​Four of us from the local WI attended the Thinking Lunch at Cheddington today. This was a follow-up meeting arranged by the BFWI sub-committee for Science and Society so that members could be aware of developments in the Care not Custody campaign and plan future activities to support it. The meeting was well attended and the hall was beautifully set out for lunch: the food was excellent too courtesy of Cheddington WI.
Each table displayed postcards of information to encourage discussion and information on the Prison Reform Trust and the Corston Report and some quotes from Lord Bradley’s address at the Annual NFWI Meeting in Bournemouth.
After lunch Sue Smith, an ordained prison chaplain talked about her work in Grendon and Springhill prisons. She had previously been on the staff at the Young Offenders Centre in Aylesbury. The general public doesn’t know of the therapeutic work undertaken in these two local establishments where most of the prisoners are completing the final years of their sentences. We were shocked to be told that there are 82,676 men and over 30,000 women in prison at present and there are 200,000 children who have both parents behind bars. The aim of the prison staff is to prepare people for rehabilitation into society and hopefully get them back into work. Compared with other retention centres Grendon and Springhill’s figure of just 39% reconviction after the inmate has completed the scheme is well below the national average of 69%. Perhaps the community set-up  where the inmates are grouped in wings of 40 is more successful. Pastoral care is good and there is access to medical and psychological help on the premises. However, the prison service is grossly understaffed. WI members were encouraged to volunteer their skills in the educational work taking place in the prisons. Some of the men cannot read or write so will find it difficult to find work when released; others are studying for further qualifications. Perhaps helping with literacy, gardening or crafts provides opportunities for talk and normality or joining the Prison Visitors Scheme to see what that entails. We just need to approach the relevant prison governor---every little helps both the staff who are short of time and the prisoner who needs to build his self-respect to withstand the temptation to return to crime.
At our WI monthly meeting the same evening, we enjoyed an entertaining talk by Isabelle Foley about her “Ten years at the BBC” mostly in the Costume Department. It was fascinating to see her memorabilia of nearly all the historical drama series since 1977 including the complete set of Shakespeare’s plays. We learned about the problems of continuity when concurrent scenes are shot not only months apart but also continents. As a finale Isabelle dressed a tailor’s dummy as Scarlet O’Hara from Gone with the Wind. Ruth Wilkinson gave an excellent report on the National WI meeting in Bournemouth which six of our members had attended. Plans were made for the August garden party and ideas aired for our stall at the Farmers’ market in November. We have received a rather unsatisfactory answer from the Blood Donors to which we are considering our response.

​It is not often that I seek refuge indoors away from the temperature outside and am glad to sit down to write the blog. Now that I do, I find that it is over a fortnight since I wrote anything about what is happening in the WI in Bucks which is not, I am sure a true picture. Locally, our WI discussion group set the members a topic about which few of them knew anything at all so they were forced to do quite a lot of homework in advance. We talked about the Chinese social credit system. OK! So you all knew about that: well, we didn’t but we do now and this is why our meetings are so worthwhile and enjoyable. It is a national scheme where every citizen will have a credit rating assessed on his/her reputation in the community to include aspects of private and business life. In some pilot towns and cities the ratings are pinned up in public places for all to see and anyone can add or subtract points to the scores of others. If one plays the radio or TV too loud, if one is seen to jay-walk or jump a red light, or thought to be a bad parent or fail to pay a fine etc. one’s rating will suffer. This has the potential to have a mortgage refused or put an end to a job application. Couple this system with a register built on facial recognition and one’s life is no longer one’s own. Could this happen in the UK? We can check our credit ratings and sometimes these have been proved wrong. Amazon and big shopping stores keep records of what we buy and so do our computers. There are tax records and a national NHS data bank. CCTV and Neighbourhood Watch? Makes you think, doesn’t it? Name and shame---here we come.
The Book Group read “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert this month which is a story of Emma who lives in a self-centred world of her own based on dreams which have been fed by reading  romantic novels similar to modern day Mills &Boon. She wrecks the lives around her, runs into desperate debt and ends up taking the only way out by committing suicide; all in her search for passionate love preferably in some exotic far Middle-Eastern setting. I am glad to say that nearly everyone finished reading the novel in spite of the tragic storyline because there was dark humour at the expense of the heroine and the pomposity of the people living in a small French town in the 1850s and it was beautifully written. Flaubert commented on society in as great detail as any Chinese civil servant assessing his neighbours’ economic and social rating.