Bad hair day

It is henceforth illegal for schools to ban certain haircuts because they believe them to be evidence of gang membership. A High Court Judge, Justice Collins, has deemed it to be a form of indirect racial discrimination.

A school in Harrow had banned the braided “cornrow” hairstyle because they feared it was worn as a sort of badge of gang membership. But Collins — who made his name by stopping the government deporting illegal immigrants and confiscating the assets of suspected terrorists and various other judicial procedures which have done so much to enhance all of our lives — has ruled that schools should allow the braids “if it is a genuine family tradition based on cultural and social reasons.”

Quite right too. It may also be that in many cases gang membership is a genuine family tradition based on cultural and social reasons, as is, perhaps, stabbing people in the throat. It is time our schools embraced gang culture as being part of the wonderful diversity of this country, instead of trying, brutally, to stamp it out.