A humorous aside from Gary

Warning This blog contains adult sex innuendo

Gary sent this through in one of his letters to us and I couldnt resist repeating it here.

Sorry Gary :-) and if by repeating this I upset you dear reader, I again apologise.

"Bora Da Guys

Nookey on the National Health? Its a mans life in Britains Model Prisons. Sex Surrogates supplied weekly.

Had I known that this was an integral part of the Gaols sentence planning procedure, I would have stolen that Mars Bar from the schooltuck shop.

However, call me old fashioned if you will, but these new sexual positions that are all the rage in the 21st Century do little to satisfy my carnal desires. Me, I am a missionary man with a few mild variations.

This recent one of bend down and touch your toes leaves me unfulfilled and besides gives me a pain in the bum for hours after!

Shall we have this as a blog Alan ROFL, LMAO (sic)

Bridget"

My Repatriation to the UK

(Note: There has been a gap in Gary's blogs to us as we have had difficulty getting letters and parcels to him in Bang Kwang and he getting letters to us unless they went via a 3rd party)

Sadly my initial hopes regarding my book have been scuppered. The original intention was to have it published before being repatriated. This didn’t work out and as I have now fully experienced the physical repatriation experience it behoves me to document it. As far as I can tell only 2 other Britons have written accounts of the process from attending the handover ceremony to the Wandsworth Marshals, to being delivered into the FNIC(First Night in Custody) cell on E Wing.

Whereas Lester and Scotty, the two who have documented the process, knew their actual date of repatriation for weeks beforehand, my day was mired in confusion, due in part because of the floods affecting Bangkok.


Originally I was scheduled for the end of November – later leaked to me by the screws as being 30/11/11. As the Bangkok floods worsened NOMS and the Embassy decide to postpone the transfer and we (Michael Connell) had been scheduled for 8 days earlier) were told on the 18/11/11 that our 'new' dates were fr sometime in the first quarter of 2012.


Michael and I went ballistic as, for complicated and unnecessary reasons, Britons are only credited with half of the time spent in Thai jails off of 'Time Served' by NOMS – effectively increasing the licence portion we need to serve. Both Michael's and my groups of supporters raised their lances and jousted against NOMS and the FCO and our schedules were bought back into line.


Thinking that my day was to be 30/11/11 all of my plans; room leaving party, handing out of property that I couldn’t take back to Blighty etc; were centred around that day. It came as a surprise when Golf – my Kapo mate working in the D3 office – at 9am on the 28th frantically started to call me over the buildings tannoy. Sure enough the ceremony was due to kick-off at ten and I had 30minutes to get packed.

The most important item on this part of the agenda was getting into my 'going away' kit. This was a tee-shirt and a pair of shorts I had had since my Bombat days 9 years ago. Both had been the sole items of clothing I had possessed for about 1 year and they were used when the lads in Bombat gave them to me to cover my nakedness. Nine years on and they were hanging in ribbons from my body; Well almost! The Nepalese had been warned as to this part of my 'Game Plan' (and my reason thereof) so were not shocked by my appearance. However the Thai lads were staggered. More so because they correctly perceived it as a deliberate insult to the senior officials attending the ceremony.


My 'uniform' had a far more subtle purpose though. As part of the handover ceremony both the British Embassy and the prisoner being repatriated are supposed to formally thank the Bang Kwang Director and the Department of Correction (DOC) for taking such good care of the inmate during the time in the Hilton. The entire ceremony is videoed and, as has happened in the past, should the prisoner later claim about the cruel and inhumane treatment they suffered in Bang Kwang, then both the Embassy and the DOC had the inmates counter testament ready on file. Dressed as I was neither the Embassy nor the DOC could risk filming the handover.

Such was the stick that I stuck in the bureaucratic wheel that many of of the rituals usually indulged in were abandoned . There was also a spin off benefit to my deportment. All of the D3 lads; Thais, Farang and Nigerians were heartened to learn that protest was alive and kicking in one small part of Bang Kwang – Building3!

Whilst the Thais were sufficiently intimidated to forego a full bells and whistles handover ceremony during which the Farang is videoed as thoroughly penitent and anxious to absolve the DOC of any further claims of abuse they have undoubtedly been subjected to by the screws, my ceremony was completed within a record breaking 10 – 15 minutes. Very much an anti-climax in retrospect.


The escorting marshals weren’t bemused by my style of dress, and after the conference room emptied I was read the Riot Act by Senior Prison Officer (SO) Winpenny, the head of the escort team of 3, a stand off between two strong minded individuals. The impasse was resolved by Arthur, the Marshal charged to be my personal body escort, a couple of humanitarian words from him and the repatriation was back on course.


