The Hypocrisy of Whining Labour over Akmal Shaikh

With regards to the story of the execution in China of British (?) man Akmal Shaikh - where do I start.

There are so many angles to this.

1) If you go to a foreign country then you obey their laws - but of course we bend our laws and customs to suit foreigners who come here so maybe we expect them to do the same for us. But China are not 'soft touch China'.

2) Are the Labour party in attacking the Chinese for doing what they did just being imperialistic? 'That's not our way' they shrill. No it's the Chinese way.

3) We do not have the death penalty in Britain. Do we not? How often nowadays do we hear of the police in Britain shooting dead someone or other on the street? No judge, no jury, no trial, no appeal - and no mental health assessment. It happens a lot and is of course sanctioned by the government. We also export the death sentence - most notably at the moment to Afghanistan - where our troops fight and kill people who produce drugs which brings me nicely to Mr Shaikh!

He was a drug smuggler and roughly 5,000 people a year die in Britain from drug 'misuse' although I bet a little more trawling of the Internet could find a higher figure. So guilty of the crime of potential mass murder he was probably deserving of the death sentence to be honest.

5) He was bipolar? Really? This is open to debate - and a bit of a slight against all the (99% I should imagine) of law abiding bipolar people out there.

So, the Labour government are in my opinion on this issue patronisingly imperialistic, are PRO death penalty (as long as no courts are involved - just the summarily execution of people by the military or the police) and therefore hypocrites AND should recognise that while China are one end of the extreme regarding drug sentencing we are the other having just given a similar drug mule in Britain a pathetic two and a half years.

To Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis etc I say: stop whining and take a good look at yourselves!