The Politics of Dancing

Prime Ministers Questions, [PMQ's], should be scrapped. It is an embarrassment beyond rescue, and should be replaced by a monthly grilling before a House of Commons Committee, possibly made of of all the Committee Chairs. To watch it yesterday was to watch a demonstration of all that is most ghastly about our current system of political representation. The predominance of suited boys, the continuous heckling and emission of zoo noises, the toe curling sycophancy on the government benches, whose MP's ask non questions, - “My constituency is lovely, will the Prime Minister agree? Will he also celebrate with me the fact that we have a wonderful government that is creating jobs in my constituency and spreading joy amongst it fortunate citizens?” I mean do the MP's who spout this puerile juvenile piffle imagine that these asinine statements do anything other than produce a weary sapping away of the will to live. However the most striking feature about PMQ's is the absence...

From next year Saudi Arabia will be a member of the UN Human Rights Council. This week saw the sentencing of Saudi human rights activist Umar al-Saed to four years in prison and 300 lashes for peacefully campaigning for the independent human rights organisation the Saudi Political and Civil Rights Association, (ACPRA). Umar al-Saed Mr al-Saed, 24 was arrested on April 28 th this year after refusing interrogation without a lawyer. Currently seven other members of ACPRA are in prison. In March a judge decided to ‘dissolve’ ACPRA and sentenced two of its founders, Mohammad al-Qahtani and Abdullah al-Hamid to 10 and 11 years in prison respectively. The sentencing of ACPRA members is part of a sustained campaign currently being waged by the Saudi government on human rights activists. [1]   The citizens of the Arab kingdom are denied free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship, the freedom to be openly agnostic, atheist or gay, equality of the sexes, a free p...