Monday, August 03, 2009

Some news - lots of thoughts

This week we have news! And the news is on a par with the arrival of Halley's Comet, an eclipse of the sun and Ian Paisley speaking civilly to a Republican. In fact, it would be safe to say that this sort of news is as rare as rocking-horse dung.

The news is about the appeal! I had a letter yesterday (Friday 24th July) from Mr Campbell Malone in which he tells me that the C.C.R.C. have written to both himself and myself to inform us that we have now been allocated a Case Review Manager and, according to Mister Malone, the manager in question is a worthy, capable and thorough fellow - which I am delighted to hear. As yet I have not received my letter from the C.C.R.C., so perhaps it has been sent to my previous establishment of H.M.P. Whitemoor. Whether they send it on to me is another matter.

Mr Malone asks me if I have asked the C.C.R.C. to consider any matters other than those listed in the original application. I don't know - I haven't had the letter to check yet. I wonder if I have asked the C.C.R.C. to consider anything which I haven't yet told Mr Malone about. I don't know. I think I asked the C.C.R.C. to examine my website, because there is an awful lot of stuff on there they may find interesting in connection with the appeal. However, never having seen the website myself, I can't actually direct them to anything in particular, just to the site in general. Will this Case Review Manager be diligent and examine it all? I don't know. I hope so.

All of that notwithstanding, the news is that we have progress on the appeal front and that simply HAS to be good news.

Secondly, I had a letter from Mike Pemberton who deals with all of the internal prison stuff - Category Reviews, Sentence Planning, Parole Board hearings and so on. He is setting about the task of having me transferred to a Category B prison - at least he will ask the Powers-That-Be, which is not the same as having any success. It took me twenty-three years to get off the Category A, so to get a sensible move may take just as long - the Ministry of Justice may not be too kindly disposed towards an upstart who has had the temerity to challenge them in the High Court. I may have to pay for that with more years of stonewalling - but we shall see.

So I sit here and ponder, something which I have grown quite accustomed to doing over the years. It is supposed to be good for the mind and soul apparently - they even have courses to teach prisoners how to ponder. As William Henry Davies put it:
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
The point is that we have got some movement with the C.C.R.C. and that has to be welcome news.

Finally, I am sitting here before this decrepit old typewriter and searching in the midden of my mind for a pithy quote to end with, and nothing is coming - the mind produceth zilch! So I thought I would just throw in one from Herbert Spencer apropos nothing at all:
How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.
The Voice In The Wilderness

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