A LOT has been going on in the world in the past week and in this column I could be writing about any of these events.

But, despite the fact that it has been a week since Boris Johnson wrote his inflammatory column and inspired many, many newspaper columns and opinions, nothing else has has quite the same effect on me as the row over burkas.

Just to recap on what Mr Johnson actually wrote in his column for The Daily Telegraph, he believes that “it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes” and that “if a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber (I should feel fully entitled to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly). Those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct”.

He believes the burka is “oppressive” and that it is “weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces”.

Writing just after Denmark imposed a ban on wearing the burka, the one-piece veil that covers the body and face with a mesh screen to see through. and the niqab, the face veil that leaves the area around the eyes open, he argued against “telling a free-born adult woman what she may or may not wear in a public place when she is simply minding her own business”.

Now, in theory, the clothes that Muslim people wear is none of my business, especially as in this country it’s estimated there are only about 1,000 wearers of the burka. Yet, just as some Muslim people are entitled to feel strongly about Western garments such as bikinis, I do have an opinion about the burka, which I am just as entitled to hold.

I know many people will disagree with me but I’m afraid I think the burka is an offensive garment. Just as Mr Johnson described, it is an oppressive garment that restricts the lives of its wearers.

Its wearers are women only. You’d never find a man in such a constricting garment and its intention is to control women. It is imposed so that no man can see the woman except her husband and possibly some male relatives, a stamp of “ownership” if ever there was one. It is designed to hide her identity and to dehumanise her, as the burka is an all-encompassing shroud that disguises her completely.

It isolates a woman in many ways. In public, people will not and cannot speak to her because her face is hidden, thus eliminating any human response to her facial expressions, her voice is muffled and she appears unapproachable. The intention of the burka is, of course, to render her invisible to other men. The unfortunate side effect is that in this country, it also renders her invisible to other women and that in itself stops her integrating into wider society, leaving her relying on a small family circle for any social contact. In tandem with the requirement to wear such a restrictive garment come restrictions in other areas of their lives, such as jobs and wider social activities.

It restricts physical movement too. As Victorian ladies found, heavy material flapping around the ankles hampers normal activities such as walking and running, and prevents participation in sports that we take for granted in this country, such as swimming, yoga and cycling.

And how hot is it under a burka? There has been no respite for its wearers in our recent heatwave or in the heat of Muslim countries around the world. There is no pity for them in extreme weather conditions: they have to put up and shut up with the discomfort.

Modesty is no excuse for this garment: it simply perpetuates the fallacy that women and their sexuality are intrinsically bad and sinful, and that women should therefore be punished for having bodies that tempt men.

There is no question, of course, that men should have to control themselves. As for the argument put forward by defenders of the burka, including some wearers and even some misguided feminists, that they choose to wear it, no. Conditioning begins at an early age.

Wearers have said they feel safe in a burka, but that’s only because in strict countries they would fear penalties from men for not wearing one, and in Western countries because they have little or no experience of integrating socially with other men. And what choice do wearers of the burka really have? It’s certainly not a choice when the alternative is so dire: expulsion from their family, separation from their children, community ostracisation and, in extreme cases, physical injury and death.

Which would you choose?