I always wondered if Bar-L (the moniker given to HMP Barlinnie by its inhabitants) was related to Superman's dad, Jor-El, and if so, why Superman had not been to visit all these poor young men.... if not blast the walls with his laser eyes and liberate them.
It is a sad day to be sure. My younger brother has been remanded in custody for being found by police in a flat with marijuana plants with three other guys. Since he had 'previous' (green fingers) they decided not to give him bail (nice of them) according to their latest round of 'changing the goalposts' [Section 23D of the Criminal Procedure Act] which more or less states (if you read between the lines) that these lawmakers and law-instituters can more or less do what they like with absolute impunity.
Having worked in countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kazakhstan and others (as an EFL teacher) I am aware of such 'summary justice', wheeching people straight off their feet into prison with no recourse to family or friends or work colleagues, or due process. To be sure, my eyes have been opened to the nonsense that 'remand' is. And it's not just my brother. In the three times I've been up so far to visit and drop clothes off I have almost wept at the injustice of keeping all these young men behind bars (before they are even tried). 'It's easy to condemn the evildoer' Dostoevsky wrote, 'much more difficult to try to understand them.' In these cases it's not so much as 'evildoing' on behalf of the incarcerated as assuming they are guilty before they are even tried. This is what 'remand' is: a complete turnaround from the legal premise that you are innocent until found guilty. I mean, what gives?
At any rate, the cycle from my gaff in Cessnock by the river, through Glasgow Green and Alexandra Park, is not half bad. I even got to talk to the crows on the way back in the wonderful Alexandra Park. I asked them what they thought about 'prisons'. But they didn't know what I was talking about...
The terracotta fountain with a touch of Venice in the background.
The People's Palace
The desolate grounds of Bellgrove abbatoir... no longer a belle grove at all but something to remind us that maybe we've got it all wrong.
The Vogue Bingo Hall on Cumbernauld Road
The Bank of Bar-L with its Victorian chimneystacks and cells.
The crows et al. of Alexandra Park
The deadly quiet Barrowlands on a Friday afternoon.
It seemed ironic that when I got back into the city I saw this: the demolition of a building in front of Queen's Street Station, thus liberating the beautiful hemisphere of its canopy. I imagined Jor-L doing something similar to Bar-L.
