I’m listening to the bit of Any Questions – starting 38 minutes in – where they talk about gender segregation. I’ve paused it after Amjad Bashir said his piece (he’s the first) because it’s so good. (It made me get something in my eye for a second.) First of all he just said No, and got applause. Then he said about growing up in Bradford (and he has the Yorkshire accent to prove it) and meeting everybody, from primary school on. Mixing. Meeting all kinds of people. And his children, and his grandchildren, they do the same. This is not Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to meet people.
Yes exactly. It’s not just the meddling with everyone’s rights. It’s the horrible narrow pinched impoverished way to live, and way to think about people, that they want to promote as pious and good. It is horrible. Bashir said his time at Bradford University was the best time in his life, meeting people – and you could hear it in his voice. The whole point of this vile segregation nonsense is not doing that, not expanding and broadening and becoming richer.
Down with it!
Having listened to the rest…
Yes Shami Chakrabarti was great – especially when she resisted Jonathan Dimbleby’s attempt to interrupt her by saying she’d talked less than any of the men and then pointing out that oh look we’re all minorities here but I’m still the only woman.
She said what I’ve been saying all along, if this were about segregating by race we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, and why is it so different when it comes to women? Women are the last apartheid, she said.
Thanks Bernard for telling us about it and how many minutes in it starts.