Restless Natives

A great British company is suffering harassment by pesky locals and the professional troublemakers at Amnesty International. Shell's difficulties with a leaky pipeline in Nigeria four years ago have been covered in slightly less detail than the notorious BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, possibly because the victims are Africans rather than human interest. Amnesty has obtained a report by a consultancy firm which suggests that the spill was at least sixty times larger than Shell admits; for its own part, the great British company has blamed the natives for hindering its no doubt thoroughly efficient cleanup, which so far has taken only a little over three years to get started. "After years of trying to seek justice in Nigeria," said Amnesty's global affairs director, "the people of Bodo have now taken their claim to the UK courts", where Shell's public-relations campaign can benefit from the professional input of Daveybloke and his cuddly chums, and where any verdict unfavourable to the great British company can be quashed by the Home Secretary without too much fuss.