People Are Strange

“WAS I the only one who felt a shiver down my spine when teaching assistant Aisha Azmi appeared on TV in her full face veil to rail against the decision to prevent her wearing her niqab in the classroom?” asks Amanda Platell in the Mail.

Platell’s page is headed “Platell’s People”. These People may well clack their marmalade-coated tongue against the roof of their mouth and harrumph in agreement with their leader.

They are Platell’s people. And Platell has more for them to listen to. “Veil or no veil,” says Platell, I wouldn’t want this woman within 100 miles of any child of mine.”

We don’t know where Platell lives – she was born in Australia – nor what planet she inhabits, but we imagine that her People do not live in an ethnically rich and less well off part of Dewsbury, where Mrs Azmi would be a teacher.

Not that Platell is worried only of her herself and her children, if indeed she has any. She fears for Muslim womanhood. “The truth is that her actions may have made other Muslim women less employable because bosses across the country will think twice before recruiting them.”

This is, presumably, instead of the three or four times some employees will think about securing the services of anyone likely to have a baby, fall ill, get fat, take up smoking or get old.

Or, like Platell, be a woman…

Posted: 26th, October 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink