I was alarmed by a headline in the Daily Mail last week “You Must Take Off Your Veil”.  A judge had ruled that a defendant was permitted to wear the niqab in court but that she must remove it to give evidence.

His decision didn’t alarm me.  It seemed very sensible.  We all form judgements about the integrity of what we’re being told not just from their speaker’s words but from their demeanour and body language, including facial expression.  In an adversarial judicial system like ours to deny the jury the opportunity to do this could be to disadvantage the appellant.

Rather the cause for my alarm was the fact that this was splashed across the front page, headlined in huge letters, with no other story.  It continued on pages 4 and 5.

It occurs to me that newsworthy as it was, it was far outweighed in importance by events inside and outside Syria, the domestic economy, environmental issues, Afghanistan; even the party conference.  So why the news-splash?

Clearly it pandered to and fuelled, at the very best level, a kind of Little Britain, “Save The British Banger” mentality; at its worst, to latent racism.  That it was in the Daily Mail only reinforced this view.

Even where the judge displayed an even-handed and sensible approach the Mail chose to report this in confrontational language.   His pronouncement that she could continue to wear her niqab in court and that no court sketch could be made of her unveiled was not a “decision” but was a “concession”; not just that but “an extraordinary concession”, as though the Mail had the right to mark his work.

Our Gert is not given to connecting in any meaningful way with world and national events outside her bubble.  Her reading material tends to be “Hello” or the “TV Times”.  If she ever looks at a newspaper it will not be a “weighty”.  When she saw me reading the “Daily Mail” she said dismissively  “Is that one of them papers that’s full of news?”

“No” I said.  “It’s not”.