Apr 2026 – sillysocksonfriday

Prison Freedom

In my daily Tik Tok plunge on Facebook, I saw a clip about the prison system in Denmark, which sparked some thoughts.

Denmark tries to make prisons as close to ‘normal’ as possible. Prisoners have comfortable cells, work and get paid! and do their own shopping and cook for themselves! They get weekends off after serving half their sentences

I have visited prisons in Africa and New Zealand and love prison movies. The Shawshank Redemption, Cool Hand Luke and The Great Escape are among my top movies of all time. All prisons I have visited were hard places, with barbed wire, stone walls and strict discipline.

By and large it is probably fair to say that most prison systems fail when it comes to rehabilitation.

Astoundingly, it seems that the most humane, softest prison systems have the lowest re-offending rates.

Another kick in the guts for we believers in western civilisation is that the bigger the western ‘civilised’ country, the worse the rehabilitation, with a recidivist rate of 70% in the US. Coincidentally, the US also has the highest imprisonment rate in the world. It should be the best at prisons – it’s got the most material to work with heh! heh!

Statistics for Arab, African and Asian countries are scant. Anectdotally their prison systems are extremely hard and many do not survive to re-offend, if they actually survive arrest. For an account of African prison experience, read Beating Chains by Rusty Labuschagne.

Don’t get imprisoned in Africa.

In Russia, at least 50% of inmates have previous prison sentences. Prisoners in both countries are released to fight in penal battalions in the Ukraine war.

Shades of 19th Century practice, when significant proportions of armies and navies were criminals!

Coming back to Denmark and its soft system – its recidivist rate is about 20%

My brother, Mpunzane, was a policeman in colonial Swaziland. In his isolated rural post of Nomahasha, he received a report that a prisoner had failed to report at morning roll call so possibly, had absconded.

Apparently, prisoners were ‘allowed to escape‘ after evening roll call but had to return by morning. Mpunzane was about to call out the District, when he was reassured by the Prison Officer -he had released all the prisoners to search for the man!

They all returned by 10 a.m. with the missing man who had drunk too much at a beer drink and passed out on the way home. Consequently, no-one woke him in time to break back into the prison before roll call.

So Kristofferson got it wrong: there is something left to lose if you lose freedom.

It seems paradoxical: the main purpose of prison is to deter crime, yet the better we treat prisoners, the better citizens they become!

The punishment of loss of liberty is sufficient – there is no need to make life very uncomfortable.

Our views of right and wrong change….

Winter fruit

The late summer stonefruit are now declining in quality and increasing in price. There have been no mangoes for a long time..

I bought some naartjies and oranges today – they are likely to be my fruit staples for some months. I think farmers are going to battle with diminished and expensive fuel…

Damn! I didn’t want to go along that ugly road!

From 6 a.m. until 5 p.m. there is a shrieking hullabaloo of rainbow lorikeets in the big Golden Penda tree next door. They get drunk on the nectar from the bright yellow flowers then spend the day shrieking at each about how good life is!

5 p.m. must be Nature’s closing time as the noise ceases like it has been switched off! Until then it is a rowdy, unrestrained party. You may be unlucky enought to be pee’d upon as they fly shreiking from tree to tree.

They fly straight at you and only veer away at the last moment!

I love them! So quintessentialy Australian.

They are not alone: they have a midday siesta and that is the time that the noisy friar demonstrates his unusual squawking, creaking call which is so unmusical it makes one grin! Every now and then the resident noisy miner flock think they see a snake and they set up an enormous racket!

In early mornings there is also the maniacal cackle of the kookaburras and the crow choir practice, conducted succesively in all four corners of their patch.

When herself worked night shift she used to rush out and clash cymbals at the crows, who still generally avoid Bahr Palace.

Do other countries have birds that are actually called ‘noisy’? I know there are howler monkeys elsewhere…

Life goes on … just ignore the news and keep your head down and all the stuff over there will disappear….

The Potsdam Declaration- a prayer

This declaration made on 26 July 1945 demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan and warned of “prompt and utter destruction,”….

It was followed by not one but two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because the Japanese government would not surrender unconditionally …. (sound familiar?) .

There were warnings of devastating bombings but no specific mention of nuclear bombs or their devastating power.

Japanese forces had already been defeated in all areas except the Japanese home islands themselves. There had been devastating bombings of Japanese cities. Firebombs in Tokyo had already killed 80, 000 and left over a million people homeless.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” seems to be a clear statement preceding another nuclear bombing.

There can be no justification for strategic attacks with nuclear bombs ever, yet we have a madman threatening just that. Trump cannot control his mouth, why should we believe he will control his finger?

Who will be next to justify their own nuclear bombings: Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, India, … Russia?

Now we know why there has been a purge of the US military command with appointment of a Hegseth stooge as Chief of Staff. Who is left to resist power crazy madmen?

I feel ill when I consider that for a number of years I have regarded the US as a bastion of democracy and the western civilisation. Now I see it as a barbaric global bully with no political control over its governance and armed forces.

The Great Satan indeed!

At least, Trump may have taught all countries to review their dependencies and promote self sufficiency as far as possible …. and not to forget to maintain strong and effective armed forces.

Just to remind you:

Immediate Aftermath of a nuclear bomb.

Blast Wave: An intense pressure wave crushes buildings, with 5 psi overpressure destroying most residential structures, leveling everything for kilometers.
Thermal Radiation: The intense heat instantly vaporizes human tissue, causes severe burns, and ignites massive firestorms.
Immediate Death/Injury: Tens of thousands are killed instantly or severely wounded by flying debris and burns.
Infrastructure Failure: Hospitals, power grids, and communication systems are destroyed, preventing emergency response.

Short-Term and Long-Term Effects

Radioactive Fallout: Radioactive dust and debris fall downwind, creating deadly contamination zones that make areas uninhabitable for years.
Radiation Sickness: Survivors face acute radiation syndrome (nausea, hair loss, bleeding) and long-term health issues.
Cancer and Chronic Disease: Survivors experience significantly higher rates of cancers, leukemia, and chronic diseases like cataracts and heart disease.
Reproductive/Genetic Damage: High rates of miscarriage and birth defects, including intellectual disabilities in children exposed in utero, were observed in previous bombings.

Global Consequences

Environmental Damage: A large-scale nuclear exchange could cause a “nuclear winter,” with smoke blocking the sun, disrupting ecosystems and global food production.
Famine: The disruption of food supply could cause mass starvation, putting over a billion people at risk of famine worldwide.
Economic Collapse: Infrastructure destruction on a massive scale would likely cause the total collapse of modern economic systems.

Please don’t do it.

A museum piece

Idly looking on Google maps at my Granny’s old house in Lee on the Solent in Hampshire, I saw there was a hovercraft museum in the village.

In 1962, I saw the Duke of Edinburgh piloting a hovercraft down the slipway onto the sea at Lee. Now he’s dead and the craft has a museum.

Later, Oupa Nu and Granny took 2 granddaughters to the local Redlands Museum. Essentially a time display of how life was lived from the days of early colonist settlement in the early 19th Century.

There were a few Aboriginal artefacts but that was not the focus of the museum.

Life must have been very hard for early settlers. The land need to be cleared, mostly by hand, with oxen doing the heavy hauling for loggers.

There were a number of exhibits from the second half of the last century. Many were achingly familiar and evoked nostalgia for a gentler, easier time in a different place.

“We had those” and ‘ we had desks like that and inkwells for dipping our pens….” Not much interest from the youngsters who were searching for hidden Easter chicks.

It was a strange feeling – I felt almost like I could be an exhibit !

Now I have a telephone, diary, dictionary, encyclopedia, film theatre, camera, torch, juke box and bank card in one little machine in my pocket! (Just got to learn how to use all of the things…)