The Opposition Leader has been in overdrive during the last week. There is no end to the things he’s going to do “under my Government”. We will ban it, we will abolish it, we will save it, we will double it, we will stop it.

So far, I’ve yet to see a single worked-out process (financial or legal) for any of it. As for Ed Balls, over the weekend he gave us the heads-up on the Eurovision Song Contest (he’s definitely not a sceptic) and Norwich City – they didn’t play well, but this kind of Twitter crap plays well with the target audience.

What we haven’t heard at all from the Shadow Chancellor as yet is a single word about Osborne’s econo-fiscal con-trick (he doesn’t want to rock the boat, see, mustn’t talk Britain down) or the biggest financial and austerity fuelled slump in world history heading our way.

No Opposition MP in recent times – not since Churchill from 1935-38, in fact – has had such an open goal as Balls has before him now. But as in reality Edward knows as much about fiscal economics in practice as he does about football – and his other Ed is playing Lady Bountiful with the promises – he is reduced to mindless soundbites about out of touch Budgets from out of touch Chancellors.This is the equivalent of Winston saying in 1939, “Herr Hitler is a man without a policy who doesn’t get it”.

Across the Channel on the other side of the House, if you follow, we have Daniel Hannan, leading Tory Eurosceptic Euro MP….a circle that to my mind remains unsquared but then what else is new among chancers. Dan’s logic on regulation in the UK (which he represents in the EU not in the UK, but still feels obliged to pontificate about it here) is that, as all regulators are crooked wankers, we should abandon all regulation.

He offers this as a solution in the light of the 2008 banking frauds, the Libor manipulation, the QE manipulation, the gold market fixes, and the increasingly obvious near-universal criminality of everyone from Bob Diamond to Jamie Dimon – see yesterday’s Independent for further damnation re that one.

Apologies for employing yet another parallel to Hannan’s view, but as he and his neoliberal ilk seem to inhabit a parallel universe, it’s probably quite apt. His strategic suggestion is akin to saying that, as the police are utterly crap at catching internet financial blaggers, we should disband the police, and close the Serious Fraud Office. (As it happens, his mate Giddy-up-a-ding-dong Osborne has the latter sorted already).

And finally, over at Lady with Blindfold & Scales Towers, the trial of two Newscorp executives lumbers on. Type ‘Coulson Brooks trial at Old Bailey’ into Google and then select ‘News’, and you will find that the last entry was April 14th….almost exactly a month ago. The trial was scheduled to bring in a verdict at the end of March “latest”.

Perhaps it is due to suffer the same fate as the longest-running West End play of all time, Elm House IV. Perhaps the well-connected London Mayor Juries Bungedone’s contacts are as myriad in the judiciary as they are in the Metropolitan Police and Newscorp. We simply cannot tell.

The best we can do for now is latch onto an article in Huffington Post from 5 days ago, which noted that the Prosecution had begun its summing up, and ‘The jury is expected to produce its verdict sometime in June’.

Just so we’re clear on the timescale here, that gives the Prosecution and Defence counsels 12 days each to sum up, and the Jury anything from 2-29 days to consider what they make of it all. The use of phone-hacking was first suspected in 2007, but then covered up illegally by Newscorp. It has taken seven years so far to get to a verdict.

Compare and contrast this with a total of 3,051 Croydon rioters who appeared before the courts in 2012. Of those, 1,968 were found guilty and sentenced in short order – 65% of the total. Another 15% were dismissed or acquitted. Of the those sentenced, over 37% immediate went to prison….compared to a previous national average of 12%. Two of the ringleaders were jailed for 11.5 and 8 years respectively.

So the wheels of justice can be slow or fast, crushing or light, depending on who you are, what you did, and who you know.

It will be interesting to place the Old Bailey denouement on that spectrum, will it not?