Last Sunday evening, a cohort of the denizens of this wing (and a couple of other wings too) decided to have a quiet and peaceful protest against a few of the recent excesses that have been taking place. Of course I can only speak about the wing where I reside as Lizzie Windsor's guest, albeit an unwilling one. Last Sunday a number of the fellows decided not to lock up at the designated time but a lot of us, me included, were not even informed of this intention! (Probably just as well really as it has turned out.)
So they didn't lock up - they had a quiet and peaceful 'sit-out' strike. This meant, of course, that the kangaroos couldn't go home until the cons, peacefully and without so much as a raised voice, locked up at nine in the evening. Sit-out strike over. The trouble started the following day when the whole place was put on lock-down - and we've been on lock-down ever since!
All of those fellows involved in the meek protest were either carted off to the punishment block or placed on punishment on the wing in that they had their personal stuff taken away from them and were placed on basic regime. The rest of us were told that we were all on lock-down as well, which in itself was a punishment - no showers, nuffink.
On Thursday they decided to let a small number of cons out of their cells at a quarter to nine in the morning and at nine o' clock the alarm bell went and everyone was back on lock-down. Someone had created an incident.
Controlled unlocking followed, and that went on until Saturday when they let half of us out in the morning, for showers and the like, and half in the afternoon. The same thing is happening today, Sunday, and we are told that, provided there are no more incidents, there will be a meeting tomorrow to decide whether to allow the wing to return to normal -whatever that means around here. Of course, most of the rest of the jail is already heing treated normally. It makes you think.
Now, none of this has anything to do with me, or a lot of other cons on this wing, but we are being punished anyway. Clearly those in command of this particular version of the Titanic have never heard of collective punishment being unfair and downright against the ECHR.
Keep watching this space - things might get even more interesting. I'm not making any comments about who is right or who is wrong or anything else, I'm simply stating the facts.
But the way I see things is that if you have a lot of young men, young eagles who have absolutely no future ahead of them, nothing at all, then it would seem judicious to me to treat them with a certain amount of compassion and not a little leeway. A person with nothing to lose takes very little persuading to take a gamble. If there is one thing a person should never be deprived of it is hope. Hope is often the only thing that keeps a person going.
Finally, from my little fountain of pithy sayings and wisdom, I have something that is well worth considering:
It is easier to deal with a friendly lion than it is to deal with a mad dog.
The Voice In The Wilderness
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