h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hiding your face during a conversation is impolite, whether it be a veil or a pair of shades. Well done to Jack Straw for having the nuts to point out the bleedin' obvious.

yeh...but we let the shades-wearers get away with it too...

If I thought I could get away with it I would refuse to speak to anybody wearing shades when it ain't sunny. Anyway, they're less dangerous: they're doing to be cool, not because the voice in their head tells 'em too!

what all this then *Pmmmoooozzzzzzzzzzzzaaaah* i have the therimin out and the amp set to 6.............. god is back in heaven with his ear plugs in.... wooop woooph


RJR (with the fuzzbox)

It's not religion, it's the single digit salute.

Surprised to see Straw mentioning it though. He has a sizeable Muslim constituency.

His comments taken alongside John Reid's are sending out a signal. Can this government have finally grown a spine?

Unlikely but you never know. I'd rather they changed tack and expressed the rational point of 'multicultural integration works both ways' than the BNP gaining any more ground.

Not really woken up yet but I just saw jack having his say n guts to the man
My mate sort of woke me up or dropped me innit again
Now back to the penis thread

I think we've just seen Jack Straw announce his resignation/retirement - there is no way he will get re-elected in Blackburn now. In Blackburn the people who this sort of idea will appeal to will already be voting BNP or Conservative (well, there'll be some liberals with spines who'll like it, but not enough), it'll just cost him the muslim and asian vote which he needs to stay in.

While I think I know what he was getting at, and I do agree with him, he must have known the negative publicity it'd get, and his real meaning will get buried in racism and the usual and on that count I feel it was irresponsible.

Personally I feel really uncomfortable when speaking to a woman wearing a full veil, its just horrible and disrespectful to me. Similarly with big, wrap-around shades, and I will ask people to take them off when they're speaking to me. There is a difference though, at least with shades you can see the general direction a person is looking in, and you can see the other features of their face, which isn't the case with the full veil.

Iago

P.S Roy, why did you say a person in shades is safer than someone in a full veil I'd have expected better from you mate

Because I have no truck with religion. However, having read Jack Straw's original piece it is pointed out that the veil is as much cultural as religious. Cultural affectations don't bother me much (apart from the impoliteness) but religious ones do.

Can open.
Worms everywhere...

Yeah, but treading on 'ems fun. And they can always be used for worm vol-au-vents (am I showing my seventies upbringing there?)

Invertebrate fondue, anyone?

Hmm, lovely. Could I have a Blue Nun with that?

Tut. Everyone knows you serve Black Tower with worm.

RF

There speaks the voice of one old enough to drink in the sevs....

We were too poor for effete nonsense like wine. It was always Kestrel lager with our worm. ("worm" singular, we had to share ours out)

Worm? You don't know how lucky you were. We made do with a silverfish.

Ee, we used to *dream* of eating silverfish...

RF

"dream"? You got to sleep?