http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15052030

Sad that it's even news, but there you go...

In my experience, men from that part of the world have no respect for women at all.
That's not a stereotype, I've actually worked with them and I was disgusted by their attitude towards women.

If women do stand for election, how would you know who you were voting for?

Yes and if a woman is elected would her votes be worth half that of a man?

It doesn't really matter, because democracy in Saudi Arabia doesn't matter. The King appoints all the important people in the government, most of whom tend to be his extended family, and the 'elected government' is little more than a parish council in terms of what it can do and what it has power over. They do all the jobs none of the King's family want to do because they're dull and bureaucratic and there's no money to be made doing them and have no power to speak of.

So to all intents and purposes they've given away something they don't actually care about at all and which has no real long term effect on anything. woohoo. But it makes for a nice bit of PR, keeps the poor from doing what they've done in Egypt and Libya and gives the people in the west who want to sell them tanks and bombs a nice excuse to carry on doing so 'because they are becoming more liberalised and less repressive'.

It's a smokescreen. Bread and circuses, basically.

The sooner the developed world perfects a non petrol dependant economy the better, then that lot will find out what the proverb 'you reap what you sow' really means.

Jon

Totally agree on that point. Without oil Saudi Arabia will be little more than a backwater tourist resort for the Hajj and camel racing.

Kuwait will be worse. There was a documentory I saw that showed all citizens being paid about £30k a year from oil revenues. Hardly any of them worked at all. Most work was done by cheap eastern labourers. They're so fat and workshy now that they'd be screwed if the demand for oil stopped.

Many of the Arab OPEC countries have exactly the same problem. They will all collapse when the oil runs out. For some they have being saving for a sovereign wealth fund to avoid that outcome.

Though the line ups will be fun.



Though the disney theme park they have is fun.