Balaclapalaver

Nicolas de Racaille's sartorial censorship law has reaped magnificent dividends with the arrest of a handful of people on a demonstration outside the Russian consulate in Marseille. The demonstration was against the Pussy Riot trial, and those arrested were wearing face-covering balaclavas after the group's habit. It would, of course, be intolerably racist if Muslim headgear were illegal while anarcho-feminist punk headgear was allowed to remain on the streets; so the flics duly descended, and the protesters were carted off in a riot van. Should the case get as far as a judge, the latter can impose a fine, a citizenship course or both; it is to be hoped that the judge will have sufficient wit to order French citizens to go and learn how to be French citizens. The French government, like the British and American governments, called the sentence in the Pussy Riot trial "disproportionate", and a bit of Putinesque clowning could be just the thing to help patch up relations.