[Sundae]

Again, that's just news in brief.

It appears that the bottom line is she was unable to prove in court that her salon would suffer a negative effect if she had a member of staff wearing a headscarf. Her mistake was stating this to the interviewee rather than citing another aspect which wasn't suitable as the previous 25 interviewers had obviously done.

It's rotten for the lady in question, but the laws are there to protect British citizens from being denied work for inappropriate reasons. For example a supermarket can't deny employment to someone just because they wear a hijab, because it has absolutely no impact on the work they are doing.

Had this hairdresser been able to prove that her business would suffer, it would have been a landmark case, as when the Law Lords voted that a Muslim schoolgirl's rights had not been violated when she was not allowed to wear full Islamic dress to school.

It's not "political correctness gone mad, OMG!" It's law. It doesn't always make sense in individual cases, but there are rules to be followed and everyone is subject to them if it gets that far. It takes someone to raise the case, someone to defend it and someone to go to the press in order for it to reach our ears.