You’d have to be both desperate and an idiot to smuggle drugs out of Thailand for £350. However, there is no sane argument that an appropriate penalty for doing so would be getting topped.

I don’t particularly blame the Thai government, who aren’t too bothered about whether people smuggle drugs out of Thailand. It’s more the fault of the Western governments (led by the US, obviously) who’ve bribed and threatened the developing world into imposing scary penalties as part of their War on Drugs.

Anthony Flannaghan, the unfortunate Brit who’s been sentenced to death, will be comparatively lucky: westerners’ death sentences are generally commuted to absurdly long prison sentences. Locals in the same boat don’t get the same courtesy: hell, half the time they don’t even get a trial.

And even the Thais are lucky compared to the Colombians.