16°C, light showers, and wind.

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 A current news story that illustrates the current times comes from Jack Straw. He asks Muslim women to remove their veil while in his Constituency office. See here. Now for my opinion, or at least a shortened version of it.

He’s come to a conclusion I can agree with but not with the reasons I would have given. He cites social separation as a reason, making community relation s more difficult. I’d say the problem is from a psychological angle, it relates to social interaction and body language. The mistake the some commentators have made when criticising him is that they claim it should make no difference. But it does because spoken words are only part of communication between human beings. The veils block natural communication via expressions and body language, often a more significant language than spoken words.

There have been no coherent arguments that refute Straw’s views. All that I have seen so far in the last two days, have been concluded from unsubstantiated assumptions at best. In fact there seem to be few arguments on this subject from any quaters, the media are saying words like "Storm", "Straw’s veil policy spark anger " and so on, but those storms remain hard to find.

 

Aww: Below is a Cedar tree, shot on a visit to Sudbury a few months ago. A magnificent tree that had me spellbound with awe on that day. A living form that was created by a combination of chance occurances both recent and from the distant past. No intellegence was involved in that process, unless some victorian gardener planted it there of course.