I’m not the type of guy who panics easily in life, I couldn’t tell you the last time I felt slightly claustrophobic, but the idea of being locked away in prison with hundreds of dangerous lowlifes with nowhere to run panics me a lot.
The thought of it makes me want to run.
Why am I telling you this?
Yesterday, I watched the first couple of episodes of the new series of Time, starring Jodie Whittaker, and that really had me feeling panicky and claustrophobic.
Jodie played Orla, a working single-mother of three who was sent to prison for six months for ‘fiddling the leccy’.
She was struggling for money and as a way to keep her children fed and warm, she chose to bypass the electricity metre to save money.
It is theft, and it is a punishable crime, but she believed that she would be let off with a caution as ‘no one gets sent to prison for fiddling the leccy’.
Unfortunately, she was wrong. She was given a six month custodial sentence.
And because she wasn’t expecting to be sent to prison, she sent her children to school as normal on the day of her court appearance and hadn’t arranged for anyone to collect them should the worse happen.
The worse did happen and she was soon stuck in a small box in the back of a prison van heading 60 miles away to prison with no means to contact anyone in the outside world.
Eventually she managed to make a call to her alcoholic mother who was able to collect her children for the night.
Orla wanted to arrange for them to go to someone else, she feared that her mother’s alcoholism would lead to social services taking her children away and putting them into care… a fear that came true.
Orla was eventually released from prison early but because she had no home and no job – due to being sent to prison she lost the job she had, her children were not returned to her.
She had to find a new job and provide a stable home before they would be returned.
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In her desperation to do just that and be reunited with her children, Orla stole £500 from her new employer as a way to find the deposit for a new family home.
Her employer had caught her on camera numerous times ‘pocketing’ money from the till at the bar she was working in.
Because she was let out of prison early on license, she was soon whisked back to prison, this time for a 12 month period.
While watching the drama, I could feel myself feeling trapped and claustrophobic.
I just hate the idea of being locked up 24/7 for long periods of time with the lowest dregs of society.
What was worse is that Orla was sent to prison for doing nothing more than trying to provide for her children.
She wasn’t your normal kind of criminal; she was just a mother trying to survive.
Yes, she stole electricity, but it was so that she could feed her children warm food, keep them warm, and not have them sitting in the dark staring at walls.
Off all the crimes committed by people, this wasn’t one that was particularly born from selfish greed.
She didn’t steal a television or a laptop from a store during looting just so that she could have it.
She didn’t shoplift items to sell to feed a drug addiction…she just wanted to provide for her family.
I need to watch the rest of the series to see what happens, but I can tell you this, being sent to prison and separated from her children has sent her spiralling downwards.
I can’t see it being a particularly happy ending.
It’s safe to say that this storyline had me thinking.
How many good people are risking a spell in prison just so that they can provide and protect their families?
With the current cost-of-living crises squeezing people to the max, how many people are stealing products and services just to survive?
It is frightening that this could be happening today.
I remember watching another drama a couple years back where another single-mother who was struggling ended up entertaining gentlemen clients as a way to make ends meet.
It wasn’t a lifestyle she chose by choice; circumstances forced her into it… that and a dodgy bloke who ‘kindly’ lent her money when she really needed it, but then insisted he wanted it back knowing that she couldn’t afford it and so suggested an ‘alternative’ way to pay it back!
This is why people need to look for ways to generate a passive or semi-passive income.
In the case of Orla, her three children were young and so they would be in bed before nine or ten at night and so she would have a couple of hours each evening to look online for ways to make money.
Being broke, she didn’t need to spend a lot to get started with several methods. There are many ways to make money online that you can start for free.
Had she started when she began to ‘fiddle the leccy’, she could have been earning enough to pay her electricity bill a few months later.
I appreciate that time is in short supply for most people… but when needs must, working a few extra hours on a project is the better option than being locked away 24/7 for six to twelve months.
Don’t you agree?
There are many different ways to make money online, and far too many people to count who are making hundreds of thousands of pounds each year working online from home.
If you click the link below, you will discover a way to make six figures a year starting today without spending a penny of your own money.
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I’m sure that you are not in Orla’s position, and I hope you and your family never find yourself in a similar position, but know this… there are far better and less riskier ways to provide for your family than ‘fiddling the leccy’.
Kind regards.
John Harrison
PS… Once you have this up and running correctly, it can reward you with an automated (semi) passive income for many years.
Here’s that link again: