A Leader in today’s Times tells us that Britain’s gaols are fully to bursting. It is an immediate and pressing problem for which I have one or two solutions. Firstly, why not send anyone who has the coronavirus to an “isolation” ward in our most hard-pressed prisons? Hopefully the isolation won’t be too successful and the virus will spread like margarine throughout the facility, thereby helping to reduce the porridge population at a stroke. Too Mengelesque? Ok, try my second suggestion. Instead of sending petty pilferers, minor fraudsters, drug abusers etc to be incarcerated, abused, further debauched and generally “wasted”, why not re-introduce the stocks? A few weeks of public humiliation should be enough to persuade many of the transgressors to revert to the straight and narrow in future and if unsuccessful, there’s always the guillotine.
Judging by my children’s acute embarrassment at being “humiliated” by their parents in front of their friends, there is no more effective punishment than letting the public vent their anger and acerbic wit with a few well-aimed rotten eggs and tomatoes. I am at a loss, actually to know why the practice was ever stopped? The Promenade at Eastbourne would be a perfect place. On days like this, when the rain descends in buckets, the wind whips the white-tops into a steaming frenzy and the gargantuan waves, laced with pebbles, crash over the seawall, the punishment would take on even more uncomfortable aspects; a sort of unintended “stoning” thrown in. I can’t think why the local Justices haven’t already had some latter-day stocks installed.
What a troubled world we live in. While Australia burns, we drown and Dr WHO is about to declare a Pandemic that could potentially wipe out millions. Donald Trump is giving blondes a bad name, ably assisted by Boris, while Vlad is doing what all good dictators do and finding a new title that’ll see him through to the grave. The Sussexes will soon be the British Columbians, Randy Andy continues to interest the redtops, while its only a matter of time before Mo Farah is felled by those that were happy to put him on a pedestal in the first place. I have a nasty feeling that he is guilty until found innocent….
Not, of course, that he will be swelling the prison population.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 