Faithful Followers

Despite the recent Schlieffenesque pronunciamento by the strutting ex-Caudillo of the Farage Falange to the effect that Belgium is not a real nation, it appears that British values are thriving and metastasising among some beneficiaries from the legacy of King Leopold II. Following the sterling example set by the shale-fracking obsessives in Her Majesty's Government, the Democratic Republic of Congo plans to carve up a couple of national parks in order to provide sustenance for underprivileged oil companies. Whereas the British government's fracking plans would inconvenience few apart from some natives in the north of England, the DRC's national parks include Africa's largest tropical rain forest and are occupied, apparently rent-free, by a quarter of the world population of mountain gorillas; so laudable as its efforts may be, the Congolese government still has some distance to travel before it can aspire to true civilisation.