Our Better Selves

British values continue to intensify among Her Majesty's Government's favourite Islamic fundamentalists. According to a United Nations special rapporteur on anti-terrorism, the head-chopping House of Saud is using the rubric of national security to suppress dissent and justify torture, for all the world like a mother of democracies. Although women are now allowed to drive, thus entitling members of the head-chopping House of Saud to include the term "Proud social liberal" in their social media straplines, according to the rapporteur there is "no separation of powers in Saudi Arabia, no freedom of expression, no free press, no effective trade unions and no functioning civil society". For its own part, the head-chopping House of Saud claims only that there is no conflict between its own interpretation of sharia law and its own interpretation of international human rights standards; and that freedom of expression is permitted, though doubtless within the pacific and moderate bounds of law, reason and the divine will. Quite apart from the continued glorious wog-bombing in Yemen, things are becoming so enlightened as to seem almost a vision from the Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair.