I think the newspaper headline of the week, perhaps of the month, has to go to the Independent for: "IT'S THE WAR, STUPID" in the bottom right-hand corner next to a full front page picture of a troubled-looking President Bush. Four simple words, and yet they told the whole story. Brilliant!
It's been a week of stupid people and stupid stories, I reckon. At a time when our prisons are bursting at the seams and convicts are having to be released into the community early to finish their time in hostels (if you watched the Panorama programme on this, then you're probably frightened to leave your home!) we hear that prisons all across the country are to spend money on having their fences painted dark green so they don't appear as prominent to the inmates, and they don't feel so "trapped"!
Er, isn't that one of the purposes of a prison - to keep offenders trapped behind bars and high walls so that the rest of us may feel safe? Shouldn't they know that is why they are there? What next, designer cells, balm toilet paper, and the latest fashion clothing for inmates? How about some annual leave - you know, a paid holiday? Perhaps they'd like that too!
Anyone not wishing to feel trapped shouldn't offend - it's as simple as that! You may ask who the hell came up with this stupid idea? Well, it's just one of the ideas to be found in the Prison Service's "Sustainable Development Report". A report that also calls for new windows to be fitted to cells, and for solar panels and wind turbines to be installed in order to make our jails "environmentally friendly". Environmentally friendly for who? Not for the planet, that's for sure!
Incidentally, have you noticed how many times that word "sustainable" is popping up these days? It seems to be the latest "in-word" used to relate a sense of importance to something, and I'm sure it must by now have overtaken our hoary old favourite: "initiative". With "initiative" being seen by people today largely as meaning: "prone to failure", I'm wondering what the public's perception might soon be of: "sustainable". Yes, I reckon "stupid" has to be in with a good chance.
The more we make prison life comfortable, the more prisoners we shall accrue and the more prisons we shall have to build to house them. Prison should be an experience that no felon would ever again wish to endure. Only then will we really start to get on top of crime. All this stupid modern talk about human rights and comfort is ridiculous. On conviction every criminal should lose all but the very basic of human rights. Too often the convict, who has already violated the human rights of another, is kept by the public purse in conditions more comfortable than those of their victim. The country has gone bonkers! Utterly! It's those do-gooders again! Personally I'd find it far more environmentally friendly for all prisoners to do hard labour and all our prisons to be fitted with watchtowers complete with searchlights and machine guns. I may not be politically correct - but I'm right for you, for me, and for the planet!
Another institution that never fails to amaze is our National Health Service. I have no more medical qualification than that gained through reading the instructions on an Elastoplast tin - yet not even I would take more than a split second to conclude that any doctor suggesting to a woman patient her mother was a witch, one who with her husband was trying to kill her, was a little unethical. Such are the allegations being made against Dr Joyce Pratt, a London physician, who has allegedly told her patient she was the victim of "black magic" but that with "special powers", along with a visit to a priest at Westminster Cathedral, she might be cured.
A three-day tribunal by the General Medical Council Fitness to Practise panel in Manchester is to decide whether or not this doctor's conduct was irresponsible, unprofessional, or in any way intimidating to her patient and liable to bring the profession into disrepute. Now, we are often reminded about all those years of expensive training, examinations, and hours of hands-on experience that are required in order to become a qualified practitioner, aren't we? So isn't it rather strange how someone like Dr Pratt could go through the system holding such beliefs, if indeed she does, and not be detected? Perhaps even stranger is why any tribunal should need three days to deliberate such a matter. I have to wonder how many Pratts are involved in this case?
I'm guessing there's quite a few Pratts associated with the NHS's new computer system. We've aired this one before, but nothing seems to get any better. A new survey of more than 300 NHS staff in London reveals many of those who are to use the system are angry they weren't consulted before its introduction. They lack confidence in its ability to deliver what they need from it, and doubt it will be of much help to them. Those taking part in the survey included scientists, psychologists and pharmacists - one of whom has come out and labelled the systems as "useless". Once they've finished paying all the bills, that's getting on for