Not Quite Centred

Under the civilising tutelage of Britain's Ministry for Wogs, Beads and Trinkets, an encouraging tendency towards moderation and modernisation has been noted in recent years among Whitehall's favourite mediaeval fundamentalist head-choppers; but there is clearly some small way to go yet. The trial of those accused of murdering the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi has concluded largely in accordance with the requirements of British justice, in that nobody was found guilty except the small-fry. Better still, the media coverage befitted the Conservative Party's idea of a free press rather than Extinction Rebellion's; and an independent UN investigator was moved to express annoyance after the customary fashion of that unpleasant bureaucratic species, which has subjected our world-truncheoning G4S people to unconscionable harassment on the British mainland. Given these progressive signs, it is all the more regrettable that Khashoggi's relatives were so lacking in British values as to request that the death penalty not be imposed.