Many regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the story of Mr Tim Burton, formerly the Radio Officer of the now defunct Liberty GB political party and his fight against Fiyaz Mughal the founder of the group of mendacious grievance mongering taqiyya artists, Tell Mama. Regular readers will also be aware that Mr Burton was gaoled for twelve weeks for ‘insulting’ Mr Mughal by calling him a ‘mendacious grievance mongering taqiyya artist’ and for putting in a joke job application for a post at the Tell Mama organisation.

If you are unfamiliar with the story then you can find a report on the trial published by this blog via the links below:

Man told leader of Islamic group that he would ‘clean out his Augean stables’

https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2017/03/28/man-told-islamic-group-he-would-clean-out-their-augean-stables/

Fiyaz Mughal then of Tell Mama denies to the court that he was ‘exaggerating’ the degree to which he was ‘offended’ by Mr Burton’s words.

https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2017/03/29/fiyaz-mughal-of-tell-mama-denies-exaggerating-to-a-court/

Tim Burton found guilty by a jury of ‘offending’ Fiyaz Mughal by calling him a grievance monger

https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2017/03/31/man-convicted-of-abusing-alleged-islamic-grievance-monger/

Tim Burton sentenced to twelve weeks for ‘offending’ Muslim bigwig

https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2017/04/28/twelve-weeks-imprisonment-for-cracking-a-joke/

When Mr Burton was, in my view, unjustly gaoled, he showed impressive stoicism and confidence in the way that he managed his incarceration. Mr Burton did not waste his time whilst he was imprisoned in HMP Thameside in south east London. He wrote what is in my opinion a superb prison diary that covers his sentencing, his transfer to court and his experience of the prison system.

The title ‘Pigeon on the Wing’ comes from Mr Burton’s probably correct decision to not let other prisoners know that he was incarcerated for insulting a high profile Muslim on the grounds that there are a lot of lunatic and violent Mohammedans resident in Britain’s prisons. These violent Mohammedans presented a clear and present danger to the safety of Mr Burton. Instead of telling other inmates that he was inside for insulting Fiyaz Mughal, something that would have enraged the violent Mohammedans, he said that he was incarcerated for shooting pigeons with an air rifle. This earned Mr Burton the nickname of ‘Pigeon’.

This prison diary is brilliantly and entertainingly written and is something that I would highly recommend that people read. It contains not only Mr Burton’s personal impressions of being imprisoned along with his relationships with guards, other prisoners and the prison bureaucracy but also documents the minutiae of prison life in a manner that reminded me somewhat of Jimmy Boyle’s ‘The Pain of Confinement’.

Despite Mr Burton’s book (which is currently being published in draft episode form on the counterjihadwarrior.com site) being about prison, which is let’s be honest a deeply unpleasant place, is not without humour. Mr Burton’s observations also contain elements of the more bizarre and funny side of prison life. This is especially prominent in the episode detailing how he was visited by counter terror officers who went away empty handed and somewhat confused when Mr Burton told them that despite his imprisonment, he still disliked Islam.

Here’s a short extract from Chapter Three of Pigeon on the Wing. You can find the whole story over at counterjihadwarrior.com

Here Mr Burton describes his arrival at HMP Thameside.

“HMP Thameside is (according to its website) a Category B private prison for adult males in the West Thamesmead area of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, South-East London. It currently has the capacity to hold 1232 convicted and remand prisoners. So far so good, you might think. You can almost sense the unspoken presence of the five-star Trip Advisor rating as you peruse the glossy holiday-brochure-style website.

(Category B is one step down from Category A, which is reserved for terrorists, murderers and serial rapists. Just the place for a decrepit old geezer like me with a dodgy ticker convicted of sending half a dozen jocular and non-threatening emails to a mendacious grievance-mongering taqiyya artist, you might say.)

The website goes on to say – The regime at Thameside Prison combines work, education, vocational training, accredited offending behaviour programmes, and prisoner health and other appropriate interventions. It doesn’t have any reference in its website to hard labour or even to sewing mailbags, which I was to later discover is nowadays generally frowned upon by most of the  more enlightened prison directors and senior prison staff (although I’m sure there are a few unreconstructed dinosaurs who hanker after the good old days.)

What it also doesn’t say on its website is that it also has, or at least had, a very bad reputation for prison violence, according to a BBC report from 2013. As you can imagine, this is not what you want to hear as you pass through the gates with the anticipation of an extended stay.

On the plus side, I was to later find out; HMP Thameside is literally within a stone’s throw of Belmarsh prison. I surmised that on a good day, one might be able to throw a stone right into Andy Choudary’s Chicken Tikka Masala if only our al-fresco lunch breaks could be synchronised. (Andy Choudary, the so-called firebrand preacher of Brick Lane, had been convicted some time previously for supporting and glorifying terrorism, and was currently residing in Belmarsh prison, surrounded and presumably lionised by similarly-minded jihadis intent on spreading the good news about Islam.) A stone landing slap-bang into the middle of his Chicken Tikka Masala would probably ruin his day.

Although the logistical and trigonometrical problems associated with calculating the trajectory required for successful stone-throwing in the general direction of Belmarsh were to be among a number of idle thoughts occupying my mind over the next few weeks, for now I was intent on absorbing as much as possible about this new environment, the better to be able to deal with situations as they arose, as I had no doubt they would.

A large solid gate set into the wall of this imposing structure slid open with a low rumbling sound to allow the prison van to drive into a “quarantine” area. The gate slid shut again behind us, once the van was within the quarantine area and had come to a halt. Once all the paperwork had been checked out between the driver and a uniformed prison guard on the entry gate, at least as far as I could see from my vantage point inside the van, a second gate in front of the van opened and the van passed through into the main reception area from which we were required to disembark. The van stopped in front of a set of double doors and we were led out, one by one, to be processed by what appeared to be the “welcoming committee” of HMP Thameside.”