In which the pond dons a hood rather than a bib for a lunch treat ... thanks to the Bolter ...

Yes the pond held the Bolter back because there's nothing like a serving of hysteria and paranoia as a way of helping to digest a lunch-time snack - let freedom speak, unless it's the Bolter who snatches away the microphone and evicts the speaker from the studio for being rude ...

Truth to tell, the pond is always need of good reptile guidance as to what's right and what's wrong.

It seems that there's not nearly enough free speech and those who yearn for rudeness are everywhere being repressed...

And yet harmless, helpful keepers of gulags are being defamed as they go about their ordinary everyday business of running the gulags and spreading the joys of western civilisation far and wide (and with nice little earners attached too)...

It dawned on the pond that possibly it could all be resolved, by a simple formula. Too much free speech for the ABC, and simply not enough free speech for reptiles wanting to be rude.

But only rude in certain ways mind you. Wouldn't want the wrong sort of rudeness ... and only talk about the things you're told to talk about.! It's the Bolter way ...

Now the guardian, the sure guide to acceptable rudeness, the Bolter himself, got vexed about this yesterday, and once again the pond was forced to ask about the value of the HUN paywall when the Bolter so shamelessly breaches it, all so he can recycle the thoughts of that mouth from the south, that blustering provincial bully Kennett ...

It was a fine dissembling bit of special pleading, passing the buck - it was the previous mob wot did it your honour - and nary a consideration of what might be sensible solutions. It continues to amaze the pond that Kennett keeps expressing an interest in depression and self-harm ...

Now in this the pond is no soft touch.

You won't find the pond going dewy eyed, soft and sentimental Norman Mailer style about the likes of Jack Abbott ... the pond's on the side of the waiter rather than his killer ...

But there's a simple formula involved here, one articulated long ago, which happens when you create a lot of angry people within the prison system. One day a lot of those people are going to get out of there, and that day, the people outside are likely to be made to pay again for what was done to them inside.

It's a simple enough equation, yet it never gets discussed when we come to the usual Laura Norder carry-on.

There are only a few answers offered as to what to do about it - lock them all up and throw away the key, or let them do self-harm until they kill themselves, but there's never much said about how maybe institutions might try to do something about it, so that the rate of recidivism might be reduced ...

See if you can find any suggestions in the Bolter maintaining the rage ...

Nope, nada, zip, zilch. It's all just the highly emotional ABC ... because shackling a young man to a chair and putting a bag over his head isn't a matter of high emotion. It's just procedural business ... you know, like this ...

Good old Abu Ghraib, what a solid, decent model it provided for gulag keepers around the world.

And so back to the indignant Bolter ...

Of course. Because the way to stop somebody wanting to hurt himself is to treat him like an animal, ritually humiliate him  and tie him down.

The Bolter, naturally, fails to mention that other state systems have entirely different methodologies for handling inmates who spit ... possibly no better than the Tamworth teacher who used to haul kids out and say "beware this llama spits" as we're on the subject of ritual humiliation ... but to read about all that, you'd have to read the ABC reporting on the use of spit hoods in various states here ...

But there you go, don't expect anything but rudeness when the Bolter gets to frothing and foaming and spitting chips ... or chunks ... because sure enough, treatment is reduced once again to a political construct, it was them wot did it, rather than a question as to whether both Labor and Liberal might have to answer for their failure to think things through ...

He was tricked - in the Bolter's opinion? Well that's a funny way to bail him out. It means he was a fool coming and then going ...

Now pardon the pond, but the day that a Four Corners person writes to you - be you politician or minder -  with a suggestion that they're going to make a sponsored documentary about how wonderful your prison system is, can the pond give you a tip?

Or perhaps a question: if you don't have a clue as to what's going on, how long has it been since you left Mars to start working on Earth? Have they got any TVs in Darwin?

The Bolter's trying to lecture the ABC about foot in door journalism? Murdoch news is going all cluck cluck and tut-tutt and sensitive?

Spare the pond's days, and please, to spare them further, let this be the last gobbet ... because the Bolter seems intent on continuing the defence that Elferink was an intolerably silly and vain doofus willing to hope on a bike to show off his wondrous prison system for the taxpayer-funded sponsored doc the ABC was sure to turn out ...

Of course in the end, in Bolter style, it's just a howl of pain about an NT government which has proven to be singularly incompetent about many matters, and it's not just this report that has put them, on the nose and likely to be kicked out.

They've been the perfect example of the usual sort of cowboys who flock above the Berrimah line to put their snouts in trough ... and sadly if a change of government is to happen, it's likely all it will mean is that a new lot of cowboys will get to ride into town, and nothing much has changed ...

It's a small place the Territory and much indulged by Canberra, and yet with many strange ideas.

And meanwhile, the real question that should be troubling people and not just in the Territory, and given the many difficulties people face dealing with offenders ...

How did either side think that this was a way to prepare people to return to the real world? A method once considered so shameful it had to be scribbled down and smuggled out?

At Guantánamo it was used for the force feeding of prisoners.

Well pardon the pond for looking nervously over the shoulder like a waiter as another inmate is allowed out on the street.

In his usual riven way, the Bolter thinks it's all about an election, when it should all be about how to run what are loosely dubbed "correctional services" ...

Never mind, let's see how that News Corp campaign for freedom of speech is going, of the Bolter just loves Bill Leak's solutions to indigenous issues kind. This was spotted by the pond on Twitter ...

You might not be able to read that modest little message at the bottom of the cartoon from NiceMilo, who thoughtfully took on that notorious hood for his avatar. 

"Cartoon=truth, Left hate it even they know there's inbreeding in Australian Abo communities."

Welcome to free speech, News Corp style. Have a nice hooded day now, and please remember not to defame gulag keepers ...