Long has the sun done set on the enterprise once known as Great Britain -- aka "England, Mother England," as in "Merrie Olde," "sceptered isle" and all that.

With the flag over Buckingham Palace at half staff in national mourning for sharia- dictator Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (a "reformer," a "real progressive," according to Fox News, practically a sufragette), the Telegraph reports that a senior BBC official has deemed that the men who stormed Charlie Hebdo's office and slayed the staff and others are not to be called "terrorists."

Tarik Kafala, the head of BBC Arabic, the largest of the BBC’s non-English language news services, said the term “terrorist” was seen as “value-laden” and should not be used to describe the actions of the men who killed 12 people in the attack on the French satirical magazine.

“We try to avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being terrorist,” Mr Kafala told The Independent.

“What we try to do is to say that ‘two men killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine’. That’s enough, we know what that means and what it is.”