AND FINALLY

The Ministry of Justice, naturally unconcerned about pursuing MP expense fiddling crooks, is more worried about slang in prisons. It seems that those doing bird are refusing to conveniently refer to drugs openly using such words as ‘heroin’ and ‘crack’ and apparently have taken to using code words. Fancy that! But this is not exactly a new idea of course – in fact the lingo worrying the rozzers so much is apparently similar to Elizabethan thieves’ cant, believed to have been developed from Romani roots by medieval gypsies.

Rochdale prison officers say that after exhaustive code breaking they have determined the cantish terms ‘chat’ and ‘onick’ mean heroin, ‘cawbe’ is crack and ‘inick’ is code for a cell phone or a SIM card. 

They don’t explain what 16th century blaggers were doing with words for mobile phones – let alone heroin or crack - but the MoJ is taking no chances and has put all chokeys around the country on alert to look out for coney-catchers.