Poor King Abdullah. Died. Ahhhhhh. Wouldn’t wanna pay his inheritance tax bill. The tax alone would be £759,665,391,885,24,081 and 47p. But they don’t pay inheritance tax in Saudi Arabia. In fact kings and sheiks and shit don’t pay any taxes at all. Don’t need to. When you live in a nation that pumps about 40% of the world’s oil out of the ground every year, there’s money for everyone. Yippee. But are they happy? Oh, its that old one: money doesn’t necessarily make you happy, but it does make you miserable in much greater comfort.

And because Abdullah was a head of state, Britain has sent it representatives to his wake. And as we couldn’t find anyone decent to send, the job went to David Cameron and Prince Charlie. And its a fucking disgrace.

If the head of ISIS died, would we send the royals? Fuck no!! Because they’re a terrorist organisation who murder, repress and have no human rights considerations whatsoever. Ok, what about when Kim Jong Il died? Of course we didn’t send anyone; North Korea is an awful, brutal tyrannical regime in a rogue nation. So how about when Mugabe dies? Would we go??

Then there’s the grey bit. Russia? Iran? China??

And Saudi Arabia.

Why are they grey and not just ‘black’ like the examples above? They are all nations who abuse, repress, flaunt human rights, imprison people for nothing more than questioning their leaders, they torture, they inflict genocide, racial cleansing, colonialism. But unlike the obvious bad guys of the world, these nations are rich in products we use and are massive in trade with us.

So we turn a blind eye to the bad bits and call them ‘allies’ and go pay respects to dead leaders who really deserved no respect whatsoever. And that makes Britain a bunch of sodding hypocrites.

Suppose we forgive Saudi Arabia for its feudal system, for its virtual imprisonment of all its women, for its zero-tolerance, death-penalty attitude to homosexuality (unless its behind closed doors, of course), for its cutting off limbs as part of its ‘legal system’. Suppose we just put all that down to their ‘culture’, to their ‘adherence to Sharia’. Well, they’re a sovereign state, they can run their country how they please; they don’t have to adhere to our liberal, tolerant, deomocratic model, do they? Suppose we believe that.

But they fund international terrorism. From Al Quaeda to ISIS, from Hamas to every other terrorist group around; if you ‘follow the money’ its starts in Saudi.

Attend the funeral? I’d rather watch the Arsenal.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx