England v West Indies

Some ungrateful beneficiaries of the British slave trade are calling for an apology, even as a couple of their betters attempt to whip up a bit of jubilee spirit. As Jamaica inexplicably celebrates half a dozen decades of being foreign, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been dispatched to dissuade the natives from any subversive emulations of the recent high treason in Barbados, which might mar the rah-rah for Her Madge Gawblesser's seventieth year of waving, grinning and squeaking. Nevertheless, a group of Jamaican notables has published an open letter in which forelock-tugging deference is conspicuous by its absence, and which even has the gall to suggest that the transatlantic jobseekers' opportunity programme was a greater human rights tragedy than the Annus Horribilis. At present, just to rub the message in, the Cambridges are fortifying themselves for the rigours of their charm offensive in Belize, the noted tax haven, among the ruins left by some other beneficiaries of European civilisation.