Too bad Cherie doesn't adopt the jilbab herself.
...I found it curious to read about the case of Shabina Begum, who this week won the right to go the other way and cover herself from head to toe with an Islamic jilbab. A victory for religious freedom indeed. (Feel free to send your kids off dressed as the Archbishop of Canterbury in future. And God only knows what the Scotch will turn up in.)
Now given that her school in Luton already had a uniform policy which was more than adequate for Muslim requirements, and given that even Muslim states like Turkey don’t permit the wearing of the jilbab in schools, I wonder somewhat about Shabina’s motives. Certainly her speech on the steps of the court sounded more like an Islamic rant than the words of a 16-year-old schoolgirl.
Could it be that the High Court ruling was less a victory for freedom and more a victory for the hard-line fundamentalists who want to impose their will on their own womenfolk while using peer pressure to bully others into line?
Surely what this country needs is more integration, not more separation and isolation. There should be no ghettoes, either physical or cultural. And haven’t I heard the Prime Minister argue that in the past? Seems odd then that Shabina’s lawyer was the famous Cherie Booth, aka Mrs “Zippy” Blah.
And how about some Dr. Who fun?
Still on matters Islamic, it appears that Captain Hook, the loveable “radical cleric” Abu Hamza, has been roughed up in the nick. It does seem a little unfair that he can’t defend himself because he’s had his hooks confiscated, so I have a solution.You had to see the show, I guess.
Why not give him a couple of sink plungers instead? He could then glide around like a little stripey Dalek with a beard while learning a useful trade at the same time. Marvellous rehabilitation.
And speaking of TV shows there's the BBC TV tax, the UK mechanism to fund the BBC by taxing each television set, currently at the rate of £121 per annum:
But wait, I hear you say. Despite this blatant disregard for financial prudence, despite this contempt for the public’s hard-earned cash, the Beeb is still the Beeb, isn’t it? A provider of high-quality public service broadcasting?I'd certainly fork out a couple of hundred bucks a year for that, but it would be even better if Alison had been playing Twister with them.
Well, up to a point. If we set aside ratings-chasers like Strictly Celebrity Nude Ballroom Wrestling Academy, and ignore the 1950s dreadfulness that is regional television news (a couple of old duffers in cardigans reading out stories from two-day-old local newspapers), there is still much to admire.
Why only the other morning I turned over from Trisha (Is The Home Secretary The Father Of My Baby?) to find a screenful of gay porn stars playing Twister. Yes, I’ll say that again, a screenful of gay porn stars playing Twister.
It was one of those time-slip moments. Had I nodded off at the desk and woken 12 hours later? Was it really 9.45 pm and not a quarter to ten in the morning? Where’s Andy Pandy and why is Looby Loo now an overweight 59-year-old woman wearing PVC bondage gear?
As it turns out, I had come across a series called Britain’s Streets of Vice, a graphic look at the sex industry, made specifically for daytime television and transmitted at 9.15 am for three days last week.
The woman (wouldn’t you know it) in charge of this aberration, BBC daytime controller Alison Sharman, was almost gleeful in her management-speak posturing: “Challenging the perceptions of daytime television has been one of my most important focuses.”
I would suggest that if she’d been watching television with a child who’d been kept home from school because of the snow, explaining away why a naked man was wearing a gimp mask and a dog lead might suddenly have become one of her most important focuses.
And for those of you who think taxing TV ownership to pay for "public broadcasting" is a tad onerous, not to worry! They're plannning a tax on personal computer ownership instead.
