Prison by the motorway

Okay, so the new national juvenile detention centre is to be located at Lusk (subscription required), a small North Dublin village near the coast and the M1.

It will cost 145 million euro.

Fair enough, if that's what it costs, though one wonders why not build it OUTSIDE of Dublin and away from picturesque coastal villages, where land is surely cheaper.

One also wonders why this centre, like Thornton Hall before it, are being built in greater Dublin at all. We've already seen the obscene cost of Thornton Hall spiralling out of control like so many infrastructural projects before it.

But surely one way to keep the price down would be to locate these facilities outside of where property and development land cost one of the highest prices per square foot in Europe?

Locating prisons in remoter areas would have the added benefit of not assisting escaping prisoners. If anyone does get over the fence from either of these facilities, they're mere miles from the main train line and motorway to the North. Within an hour of breaking out, they could be out of the state, or indeed anywhere within it.

This is further squandering of tax payers' money, and indicative of a lack of joined-up thinking by the authorities and their 'advisory committees.'

When is torture not torture?

When it's conducted by the American government, of course!

If I kidnapped you and held you against your will, slapped you repeatedly about the head, held you in freezing conditions and plunged your head regularly under water threatening drowning, you wouldn't be best pleased.

In fact, you might well describe such behaviour as torture.

And it would be, as long as I'm not a member of American security forces. If I was, then I could slap you around the head all I want, deprive you of sleep, humiliate you, keep you in freezing cold conditions, and simulate drowning by holding you underwater as much as I liked.

And it would only be 'taking action to protect the American people from further attack.' And I would be a 'highly trained professional interrogator', not the medieval torturer you thought I was.

Glad to have cleared that up for you all.