© Heathcliff O'Malley
Labour Lord Greville Janner
As Oskar Groening,
the so-called Accountant of Auschwitz, goes on trial at the age of 93 for his complicity in war crimes, the 86-year-old
Labour peer Greville Janner is excused prosecution for 22 alleged sexual offences against nine boys in his Leicestershire constituency, from the 1960s to the 1980s, because he is suffering from "severe dementia".
How terribly convenient. Powerful elderly men have form when it comes to losing their memory when there are things it would not be helpful to remember. Think of
Ernest Saunders. In 1991, a consultant psychiatrist told the Court of Appeal that Saunders, formerly the chief executive of Guinness, was unable to recall three numbers backwards or use a door.
Saunders had been jailed for five years in 1990 for financial wrongdoing. His lawyers contested the sentence, saying that a term of incarceration would only exacerbate the pre-senile dementia of which poor Ernest was displaying the early symptoms.
Saunders shuffled about looking like the simpleton played by Peter Sellers in
Being There. His sentence was duly cut in half and he served only 10 months.
One evening, not long afterwards, Himself and I were wandering down St James's when who should we see, across the street, but one Ernest Saunders. Dressed in a smart suit, he was getting money out of a cashpoint. With that public spiritedness for which your columnist is renowned, I shouted: "Having any problems remembering your pin number, Ernest?"
Comment: It may be that the world's financial elite (and central banks) are well aware of the coming world financial reset and the important role that gold will play. This might explain secretive redistribution of the world's gold reserves.