Libertarian musings from just inside the M25.

Just unbelievable. The BBC has the story. Apparently Sikh police officers want the government to fund the development of bulletproof turbans “so they can serve as firearms officers and deal with public order”. This would be because, according to the British Sikh Police Association, somewhere in the religious requirements of Sikhism (presumably the Guru Granth Sahib) is an edict prohibiting the removal of turbans, meaning that Sikh officers “cannot currently do jobs” such as riot policing. Or, in fact,  to widen the issue’s implications, following the standard safety regulations for riding a bike; or, for that matter, working in relative security on a building site.

I’m not exactly a fan of exemptional treatments for minorities on the grounds of anything other than personal security. As far as quality of life is concerned, I rather suspect that Sikhs would prefer not to have their skull fractured by collisions with dangerous objects over the slight inconvenience of having transgressed a sweeping generalised rule in a religious text written in a pre-industrial age and a non-violent context. So I don’t really see why a religious requirement should be used to justify frittering millions of pounds of taxpayer money away on such a niche and falsely preferential project. And for the record, I believe we already have something like bulletproof hats in common use in the police force: they’re called helmets…