PEOPLE on low incomes will be pleased to learn that prisoners in very jail are to get their own TV in their cells.

Over the next three months, £1.5 million of tax payers' money will be spent on 20,000 sets to put in cells of 80 prisons, more than half of the 138 total in England and Wales.

The ultimate aim is that every prisoner will have a telly. The prisoners will be charged £1 per week from their £7.50 wages.

The £65 14-inch sets will be given to even the most high risk prisoners in the hope that it will make them behave.

This appears to be part of the "get tough" policy promised by Jack Straw.

What next, I wonder -- free cannabis, room service? We can't have the lads missing their favourite programmes.

What a farce! No wonder the National Pensioners' Association describes this as a disgrace -- retired people still have to pay £95 just for a licence.

ALAN PEARSON, Park Lee Road, Blackburn.

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