Some people on the comeuppance side have been anticipating Conrad Black going to jail, and what life will be like for him there. The only ones I've seen tend to have a moralizing bent, but there are hints of a certain scurrility as based in jail lore. I haven't seen one that's explicit about it, but I have seen hints.
Actually, the odds that Conrad Black will do tough time, even if sentenced to enough years to rate medium security, are low. One reason for this improbability is his lifetime membership in the Privy Council of Canada.
This CanadaInfo article spells out the responsibilities of the Privy Council. These responsibilities have corresponding rights, which us regular folks in Canada don't have. One of them is the right to receive secret - classified - documents.
Try putting yourself in the shoes of the typical con. This old guy with a plump accent and a condescending manner is an immate in the jail you're currently staying in. He drones on about his responsibility to help the government of a country called 'Canada' and you don't know what to make of it. The guy looks, acts and talks rich, but you don't know if he's feeding everyone a story.
Then one day, he receives a visitor in the visiting room - an agent of some sort. The old droner now has in his hands a package from the "Government of Canada" that says it's full of classified documents. He asks for the warden to come down, and asks the warden to be placed in the hole so he can go through them. He also asks for a computer or portable typewriter so as to do his duty to the Queen. Despite the warden's glance that says 'someone's tin-cupping me here', the old droner gets all that he asks for...
Yep, if Conrad is sentenced to jail, he would do easy time. He need hardly drop the name of the CIA either.
[No-one's been fired from the PCO, and I don't even know if it's possible. Even if it was tried, Conrad could invoke his life peerage to get the Queen to block it.]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment