Lock 'em up and throw away the key to the ballot box?

Prison. What's it for? Punishment or rehabilitation? Do convicts merely lose their liberty or are their human rights taken away too? Do we differentiate between people in for a few months for minor offences and those locked away for longer terms.

What if you happen to be inside when an election is called? If you were sentenced to time in a British jail today you'd have to be expecting to serve more than four years to still be there when the next general election happens. In Scotland the average sentence (not including life sentences for murder) is over nine months (281 days).

Today MPs voted by a margin of 234 to 22 (where the hell were the rest of them is this is so important?) to defy the European Court of Human Rights' decision that inmates should be enfranchised.

This isn't a simple issue, it's not black and white. There's a whole rainbow of shades of grey between the two extreme opinions. If you believe that convicted criminals lose their human rights and should be left to rot then it's clear cut; how can you let these people have the vote? Of course you can't.

But I think that prison is about more than punishment. Convicts lose their freedom. Massively. And so they should. But we shouldn't forget about them. One way we judge a society is by how it treats its prisoners, and it's important that however long they're sentenced for that they're prepared for what will happen when they're released. Teach them functional skills, prepare them for work, keep them busy to avoid the fall into drug use and the "university of crime." As the end of a sentence approaches and we're trying to prepare a convict for life outside again, why not let them have a vote if an election comes around? Inmates preparing to be released should be encouraged to take an interest in the society that they'll be re-joining. Let them engage by voting.

On Wednesday Eric Illsley, the MP for Barnsley Central pleaded guilty to charges of fraud relating to £14,000 worth of expense claims. He's due to be sentences in four weeks. If he gets more than 12 months the Representation of the People Act 1981 will cause him to be disqualified from parliament, his seat will be declared vacant and a by-election will be called. If he gets less than a year he doesn't have to give up his seat. How he'll represent his constituents and where he'll hold surgeries is a bit of a mystery. It's grossly hypocritical to have laws that allow MPs doing time to keep their jobs, but to stop convicts from voting them out of office.

So where do I stand on this? Well, not all prisoners should be allowed a vote, but perhaps those in open prisons preparing for release should get their place back on the electoral register, or maybe those serving less than a year. And what about prisoners on remand who are yet to face trial?

It's not easy, but sometimes being a small-l liberal means you have to support things that aren't popular.

That Fox News map of the Middle East

All over my twitter stream for the last few days have been people tweeting and re-tweeting this screen-grab of a map of the Middle East from Fox News.

Egypt is in the wrong place, it's where Iraq was when I last looked.

Everyone's getting hot and bothered about the channel's ignorance and the poor grasp of geography shown by American as the crisis in Egypt unfolds.

But it's not a new image. Do a little Googling and it soon becomes clear that the map dates back to July 2009, as these sites explain.

And just look at the picture. If it was anything to do with the current story wouldn't Egypt be one of the highlighted countries rather than Syria, Iran, Jordan and Israel?

And who's to say that it hasn't been Photoshopped? If it was a photo of a telly with the map actually on-screen I'd be much less dubious, but a clean graphic like that could easily have been tinkered with and who'd know it?

Last week I read this excellent blog post from Paul Bradshaw about verifying online content.

With some justification we're told not believe all that we read in the papers, but we should also remember that things are even easier to spoof online. As well as reading Paul's post it's worth being aware of snopes.com which is a great site for dispelling urban and internet myths, and a good way to waste hours of your time.

Driving the desk

In music radio in the UK there's a group of people who believe you can't be a real presenter and connect with the programme, really feeling the music, unless you self-op. That's not a euphemism, it means you have to push all of the buttons yourself. It's called driving the desk.

It's one of those things that can be tricky to explain, is actually quite simple, and in total contradiction of myself is really bloody hard to do well.

Most people can learn to do it adequately in a day or so. But some should never be let loose near a fader.

This man is one of those...



(via someone on Twitter who re-tweeted @ricksimmonds)