Political correctness, behind bars!

Charity to spend £15-20,000 reprinting magazine

Via Mediawatchwatch and Jailhouse Lawyer

Here is another incredible story of political madness gone wrong, this time affecting a man behind bars and a charity responsible for distributing Inside Time, a monthly magazine free for UK prisoners.

Andy Thackwray, a prisoner at HMP Hull, had written a highly satirical and humorous article suggesting that the outbreak of swine flu was perpetrated as a terrorist act by Osama Bin Laden, here’s a scan of Thackray’s article:

Fairly innocuous, light hearted, and as explained at the very top “satirical”.

However the article has landed Thackwray in hot water with the Prisons Service and the Justice Department, and he is being punished under Prison rules and has been charged with a Disciplinary Offence, put in the Segregation Unit, and will be transferred out of HMP Hull. The Ministry of Justice, of which the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is a part, forced the national newspaper Inside Time to recall all the copies distributed to prisons and prisoners. This will cost Inside Time between £15000 and £20000 to recall, reprint, and redistribute the 50,000 copies of the magazine, after it was claimed that the cartoon of Osama Bin Laden might offend Muslim prisoners, and the same for the satirical article.

It is plainly obvious to anyone who could be bothered to read Thackwray’s article that this is NOT an attack on Muslims in general, NOR an attack on Muslim prisoners, NOR some cack- handed effort to malign the Prophet Mohamed, but simply a comical lampooning of the world’s most elusive terrorist, but apparently the illustration used to depict swine flu is what is causing authorities the most concern, and as John Hirst writes in his blog:

Offences against discipline
51. A prisoner is guilty of an offence against discipline if he –

(20) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour;

If the authorities think that Thackwray is guilty of any of the above then they can only be talking a load of cock, instead they ought to be thankful that he is using his time inside usefully in helping to produce a magazine that keeps inmates interested in their own development and is supporting a charity which is designed to help prisoners their friends and family members and anyone working in a prison related industry or service.

Nobody here is taking the proverbial out of Islam or Muslims, it is Osama bin Laden, a terrorist, who is having the urine extracted from him.

So why is Jack Straw and his mates in the Justice Department defending the sensibilities of the world’s worst terrorist?

Political correctness in the UK is now so bad, that you cannot even escape it with a spell at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

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