Decent Arabs

Three Londoners have been arrested in Dubai on drug charges and claim that they were beaten, tortured and made to sign documents at gunpoint. Dubai is one of the United Arab Emirates: a group of corrupt, oil-rich hereditary dictatorships which bask in the sort of climate towards which the greenest government ever is working for the rest of the world. They use South Asians as indentured labour (the same variety of slavery about which Churchill didn't care to risk terminological exactitude) and Daveybloke's former Minister for Wog-Bombing, Adam Werritty, favoured Dubai as a location for his trysts with Liam Fox. On top of all these advantages, it is now alleged that police in Dubai torture people, including Britons; which one would imagine virtually qualifies them as honorary Americans, with all the relational specialness that implies. However, two of the arrestees have names that pass for white and one of them is surnamed in honour of Daveybloke's own wee clan; so naturally the president of the UAE will get a bit of a dressing-down when he drops in on Britain's Head Boy later this week.