The GOS has been sitting back and waiting to see how the row about Jack Straw and the Masked Muslims was going to pan out, before diving in and offering his own humble opinion. But I know you've all been on the edge of your seats wanting to know what he thinks, so …
Jack Straw said he had been mulling over the issue ever since a veiled woman attended his surgery and said she was pleased to meet him face to face at last. "Chance would be a fine thing, I thought to myself but did not say aloud," he wrote. The encounter led to thoughts about the "apparent incongruity between the signals which indicate common bonds. Above all, it was because I felt uncomfortable about talking to someone face-to-face who I could not see. The value of a meeting, as opposed to a letter or phone call, is so that you can, almost literally, see what the other person means, and not just hear what they say. So many of the judgments we all make about other people come from seeing their faces. I thought a lot before raising this matter a year ago, and still more before writing this. But if not me, who? My concerns could be misplaced. But I think there is an issue here".
This sounds like a reasonable train of thought from a reasonable bloke. Or on the other hand it could be a cynical ploy to capture the hearts and minds of Middle England at a time when leadership of the Labour Party is bound to be in doubt. But then what's so wrong about trying to appeal to the great majority of voters - isn't that what politicians are supposed to do? Isn't that precisely what they haven't been doing in recent years, which is why the present government is so deeply unpopular and mistrusted?
Really the issue is a very simple one. It doesn't matter whether the Koran requires women to wear masks or not. The Koran has as much to do with British society as the Bible, the writings of L.Ron Hubbard or the Big Red Book of Fairies. It doesn't even matter what the women's own preference is. That really isn't our concern. All that matters is that in this country it is very bad manners to engage in any kind of social or business interaction while masked.
There are other, more practical, implications too, of course. Women attending driving tests can now be asked to remove their masks so that the examiner can be certain that the person taking the test is the person on his list, and quite right too. There is a strong argument to make wearing masks while driving illegal for safety reasons. The police and the courts need to be able identify witnesses. There was a row late last year at Imperial College London when students were told not to wear masks or hoodies so security men could spot intruders more easily. Odd, isn't it, that at a time when some of us are fighting the idea of ID cards we should even be bothering to debate some people's right to conceal their identity whenever they like?
But all these very right and reasonable arguments apart, you have to come back to it - in this country it is rude to wear a mask. As Saira Khan (herself a Muslim) wrote in The Times Online, "It is never right for a woman to hide behind a veil and shut herself off from people in the community. But it is particularly wrong in Britain, where it is alien to the mainstream culture for someone to walk around wearing a mask. The veil restricts women, it stops them achieving their full potential in all areas of their life and it stops them communicating. It sends out a clear message: 'I do not want to be part of your society.'"
There's an easy answer, of course, and The GOS can't think why no-one has suggested it. They want to wear masks to emphasise their separateness? Fine - we'll all wear them. Let's see how separate they feel then. Perhaps The GOS could make himself a few bob by selling through this website special "Grumpy Masks" with a picture of Mrs.GOS on.
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