[jambutty]

I don’t know if anyone else watched Question Time coming from Preston last night but if you did you may have noticed that if the audience was to be representative of the country as a whole, we are losing the ‘veil’ debate.

Not only did the ‘veil’ topic take up more than half of the allotted programme time, which is unusual in itself, but the discussion wasn’t about the original ‘veil’ issue but had been dragged off on a tangent to encompass Islam and the right to wear what they like. Can I remind people that the only issue is whether a veil should be removed when attending an MP’s constituency surgery? And from that it follows any official one to one meeting.

Not one single person either on the panel or in the audience made the comparison between crash helmets and the ‘veil’. There were even a few Muslim women wearing the full dress and veil and they were allowed to say their piece from behind a mask, instead of being asked to remove it so that everyone could see their face and be able to judge the sincerity of the said piece.

One member of the panel even went as far as to suggest that talking to a person wearing a veil was no different to talking to them over the phone. But in the phone case neither can see the other’s face so they are on a level playing field.

The thought occurs that many office employees have a photo ID card either pinned to the outer clothing or hanging around the neck. How can you check if the person wearing the photo ID is that person, if they are wearing a veil?