the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Here we go again, and we’d better get used to it, political parties engaging in something I call manifesto clickbaiting. A proposal that has about as much chance of becoming law as they do of forming the next government. Something that will both hopefully – for them, if not us – dominate the news agenda. And act as a political dog whistle to people who are undecided or wavering;

UKIP is to include a ban on the full veils worn by some Muslim women as part of its general election manifesto, its leader Paul Nuttall has said.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show Mr Nuttall said wearing a burka or niqab in public was a barrier to integration and a security risk.

Although this proposal might be seen by some as the state suggesting what can and can’t be worn by women – which some religions do very well on their own without the the state getting in on the act – worse was to follow;

Mr Nuttall also told the programme that he wanted to prevent Islamic sharia law becoming “a parallel legal system in this country”.

“It cannot be right that we have court or councils in this country where the word of a woman is only worth half that of a man. That has no place in a liberal, democratic, functioning Western democracy,” he said.

But he said that Beth Din, Jewish rabbinical courts, would not be affected, because they had been established for centuries and the Orthodox Jewish population was falling.

So there we have it. If something has been established for long enough, that’s OK, is it? Really? Is the permissibility of things now, according to Ukip at least, based on how long they’ve been happening? By that yardstick – and there seems no other logical interpretation – because I’ve always eaten my bogies that’s OK?