Oh my goodness! That opening ceremony! If you didn’t watch the beginning of the Olympics last night, I encourage you to go on to the iPlayer and watch it all. Even if some of the artistry wasn’t to your taste, as a feat of technical achievement, it was outstanding.

There was, apparently, no full rehearsal because of the sheer size of the production which makes it even more of a success yet, despite how much of a technical triumph it was, I think that the true accomplishment was that of team work. It would not have been possible for them to have done that were it not for the efforts of what must have been a huge team.

All of this brings me on to what I’d like to write about this morning – just how outrageously selfish many of the prisoners are in here.

I have seen so many examples of total and utter disregard for others to the point where I’m wondering if there is a genetic deficiency that could be identified as a pre-indicator of criminality. I’m not suggesting that people who take the last sausage roll are all criminals but it does feel that man of the guys in here have spent their whole lives in a self-obsessed quest to benefit their own cravings with a total disregard to the impact on others.

There will, of course, be a psychological term for this but it is horrible to be living with: from guys taking so long in the shower so the guards get grumpy and kick everyone out meaning some don’t have a shower that day to guys passing drugs in their association time so the whole activity gets cancelled.

They have absolutely no care for the impact on the whole group yoga sessions being scrapped or the visits being restricted or privileges being removed from everyone. I isn’t that they can falsely justify it or even that they just ignore it, it’s that from a psychological point of view, it does not exist.

I confronted someone about this a few days ago and he was utterly bemused with what I was saying. He didn’t argue or try to defend himself, he just had no tools to process what I was saying. Call me naive but I was amazed and shocked.

I wonder what the opening ceremony of the Olympics would have been like if prisoners had tried to organise it. I suspect it wouldn’t have got beyond the initial planning stage. There would be so many arguments and the screws would find a reason to send everyone back to their cells. Then the Daily Mail would run a headline so our politicians would declare something reactive and someone would be forced to resign because of it.

It would be pretty straightforward to address the issue of selfishness – rather than locking us up for 23 hours a day with only our cellmate to talk to, how about you allow us to develop teamwork by letting us play team sports or other group artistic activities? How about, rather than warehousing us, you actually have an intelligent response?

NaN.