Despite the fact that Bernie claims that all the teams are raring to go to Bahrain, they have all done something most unusual. They all have two sets of travel arrangements for after Shanghai. One set is for travel to Bahrain, the other is to get home avoiding Bahrain. So much for a united front.

There are protests directed at the race. Apart from the usual injuries the security forces inflict, and they do on a daily basis, on Friday a 22-year old man who was filming the protest was shot and died of his injury.

Reports have been confused, but he was apparently shot from a car containing men in civilian clothes. Some say that the car was unregistered.

Last week Nabeel Rajab, the President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, said, 'We are going to use the opportunity that a lot of journalists are there (for the Grand Prix) and we are going to protest everywhere.' Mr Rajab has since been arrested.

In Manama, the capital, graffiti has appeared linking spilled blood to the race. There is a vigorous Twitter campaign doing the same, and numerous cartoon images have been posted on the Net.

The Bahraini authorities have claimed that the safety of individuals should be no more of a worry than at a European Grand Prix. I do not recall people taking to the streets of London or Rome, in their tens of thousands, to protest against Silverstone or Monza.

No fewer than 35 Shia mosques have been demolished, and this in a country of about 600,000 citizens (plus about 600,000 migrant workers.) Work on reconstruction began on five of the mosques, but was forced to be abandoned after intimidation.

I am atheist, but if foreigners came and started demolishing churches in England, I would be pretty hacked off. It is not something that I would forget in a hurry. It is not just about religion, it is also about heritage.

To elaborate on two points I raised in my last post. Protesters are not the mindless yobs we saw riot and loot in some cities in England last summer. They are frequently sophisticated, educated, people who understand modern communications. They are also frustrated that the Western media has largely ignored them.

If I can access the Middle Eastern media, and I do every day, they can access Western media. Many older Bahrainis may not speak English, but the educated young do.

There have been wholesale expulsions and sackings from the University of Bahrain, the Teacher College and the Polytechnic. I have been in touch with someone whose students staged a protest and saw them attacked by what he describes as 'thugs' armed with golf clubs, iron bars and swords.