Whose opinion?

Here's an interesting dilemma. Richard Littlejohn, writing in the Mail, takes issue with Harriet Harman's claim that Fred Goodwin's pension is not enforceable in the "court of public opinion". He points out for example that;

In the court of public opinion, Tony Blair would find himself accused of war crimes after sending troops to Iraq on the basis of a dodgy dossier cooked up by his co-conspirator Alastair Campbell. The court of public opinion would have convicted him of selling honours and taking bribes from Formula One.

Good point. But then Littlejohn takes it further:

Left to the court of public opinion, we'd bring back hanging, restore the grammar schools, end immigration and force councils to empty the dustbins once a week, every week.

We'd pull out of Europe, scrap the yuman rites act and put every foreign criminal and terrorist on the first plane to Timbuktu.

There'd be police stations open day and night in every High Street and bobbies on the beat. Serial burglars, car thieves and anyone carrying an offensive weapon in public would face automatic, exemplary prison sentences.

Ludicrous elf'n'safety laws would be scrapped and the legions of five-a-day co-ordinators and diversity managers would have their contracts torn up and be told to get a proper job.

Those preposterous windmills scarring the landscape would be torn down; speed cameras would be dismantled, except in genuine accident blackspots, and traffic humps would be bulldozed flat.

You have to assume that Littlejohn appears with everyone of these mindless, populist, ignorant proposals. I disagree with just about all of them.