Still no word on when Gordon Brown is going to get Aung San Suu Kyi out of jail, him being so admiring of her courage and everything during his Labour Party leadership bid:

For me, Suu Kyi defines the meaning of courage. Once courage was seen chiefly as a battlefield virtue. In most accounts the emphasis is on the physical - physical risk, physical vulnerability or physical triumph. It has been seen as an almost exclusively male, physical attribute: courage as daring and bravado, even recklessness; indeed, in many languages, the word for courage is derived from the word for ‘man’. But Suu Kyi represents the power not of the powerful but of the powerless: a woman, a prisoner of conscience up against a state with one of the worst human-rights violation records in the world; a country of only 20 million people with 1,000 political prisoners, 500,000 political refugees, children as young as four in prison, and poets and journalists tortured just for speaking out.

So what, if anything is being done, by our doughty defender of human rights, bravely speaking out in print, and his government? According to the Burma Campaign UK (via Ten Per Cent), not an awful lot:

With tight restrictions inside the country, organisations and projects promoting human rights and democracy have to be based in exile, and work through underground networks in Burma. Despite the International Development Committee reccomending funding for these organisations, D[epartment] f[or] I[nternational] D[evelopment] is still refusing to fund such projects. Many of these organisations played a crucial role in getting news and images out of Burma during the recent protests and crackdown.

‘This is not joined up government,’ said Mark Farmaner. ‘The government isn’t putting its money where its mouth is. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have been leading the international community in supporting Burma’s democrats, but DFID seems to be going in a different direction, only prepared to deliver aid to people and projects that the Burmese dictatorship agrees to.’

Still, look at it this way, Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma might be no closer to freedom after 120 days of her great admirer being in power, but at least they’re no further from it either. And isn’t that the very essence of our courageous Prime Minister? No boom, no bust, just steady-as-she-goes. Sometimes it takes courage to do absolutely sod all.