From the conference room I was then; much to my surprise, handed an envelope containing just over 9,000Baht (£200) which was the balance remaining on my prison coffee shop account. Added to the 4,000Baht in cash I thought I might be needing as 'Gate Money' for the Kapos – charged by them as a 'toll' to all those leaving Bang Kwang, I now had 13,000Baht to hand should an opportunity to escape arise in IDC. Although not a fortune, enough money to spirit me away to Laos. No Such Luck.


The marshals then handed me over to the Thai screws taking me on the 45 minute drive to the IDC located on Sathorn Road, There was very little evidence of the much broadcast Bangkok flooding that all the recent brouhaha was all about. Maybe Michael (who had gone back the previous week) saw more.


Other though then keeping a 'weather eye' open for evidence of the flooding, my main efforts were being put to having the screws stop briefly so that I could buy us all a beer or two. It was just my luck though that these 3 screws were the only ones in all of Thailand who didn’t like a drink. To add insult to my injury, none of them would accept a reasonable drink (Bung) to quench my thirst with a medicinal Beer!

We finally made it to IDC, sadly none the worse for wear, more's the pity.


More soon.

Gary

“Caecorum in Patria Luscus Rex Imperat Omnis”

Through a Glass Darkly

Since Nov. 2010 I think I have detected the merest zephyr of change that has wafted across the Thai desk at the London Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Certainly not enough of a breeze to ruffle the feathers of a certain 'Shelia' in the British Embassy in Bangkok. Nevertheless, when she visited me yesterday (Feb 3^rd 2011) to; amongst others, deliver a bollocking for continuing to exercise my right to blog; a new word has entered her lexicon: Transparency. Seemingly there's a plan afoot that embassy staff have to be a shade clearer in their attempts at cover ups.

As laudable as the Foreign Secretary's directive is, by the time it has been “filtered” past the Mandarins such as Haigh – the head of the Thai Desk it has been watered down.

Onto Dufall. The distortion has resumed its usual opaqueness in order to protect the guilty. Transparency has arse. How about a little more on the whys and wherefores of Quinten Quayle deserting the stinking shit, oops the sinking ship of Wireless Road? Nothing to do with Dufall's collusion with the Thai filth on extracting wodges of dosh from Stephen Ingram and Xi Lin in 2009 perchance?

Or maybe it was Dufall's refusal to notify the families Adam Lloyd and Vanessa Arscot of Police Sergeant Somchai Wisetsingh's application for Parole. Under Thai law the families of the victims can object to parole being granted.

Some of the blog readers will wonder whether this new era of transparency extends to Dufall's penchant for refusing to commit herself to the written statement. She is very quick to make a verbal statement, but will never confirm it on a signed document – including e-mail. Should Dufall be later taken to task over a glib assurance, she'll swear like a swagman that she never made the statement and without any paperwork we cant prove any of it.

I've many instances of this from personal experience, but I will cite an example of this from my legal advisor, Jake. Jake had sent me 2 mechanical torches a couple of years back. The parcels screw seized them. Jake was concerned as they had sentimental value. He phoned Dufall (an international call) to recover them. She assured him that they were perfectly safe and that all Farang property seized by the priosn was recoverable by the Embassy. As this was a verbal statement Jake, being a legal man, wanted something more concrete. He emailed her for a written statement. To this day a response is outstanding!!

Perhaps somone could email a copy of this blog to Haigh of the FCO? Ask him if this wind of change heralding FCO/Embassy transparency includes Dufall also? Don’t hold your breath waiting for a reply though.

Dirty deeds done cheap

One has to hand it to the British Embassy’s leading misanthrope Kate “Kuntz” Dufall. She never misses a chance to ream us poor inmates in her charge a new 'Ronson' (rectum).

A recent victim of Kuntz is my countryman Neil “Joey” Clayton. Soon after our arrests the Royal (that’s fratricide to us commoners) Thai filth handed over our passports to the Embassy in Bangkok. Currently, by her own admission, Kuntz is holding over 70 passports, each one worth a good $US500 on the illegal passport market. A nice little earner for someone who can trace her Aussie roots back to the Botany Bay; 70 x 500=$35,000.

There’s a problem though for her to realise this windfall. Those passports are needed for when we finally repatriate, that is unless she can get us to apply for new ones. Enter Joey. Kuntz has hit upon the scam of telling us, individually that our passports have been mislaid – not lost, mislaid. As if there’s a difference! – consequently we must apply for replacement travel warrants if we want to get home, her most recent victim being Joey.

One would think that it would be the person or organisation that lost the passport that would have to bear the cost of the replacement. Not so according to Kuntz, and this is what hurts her hapless victims, it’s us victims of her scam whose pockets are robbed. To get back to Blighty Joey had to bend over, touch his toes whilst Kuntz extracted GBP 42 from his anal orifice.

How many others have been caught by Kuntz? More to the point, how many of our 70 odd passports has she managed to mislay in Bangkok’s noted dodgy passport location, the Nana hotel (otherwise known as the British Embassy), just off Sukhumvit?

Those doubting the veracity of this blog are advised to contact Joey in HMP Wandsworth, UK or any of the other recent repatriates. While you’re at it, check out Kuntz's performance with Stephen Ingram and Xi Lin circa April 2009

Be Well

Bridget

Cynical? Moi! Surely not.

Call me a cynic if you will. At least it is better than the appellation of Dr. Hannibal (as in Lecter) that Dufall of British Embassy infamy insists on using to discourage potential correspondents and visitors. Furthermore , a cognomen of cynic is accurate whereas Hannibal.....

This month’s Citylife (Jan2011) community service section – check it out on the Web – resulted in howls of derisive laughter to emanate from D3 in the Hilton. No fault of editor Pim’s but the entry was deliberately sparse on necessary detail thereby permitting certain – no names, no pack drill – British Embassy employers to instigate yet another dirty deed done dirt cheap and bolster her pension funds at the expense of the pockets of both British ex pats and us residents in Bang Kwang. As of (presumably)1/1/11 all non- Europeans requiring a visa to travel to the UK must pass an exam that tests their fluency with the English language.

A favoured phrase of both my prep. School Latin master and my mother comes readily to mind:”Sed qui custodiet ipsos custodies?” I also stress how the Embassy have again shot themselves in the foot by using the proper noun, European.

Long-standing ‘Old Thai Hands’ amongst the British ex-pats/inmate community will recall a previous ‘nice little earner’ of the Embassy’s, TB testing. Given that Amazing Dieland is rife with TB, itself only 2nd to the incidence of Aids, this scam netted consular staff hundreds of thousands in GBP paid as a back-hander by the sole clinic authorised to carry out the test! Unlikely that the cognoscenti will anticipate a lesser windfall with this latest swindle.

Not that blog readers aren’t aware of many or all, of the caveats raised by this shameful subterfuge of what is more accurately described, extortion, but I would be remiss if I failed to give, at least serious exceptions to exhibiting a competency in ‘Home Counties’ English.

• A visitor intends to journey to the UK to experience one or more regional festivals, viz; Edinburgh, Eisteddfod, Hop picking in Kent, Morris dancing in Devon and Cornwall, Naval reviews in Portsmouth and or Plymouth, sites of Roman occupation, walking tours of Yorkshire Moors, etc., etc., etc., I argue that being conversant in a British style Eton college English is downright life-threatening in many parts of the UK.

• The Visa applicant intends to stay in the UK for socio-economic reasons during an extended period. Linguistically the United Kingdom is one of the most diverse regions on the planet. Five separate languages, not counting hundreds of local dialects, - many of which become incomprehensible to other Britons living outside of the 5 mile radius of the locality – are routinely spoken in the British Isles; 3 Goidelic (variants) of Gaelic, i,e, Scottish, Irish and Cornish, Welsh and English. Personally I am grievously insulted by Ambassador Quayles egocentric demand that my wife and children would be forced to learn a language that they have no need of in Cymru.

Quayle needs to be asked some questions about this racist and very challengable dictum, again blog readers will need little prompting as to which ones reveal the Embassy’s true intent. For those new to this blog I’ll give a sample or two of jeopardy type answers:

• This new policy only applies to Thailand
• It will cost ‘big bucks’ to sit the exam.
• The setter will be a locally employed Thai with a Khao San road T.O.F.L certification, or an Aussie woman whose name momentarily escapes me (Clue –ROFL)

As a further aid for English exam entrants should you see the Sheila whose name I can not recollect in the examination hall then the following question, posed in Australian, will ensure a 100% pass mark;

EMMA CHISIT??

