Not now dear, I've not got time to be logical

And yet again, press hysteria has me reaching for my keyboard in vehement rage. Worry not dear reader, it's not that I've not had anything to rant about since my last post - just that I've not got to the keyboard before erupting in a foaming-mouthed finger-stabbing bout of fury. Also, further to the last post, I am now a properly-employed, real, teller-of-lies-to-small-children - and far from getting paid to sit on my arse over the holidays, I am drowning under piles of paper and books, not least because I have had to clear my desk whilst various bits of wall and ceiling surrounding it are obliterated. Personally I would have taken a sledgehammer to it akin to Vyvyan from The Young Ones, but the results may not have been as pretty. Or safe.
But, I digress, again. Seems to me that it's been time to have a pop at Islam just recently. How would you tell the difference? Well, ok, even more so than usual. But rather than painting all Muslims as bearded terrorists, whilst outside our windows the crickets chirp away and life seems normal, it's time to have a go at the people living and working around us. We're not in Kansas anymore.
First up, Jack Straw. As far as I can tell, the fella just happened to ask a Muslim lady to remove her niqab, but if she didn't want to, that's fine. All fair and good - if you don't ask, you don't know the answer, the worst that can happen is that she says "Sorry, no."
However, this was of course manipulated to him demanding that women show their faces, in order to cause outrage, settled down a bit and carried on bubbling merrily, giving people something to chunner about for a few days.
How did this become a press issue though - surely it is a thing that is really only of concern to Jack Straw and the constituents concerned at his Blackburn surgeries? Was he sharing good practice with other MPs, or was it simply an exercise in political popularity?
Either way, we got what we wanted - lots of arguments and outrage, people making bold statements on Radio 4, the main purpose of which seems to be to cause the present Mr B and myself to shout at the radio in opposition.
It leads us nicely into the tale of teaching assistant who was at the centre of some controversy over the niqab again. I spend most of my days asking children to take their hands away from their mouths and look at me when they speak, otherwise the sounds are incomprehensible by the time they reach my ears. I cannot distinguish speech from background noise very well, and daresay I could cause plenty of offence to a TA wearing a niqab by either asking her to repeat herself ad infinitum, ignoring what she was saying, or asking her to take the veil off. Maybe I should have listened to my mother when she told me not to listen to my walkman at that volume. Again there was a lot of hoo-ha - did the lady in question go to her interview without the veil to improve her prospects? Was is really that big a deal if she only covered her face when a man was in the room? Won't somebody think of the children?!
I suppose this is the point where I should conclude. There are things I have to do as part of my job that don't necessarily fit in with what I believe. It's a church school; I teach RE from a Christian perpective, I lead prayers, I don't wear a pentagram the size of a camper van badge. Maybe that makes me complacent in my beliefs; I don't think it does. If I refused to teach RE, or insisted on wearing my pentie on show, it would make life unpleasant for me, my colleagues, the children. Am I saying just do what the man says for an easy life? No, I don't think I am, even though technic'ly I am the man now (I'm ready for my penis now!) I think what I want to say is; be consistent. Stand by what you believe in all the time, not just when it's convenient. Next half term I'm teaching a unit on God and perceptions of God. So we're going to find out about all sorts of Gods and how people view them, after all, ignorance breeds fear. I want the children to be able to make their own decisions based on their own views, not what they've been fed with a dollop media frenzy on top.