Last Friday Bernie Ecclestone, the master-mind of Formula One racing, said that the Bahrain government was stupid in a lot of ways to continue to stage the Bahrain Grand Prix because it served as a platform for protest against its oppressive regime.
But after the race was over on Sunday he was telling everyone that the organisers had done a superb job and that he was inclined to offer them an extension of their contract to 2021. I don't see any problem he said.
The problem, of course, is that to enable the event to take place the tiny Gulf island kingdom has to be divided into two parts in one of which the security services lock down areas where the local population might want to draw attention to the undemocratic nature of the government which is so welcoming to the visitors who come from near and far to see the big event.
There are two Bahrains -- one kept out of sight and the other creating a totally false impression of a stable and progressive country. Sometimes they overlap. Last week an ITV film crew was deported because its cameras strayed beyond the sanitised Grand Prix area.
Two years ago the event was abandoned because protests threatened the safety of the race itself.
Many of those arrested at that time are still held without trial while the show goes on.
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