"There has been with each passing day an ever-swelling cast of BBC Television staff, and BBC Radio staff, and BBC World Service staff and BBC News 24 staff and no doubt BBC Papua New Guinea Service staff, none of whom attended a moment of the trial but turned out en masse to capture live the march to the scaffold. The trial wasn’t worth sending a solitary Beeb reporter to, but the hoist to the gallows merited dozens of ’em."

Steyn on the circus which assembled at the Conrad Black trial, which ended negatively for Black and his colleagues today.

Of course I am disappointed, and the BBC are trying hard to restrain themselves now that there is a guilty verdict to clap along to. Their summary has already calculated Black's possible jail-time. But not so fast, Beeboids. I realise that winning on a majority of points doesn't help Black directly, though that's what he did. He won nine of thirteen counts in a trial of great ladle-fuls of detail- most of it obfuscatory, it has seemed to me. If one believed in the US justice system at all, one would be inclined to say, as the jury seem to have, that's there's no smoke without fire.

So in a way, given the appeal which has been announced, it's really nine down, four to go for Lord Black. Maybe a narrower range of charges will make the air clearer for his continued defence.

Tandem thoughts

In the battle against Islamofascism, we don't appear to have had a lot of success. Most people would say it's got worse rather than better. Such is the nature of the rising tide.

If we were though to follow the central understandings offered by our more responsible commentators, we'd be getting things more or less right from here on.

Hassan Butt may be a former Jihadi, but he provides one fundamental when he identifies "the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.". The question is, do we know what that really means? (by the way, I don't mean to say that I actually trust this guy Butt- but the point is a sensible one).

Mark Steyn, meanwhile, identifies another core point: "Liberty is a 24/7 condition, not merely a trip to the voting booth every few years."

So, do we understand the attraction of the theo-Islamic-ideology, and do we know what it means to be at liberty?