Saudi Blood Money

I'm sure that there are enough comments being made about the BAE Scandal, where two decades of British governments have been willing to slum it with the Saudis in order to secure those all important arms sales.

And, apaulled as I am at GB's status as the world's 4th biggest arms dealer, I'm pragmatic enough to accept that the income is probably the only thing keeping our National Health Service (the UK's largest employer) going.

However, can the government please start being more honest about the Saudis? Let's bang on about their absence of human rights. Let's draw links between their failure to police a domestic crisis and the concommitant export of fundamental islam. Let's never stop talking about the confederation between the oil-rich Saudi aristocracy and America's oil-rich ruling classes.

And let's persist in the idea that America (with Britain's support) is destabilising Saudi's neighbours in order to reassure the Sheiks in Riyadh that the House of Saud will always be the west's favourite fundamentalist arabic state.