Blog entry 12th November 2019
It has been a while since my last blog. Principally because I have been swamped in a mountain of paperwork and studies.
The CCRC have been reviewing my application to have my appeal case investigated for over a month now. Whilst I have had no direct feedback I feel it positive that they are taking time to review the issues I have submitted as a sign that they are taking them seriously.
The preparation for my parole hearing continues. My legal counsel has had an independent report by an eminent psychologist prepared, and is now in the process of commissioning a second. The date for the hearing is still to be set. The indications were that it was to be December. However it now seems that it will be February or March 2020.
Part of the reason that I haven't written a blog for two months odd is that elements within the employ of the Ministry of Justice have made clear adverse inferences about my appeal campaign website in their parole reports against me. My personal feeling is that such actions are thinly veiled intimidation. During my trial serious lies were told about me and evidence was hidden and falsified. All of this was widely disseminated to the media which reported it wholesale. Now I have proof of the police and CPS deceptions and unlawful actions the MOJ wish to use any means to silence the truth. Currently my only opportunity to get this truth known is through my blogs on this campaign website. It is fundamentally and constitutionally wrong that the 'state' is allowed to act in this way. Incidentally, I have no doubt that the Ministry of Justice's employees will now try and use my statement on this as a means of influencing a negative decision from the parole board against me.
Having passed my 'level 2 passport' as a gym instructor I have now commenced upon studying for my 'level 3 passport' as a personal trainer. Getting to this point has taken a lot of work. Including an ongoing civil court case against HMP Wakefield. The prison system likes to give the impression that it promotes and supports prisoners education. It is my experience over the last 20 years that this is simply untrue.
At every high security prison I've been held at I have had to fight tooth and nail to pursue my studies, HMP Wakefield has been the worst prison of them all in this aspect. Here prisoners are threatened through the loss of beleaguered wages or the loss of their paid work if they do not participate in entry level English & Math courses that aren't even recognised by potential employers, or manufactured qualifications that have no external awarding body.
Yet those of us who wish to pursue valid qualifications through distance learning up to university level receive only obstructions from the prison and inevitably have to resort to court action. Of course the fact that the prison receives financial incentives for prisoners entering on to the entry level courses, but none for distance learning/higher education has nothing to do with it. What makes this worse is that a prisoner doesn't even have to pass the entry level/manufactured 'qualification' for the prison to receive its incentive. They simply have to be registered and enrolled (press-ganged) on to it.
Well, that's my news and views for now. Until next time.