guilt. I did in fact have a bible, which the chaplain had given me. It was, I worried, a very bad thing to deny religious solace to a man in prison, and I really had no right to act the way I did, based on an irrational distrust. I went off to take a shower, and on the way back to my cell was again accosted by the man.
"If you don't have a Bible," he said, "Do you have any other book with thin pages?"
He wanted the paper either to smoke drugs, or more likely to make tabs from a boiled up solution of a drug.
You cannot separate the catastrophic failure of the Scottish penal system - Scotland has the highest jail population per capita in all of Western Europe - from the catastrophic failure of drugs policy in Scotland. 90% of the scores of prisoners I met and spoke with had serious addiction problems. Every one of those was a repeat offender, back in jail, frequently for the sixth, seventh or eighth time. How addiction had led them to jail varied. They stole, often burgled, to feed their addiction. They dealt drugs in order to pay for their own use. They had been involved in violence - frequently domestic - while under the influence.
I had arrived in Saughton jail on Sunday 1 August. After being "seen off" by a crowd of about 80 supporters outside St Leonards police station, I had handed myself in there at 11am, as ordered by the court. The police were expecting me, and had conducted me to a holding area, where my possessions were searched and I was respectfully patted down. The police were very polite. I had been expecting to spend the night in a cell at St Leonards and to be taken to jail in a prison van on the Monday morning. This is what both my lawyers and a number of policemen had explained would happen.
In fact I was only half an hour in St Leonards before being put in a police car and taken to Saughton. This was pretty well unique - the police do not conduct people to prison in Scotland. At no stage was I manacled or handled and the police officers were very friendly. Reception at Saughton prison - where prisoners are not usually admitted on a Sunday - were also very polite, even courteous. None of this is what happens to an ordinary prisoner, and gives the lie to the Scottish government's claim that I was treated as one.
I was not fingerprinted either in the police station or the jail, on the grounds I was a civil prisoner with no criminal conviction. At reception my overcoat and my electric toothbrush were taken from me, but my other clothing, notebook and book were left with me.
I was then taken to a side office to see a nurse. She asked me to list my medical conditions, which I did, including pulmonary hypertension, anti-phospholipid syndrome, Barrett's oesophagus, atrial fibrillation, hiatus hernia, dysarthria and a few more. As she typed them in to her computer, options appeared on a dropdown menu for her to select the right one. It was plain to me she had no knowledge of several of these conditions, and certainly no idea how to spell them
The nurse cut me off very bluntly when I politely asked her a question about the management of my heart and blood conditions while in prison, saying someone would be round to see me in the morning. She then took away from me all the prescription medications I had brought with me, saying new ones would be issued by the prison medical services. She also took my pulse oximeter, saying the prison would not permit it, as it had batteries. I said it had been given to me by my consultant cardiologist, but she insisted it was against prison regulations. (/quote) -- Cont'd at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/01/your-man-in-saughton-jail-part-1/
The SNP mafia alongside its civil and legal courtesans will be regretting jailing Craig already...
Whatever the serious negatives of being banged up it has presented him as a journalist with a powerful opportunity to write an account of the iniquities of the Scottish legal and prison system from a position of direct personal experience.
After giving us a window on the corruption of the Scottish government, its civil service and its courts, they have in effect actually laid the stinking system open to even more scrutiny from Craig in their attempt to punish him.
Tremendous! Worth reading in its entirety. I wish more people would write
about their prison experiences and I wish more people would read them. Far too many people have no idea what its like being locked up. I remember David MacIllwain saying prisoners should have to work! Totally ignoring the fact that they are paid pennies n the product that is made is sold for a tidy figure and the income used to support the wretched prison regime. Presumably David thought the prisoners should have to work to pay for their board and lodgings. And not be a drain on the state. Some activists should plain get out more. Or maybe even get in more.
In many prisons the only time you get out of your cell is to work.
Maybe I should have sent Craig a copy of Alexander Berkman's ”Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist". Then again, maybe not.
Looking forward to the next installment.
Pres. Obama paid a moving tribute to another famous ex-prisoner.
I remember Pilger at the London Anarchist Bookfair, shortly after Obama's victory, being lambasted by one individual for having the audacity to say that little important would change.
Pilger has been proved right while his castigator has vanished in the mists of time.
I read something somewhere that Pilger wrote years later about the incident where he seemed to be criticising all the anarchists at the Bookfair for the comments of that one individual (who was certainly no anarchist). Pilger was very mistaken on that aspect. He had loads of support. Maybe crap has a tendency to stick in the mind.
Anyway, I enjoyed your thread apart from that one lunatic. You're a better man than me. I'd have just told him to feck off. Maybe I need to work harder at my new year resolutions.
Re: Just read that invigorating thread over at your place.
He had the power to banish me into the wilderness at the slightest provocation, which he had already done several times in the past. His handle "Te Reo Putake" means "The Voice of Reason."
Unfortunately for Te Reo Putake, he fell foul of one of the other moderators on the site, a ghastly censorious presence rejoicing in the moniker of "weka." He is now effectively banned from The Standard.
Weka's main strategy is to embroil people in the most arcane and crazed sexual politics. Here she notes that John Pilger will be interviewed by Kim Hill, and that she "will be listening to see if he has learnt how not to support rape culture in his support for Assange.".... https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/weka-has-go-at-john-pilger-aug-22-2015.html
"You seem to think I am talking about the rape charges against Assange. I’m not"
-Um well, she actually couldn't because there never were any "rape charges" made to talk about.
"The only thing I’ve said about Pilger is that I hope he’s changed and doesn’t talking about Assange tomorrow in ways that promote rape culture..."
...and as they were no rape charges made against Assange ergo Pilger couldn't do so either, so here we have a presumptive criticism entirely based on the authors own original false premise.
"Rape culture" ...one of those "profound" scattergun memes popularised by the middle classes who write for the liberal corporate media broadsheets. Like "Toxic masculinity", it really means little to nothing but does allow you to identify the user as the kind of person that's a sucker for ideological pseudo-analysis. I suppose this goes well with the "ability" to actually reach broad sociological conclusions based on totally misreading an original individual case.
I'm sorry Morrisey, but I don't think I could go through the rest without a great deal of mental anguish: there's something troublingly wooden about the mindsets on display, but you have my utmost sympathy for trying.
Believe it or not, there used to be an even more deranged feminazi moderator at that site, called "Queen of Thorns." She combined nutty identity politics with the foulest mouth in Christendom...
on January 5, 2022, 5:06 pm