The teddy bear teacher was released from prison too soon

So the mop-headed ingenue teacher Gillian Gibbons has been released from her torment in Sudan without being horsewhipped or banged up for too long. The Scousers — Ms Gibbons is from Liverpool, naturellement — had insufficient time to organise a candlelit vigil for her or a minute’s silence at Anfield, but they did manage to festoon lots of railings with yellow ribbons and bouquets from the local garage.

The world, you might think, never changes. The Sudanese government — arguably the worst administration on earth — can now bask in the knowledge that they are deemed by the West to be compassionate and conciliatory. The charges against Ms Gibbons — ‘to have knowingly allowed several children to call a teddy bear Mohammed, pbuh’ — are breathtakingly stupid, of course, but nonetheless among the more minor infractions committed by Sudan in recent years: sadly there are no Muslim peers in Khartoum petitioning President al-Bashir about all that Darfur business, and I don’t suppose it would do much good if there were.