Tim Collard's blog on (and off) the Daily Telegraph

This blog is based on the one I write on the Daily Telegraph website (blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/timcollard). But it also contains posts which the Telegraph saw fit to spike, or simply never got round to putting up.

I'm happy for anyone to comment, uncensored, on anything I have to say. But mindless abuse, such as turns up on the Telegraph site with depressing regularity (largely motivated my my unrepentant allegiance to the Labour Party), is disapproved of. I am writing under the name which appears on my passport and birth certificate; anyone else is welcome to write in anonymously, but remember that it is both shitty and cowardly to hurl abuse from under such cover. I see the blogosphere as the equivalent of a pub debate: a bit of knockabout and coarse language is fine, but don't say anything that would get you thumped in the boozer. I can give as good as I get, and I know how to trace IP addresses.

Friday, 23 October 2009

Even in Saudi Arabia, men are afraid of nagging wives

A wife suing her husband for divorce on the grounds that she is listed on his mobile as “Guantanamo” would be good for a chuckle anywhere in the world. But who would have thought it would come from Saudi Arabia, of all places?

Arguably this is the best publicity the Kingdom’s had for years. There we all are, assuming that all Saudi marital disputes are settled by a clip round the ear, a beating by the religious police, or at best by the recitation of forbidding words from the Koran, and now we find that the blokes can feel just as oppressed by the old ball-and-chain as we do. Meanwhile, the Kingdom clearly isn’t short of feisty ladies who take no nonsense from their lords and masters. This one is petitioning for divorce, but has indicated that the prisoner may get away with a large monetary payment to her, in which case she will deign to stay married to him. Sounds like a bit of a double whammy to me.

One sympathises with the poor chap, though one’s main feeling is admiration for the indefatigability of human nature. Even given some of the most misogynistic legislation the world has ever seen, the character of the ferocious old battleaxe cannot be suppressed. Wasn’t it Horace, or possibly Boris Johnson, who once said “You can expel Nature with a pitchfork, but she’ll always come creeping back”?

I’d love to have a drink or two with this guy and compare battle-scars, but I dare say he doesn’t get to go down the pub much.

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