Elfin Safety

Jackart really says all that needs to be said about this. Ultimately we have become a society incapable of treating accidents as accidents. If every time a three year old child fell over the adult supervising (teacher, parent or whatever) was prosecuted and jailed then we'd be seeing an over-crowding problem worse than we do now. Sadly, for public hysteria to reign, all anyone has to do is shout 'Won't somebody think of the children!' and any degree of objectivity flies away.

Conrad Black - Guilty?

Verdicts are in, and Conrad Black has been found guilty of three counts of fraud - so the BBC announce. But has he? Sorta kinda. Mark Steyn has been covering the entire trial, and has been pretty unimpressed at the Government's cases - there were thirteen charges including racketeering, the sort of thing Al Capone did. As Steyn says the verdict is that:

Conrad Black was found NOT GUILTY on racketeering, NOT GUILTY on tax fraud, NOT GUILTY on the CanWest scheme, NOT GUILTY on Bora Bora, the Park Avenue apartment and Barbara's birthday party, NOT GUILTY on the individual non-competes on US newspaper sales.He has been found GUILTY in just two narrow areas - "obstruction of justice" re the security camera footage of him removing boxes from 10 Toronto Street, and three "mail fraud" counts relating to the APC non-compete agreement.

The obstruction of justice conviction looks ripe for appeal, and that leaves us with those three counts of fraud. The BBC describe it thus:

Media tycoon Conrad Black has been convicted of three charges of fraud and one of obstructing justice by a jury in Chicago. But Black was found not guilty of separate charges of racketeering, wire fraud and tax evasion.

Which is odd really. Why specify that Black was not guilty on wire fraud if you are going to describe him as guilty of fraud? Because Black was found guilty of mail fraud, a concept alien to English law and really rather odd. Essentially, it means that Black (and associates) used the Federal Mail to further a fraudulent piece of business. Whether that stacks up is another matter: Steyn thinks it the easiest of the charges to stick on Black.

However, given that Black was facing cumultaive jail time of well over 100 years, a five year stretch for abusing the Federal Post Office doesn't seem too bad. If he can't get off the obstruction charge though, Black will still be looking at 35 years behind bars. Given that his crimes amount to taking boxes of pre-disclosed documents out of his office, that seems a trifle excessive. Oh well, at least we'll all sleep safer in our beds eh?

Legal principle #1

Never ever go to court. Melissa Kite seems, however, to be spoiling for a battle of the briefs. The trouble stems from an article in the Sunday Telegraph in which she suggested an imminent Tory reshuffle, dropping Liam Fox, dempting William Hague and promoting David Ruffley. Iain Dale smelled Ruffley's influence on the peice, which he saw as improbable in the extreme. Presumably, also, commenters piled in decrying the status of Ms Kite to write the piece in the first place (I admit though that I tend to follow Oliver Kamm's rule on the bigger blogs and usually don't read the comments).

Melissa, smarting at this rather rough handling, takes a swipe at conservative blogs in general, describing them as being close to death and as being almost exclusively the preserve of right wing men of a certain age - which might surprise such bloggers as Matt Sinclair (and me for that matter - 27 is hardly freewheeling into the tomb) or Caroline Hunt. For evidence she condemns the Cornerstone Group's new blog, which is hardly going to cause much disagreement either here or at Iain's - the target of most of her ire. She goes on to blame the criticism she got for her reshuffle article on misogyny and, for good measure, threatens her critics with a libel suit.

Tory blogging is ripe for a libel challenge. And there will come one. I know these bastions of male political debate love the fact that I'm a woman in their world so let me put it in language they might understand:

The next time you guys go into a tizzy in your little chatrooms you ought to ask yourself one question. Do you feel lucky? Well, do you?

In her case, her question is where else could you call a professional every name under the sun and expect them not to uphold their reputation in court? Unfortunately the answer is pretty much anywhere - calling someone every name under the sun sounds like the definition of vulgar abuse and thus not libellous. Just ask Steven Berkoff.