(to be spoken out loud for the best effect)

Have Fun

BangKwang Bridget

More about Prisoners Abroad

If there's anything that scares the excreta - that's shit to you and me – out of the Prisoners Abroad (PA) and their boss here at the British Embassy in Bangkok, Kate Duffall (kate.dufall@fco.gov.uk should you wish to forward this entry on to her) is that we Britons have unimpeded access to the outside world Both PA and the the Embassy go to inordinate lengths to ensure we remain muzzled. Perhaps blog followers maybe interested in the modus operandi (MO) of PA. This will be much expanded on in the PA chapter of my book.

Credit though, where credit is due. As with many scams perpetrated on us Brits in Thai Gaols by those allegedly helping us, I first heard of this possibility from a Lat Yao resident, (Alan) John Davies, better known to me as Deep Throat or DT.

As soon as I started receiving Nexus, a bi-monthly magazine for the active ex-pat community edited by Sheila Hare in the UK, I realised that this was a terrific source of potential visitors and supporters. I resolved to open up a line of communication with Sheila and Nexus post haste. I sent in a number of articles on Thai prison life and after persevering for 2 years made the breakthrough, or so I thought.

Either my timing was abysmally bad or I was curse by god-awful luck. Running parallel with my low-key requests that those Nexus readers living/working in Thailand may want to write to me here in the Hilton, Sheila also fielded a full on obtrusive demand from PA.

Now PA proclaim that it doesn't have any position whatsoever on the merits of whether its clients (that's us inmates) are guilty or innocent. Yet PA's Nexus submission was emphasising the inadvisability of anyone having direct contact with inmates as they were effectively letting total strangers into their homes. Instead, as PA recommended, better to write to British Prisoners via PA itself and let them forward the letters and replies accordingly. That way the convict need never know the “Pen Pals” home address.

Ostensibly a reasonable caveat. Indeed Sheila herself proposed a similar approach in that Nexus members – one has to be a member to receive the magazine or access the website – wrote to me via the Nexus home offices in the UK until the correspondent became comfortable to do otherwise. I had no problem with that, at least it would remove the unnecessary touting for handouts that DT had warned me about and PA were notorious for. Remind me one day to tell you of how PA hounded my mother, when she was dying of cancer, for a legacy.

PA, by intimation and Kate Duffall directly, have both readily voiced to all and sundry that we are drug barons, murderers, paedophiles, rapists and sex tourists even. The sole moral dereliction we have thus far escaped being accused of ghoulishness, which is PA's and the Embassy preserve.

After my request in Nexus was published Sheila wrote to me saying she had received a number of letters from members – about 50% favourable and 50% strongly censorious – and she had packaged them up and as per PA's kind offer to send them on to me, had posted them c/o The PA London address.

Needless to say I didn't see a single one. I wrote to PA about 2 months later asking what had happened to my mail. I received a supercilious response deliberately misinterpreting my question, stating that they were not responsible if no one wanted to write to me! Bollox

Hugs

Bridget

The FCO and Prisoners Abroad

Those who know me well understand my belief that since 2003 and the stewardship of Pauline Crowe, the Charity Prisoners Abroad (motto – Caring for Britons in overseas jails) is nothing more these days than a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Kingdoms Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

Funds are donated for Brits such as Joey, Scotty and I by socially concerned citizens such as Richard Branson and others for the purpose (amongst other things) of motivating Her Majesty's Government (HMG) to protest the appalling and inhumane conditions that its passport holders are incarcerated in.

Instead Sir Richard and the others largesse goes towards Prisoners Abroad's (PA) agenda of suppressing the life threatening risk we take in getting the picture of Thai prison life to you.

A challenge to Ms. Crowe. Name just one campaign that PA has led to improve our conditions!

No surprise then that when my mate (no names, no pack drill) connected me to Joey's Facebook entry I became Pig Biting Mad!! What do we find here but nothing short of a blatant poaching on a website intended for Joey to promote himself in a social setting. We find Joey's mates and supporters were ignominiously trampled on by PA perverting his “site” in a vociferous appeal to extort funds from his supporters – 06/08/2010 at 13:49

Embedded in PA's seizure of the site was news that a “fact-finding” HMG sponsored team was en-route to Bangkok prisons on a mission to encourage to “to tell it like it is” about life in a Thai Death Camp. Also no surprise to me that the PA team lacked the Testicular Fortitude to invite me to participate. Historians will recall a sound bite supposedly from Henry Ford “You can have your Model T any colour you like provided its black”. Ditto then Pauline Crowe and the PA “You can say what you like about Thai prisons provided it doesn't offend either our bosses at the FCO or The Thai Department of Corrections (or Corruptions depending on your point of view).

Out of the purest interest, what other prisoners have had their Facebook entries shanghaied by the PA poachers?

Be Well

Bridget