The burkini ban has nothing to do with tackling oppression

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A woman wears a burkini in the sea (FETHI BELAID/AFP/Getty Images)

Nothing can justify the disgusting spectacle of two armed, male policemen forcing an innocent woman to remove her burkini on a French beach.

We hear a lot about the need to defend Western values of freedom and choice but a Muslim woman cannot chose what she wants to wear on a beach in France.

This is nothing to do with tackling women’s oppression and everything to do with racism and sexism.

The state has no place telling a woman what she can or cannot wear. France has disgraced itself throughout the world and has shown it is putrid with the European disease of racism.

It has shown that the National motto of France – liberté, égalité, fraternité – doesn't apply to Muslim women.

Sasha Simic

London

Traingate

The mainstream media’s ludicrous coverage of Sir Richard Branson’s involvement in “Traingate” indicates that the old boy network is much faster, more efficient and better connected than our current rail system. But does this multi-billionaire train operator not realise that a cynical public will make the obvious connection between his financial interests in this matter and Jeremy Corbyn’s plans to renationalise the railways? And secondly, is it not unwise to imply that there are seats aplenty on his trains when many rail commuters face such overcrowding that finding a space to sit on the floor, or indeed a luggage rack, seems like a luxury?

This silly story is yet another illustration of how those who have always travelled in the first-class carriages of life lack any understanding of the experience of those less privileged than themselves. Another illustration too of the self-serving links between big business, the mainstream media and the Government, evidenced daily by their concerted (and self-revealing) attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.

All change please.

Andy Halewood

Bradford on Avon

To those wondering over Jeremy Corbyn's honesty after Richard Branson's intervention in the Labour leadership election on the first day of voting, I would just say: “If you want to judge a man look at who his enemies are.”

Linda Ellis

Hull

I have just read Sean O’Grady’s article on whether returning the train network to the public under public ownership would work? My first question to O’Grady is: did not the loss-making franchise of East Coast become profitable after it was taken over by the Government? Secondly, I assume, on the basis of your comment, that you believe people who do not use the rail network should subsidise new trains? As I do not have children, surely I do not need to contribute to the massive education budget? In respect of the benefit of more people using the railway, there are fewer cars on the road and less pollution of the earth. Surely, O'Grady, you see my point?

N Smith

Address supplied

Solving the gender paygap

In your article about the recent research about the effect on motherhood on women's pay “Motherhood costs women a third of their salary compared to men, report reveals”, you didn't mention that female graduates get paid more than male graduates. You have reported that innumerable times.

The Women’s Equality Party says a solution to the pay gap when mothers take a career break to care for their children is to encourage fathers to take paternity leave. This would mean organisations would have to plan for paternity leave and for men to be as assertive as women in the workplace to demand their right to paternity leave. Also it would mean pre-school organisations would have to welcome fathers.

If a third of recipients of child benefit were fathers it would greatly reduce the gender pay gap and also mean that society’s sexist attitude to child care would have been removed.

Martin Oakes

Gloucestershire

What is all the fuss about badgers?

What is all the fuss about killing more badgers when we eat chickens, cows, pigs, lambs, fish and so on?

Dairy cows and egg-laying hens are also treated just as badly as the “meat’’ animals we eat and also end up in the same slaughterhouse anyway.

The only way to stop inflicting suffering and death on animals is to go vegan.

Mark Richards

Brighton