Traditional Values

As Daveybloke's Minister for Wog-Bombing dips another few toes into the Iraq quagmire, the Government's fellow warriors for democracy in the Middle East are having a bit of female trouble. A woman has been detained for car-driving, face-showing and generally undermining the social cohesion of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; normally these acts of justice last for a few days, but Loujain al-Halthloul's detention has been arbitrarily extended by nearly a month. She was participating in a campaign against some of the country's more ridiculous laws, and the spectacle of females driving automobiles has caused much the same sort of panic among Daveybloke's Saudi chums as the spectre of equal rights tends to cause in the British Conservative Party. No doubt the British Government will be having forthright words with the Saudi theocracy on how the UK's weapons exports might best be used in defence of those inclusive, tolerant and peaceful values which Britain's Head Boy learned at Auschwitz the other day.