Eighteen months simply isn't enough!

Eighteen months.

It'd be ironic if someone was hacking his phone...

That's the paltry sentence that was handed down to Andy 'Happy Hacker' Coulson after he was found guilty of phone hacking (or 'conspiracy to intercept communications', to give the crime it's proper title).
That means (under the UK's monumentally perverse penal system) that he'll serve no more than nine months, whereupon he'll be free to walk straight into the nearest publishing house and negotiate himself a big fat advance for 'his story', in which he will avail us of the 'nightmare' he and his family has had to endure (which hopefully will include revelations about happened when he accidentally dropped the soap in the communal showers at HMP Softly Softly and became suddenly intimate with a large inmate called Giles).
And then, when his autobiography hits the bookshops and he sits in front of the cameras on the sofa of This Morning to be 'rigorously interviewed' by Phillip Schofield, will he be all contrite about the misery resulting from his actions and those of the people in his employ? Of course he will - he'll be ever so sorry! But behind closed doors? Somehow I doubt he'll be as penitent.
You see, in order to feel genuine contrition, you need to have something that I suspect Andy Coulson and all those involved in the phone hacking scandal don't have:
A conscience.
If they had possessed a conscience then the moment they became aware that their interference with poor Milly Dowler's mobile phone had placed false hope in the minds of her parents, they should have come forward and admitted to the authorities what they had done…but the chose not to. Instead, they simply carried on with what they were doing, no doubt regarding the renewed anguish they had caused Sally and Bob Dowler as nothing more than collateral damage in pursuit of a 'good story'.
That makes what they did all the more reprehensible and that is why I believe that Andy Coulson and his grubby partners in crime will regard their time in whatever HMP Holiday Camp they are sent to, not only as little more than a mild inconvenience, but actually as an opportunity to cash in on 'what they've been through' with a book and some TV appearances and probably a serialisation in, somewhat ironically, one of the tabloids. No doubt they'll be able to use their time inside to practice their expressions of regret, to get the downward glances just right, to get the wringing of the hands spot on…Christ, they'll probably be entitled to counselling whilst serving their pathetically short sentences, or they may even be entitled to acting classes paid for by the taxpayer as part of their rehabilitation and reintegration back into society.
That's why eighteen months simply isn't long enough for these bastards - in fact, I'd prefer it if we didn't see Andy Coulson's face on our TV screens and in our newspapers for at least eighteen years!