Heaven

DAY 203 WEDNESDAY 6 FEBRUARY 2002

9.00 am

I can’t believe how stupid some people can be.

On Monday I attended a CARAT meeting where one of the participants told everyone present that he had given up drugs. On Tuesday the same man comes up in front of the governor for failing an MDT for cannabis. Seven days were added to his sentence, and he told me he considered himself lucky not to be shipped out. Last night the same man was caught on his way back from Boston in possession of a plastic bag full of drugs that included cannabis and heroin. He was locked up in the segregation cell overnight, and will be shipped out this morning to a B-cat with a further twenty-one days added to his sentence.

His stupidity is not the only aspect of this incident worth considering. If he’d been caught with such an assignment of drugs ‘on the out’ he would have been sentenced to at least seven years, but as his sentence is already fourteen, he gets away with twenty-one days added. It’s just another pointer to the drugs problem this country is currently facing.

11.00 am

Mary has a piece in Peterborough that she came across on the Web. It makes me laugh so much it’s simply better to reproduce it rather than attempt any precis. (See below.)

Woman of substance

Lady Archer’s sense of humour is alive and well. The fragrant chemist has just submitted a “hazardous materials data sheet” to the Chemistry at Cambridge newsletter. “Element: woman. Symbol: Wo. Discoverer: Adam. Atomic mass: accepted as 55kg but known to vary from 45kg to 225kg. Occurrence: found in large quantities in urban areas, with trace elements in outlying regions. Physical properties: boils at absolutely nothing, freezes for no apparent reason. Melts if given special treatment, bitter if used incorrectly. Chemical properties: affinity to gold, silver, platinum and all precious stones. The most powerful money-reducing agent known to man. Common use: highly ornamental, especially in sports cars. Can be a very effective cleaning agent. Hazards: highly dangerous except in experienced hands. Illegal to possess more than one, although several can be maintained at different locations as long as specimens do not come into direct contact with each other.”

The Telegraph also publishes the results of a poll on Mr Blunkett’s recent pronouncements that non-violent, first-offence prisoners should be able, where possible, to continue their work while reporting into jails in the evenings and at weekends; 83 per cent say ‘keep them locked up’, while only 12 per cent feel the Home Secretary is right to consider legislation along these more realistic lines. I must confess that before I’d been to prison, I would have been among the 83 per cent.

7.00 pm

I phone Mary, who tells me before I can get beyond ‘Hello’ that Baroness Nicholson has finally issued a statement in which she offers a grudging apology. (See below.)

Baroness Nicholson wishes to make it quite clear that at no time did she intend to suggest that Lord Archer had personally misappropriated money raised by the Simple Truth appeal. Indeed, it had not occurred to her to think that it might have been possible for Lord Archer to gain access to funds raised by the British Red Cross. If tho inference was drawn that she was accusing Lord Archer of having stolen Simple Truth money from the British Red Cross, she regrets the misunderstanding and regrets any upset that may have been caused to Lord Archer’s family.