Turnpike Trusts

I have a post up at Transport Blog.

Oddly, the spell-checker in the Expression Engine blogging software complained about the word 'blogged'. Blogger's spell-checker doesn't have any problems with it, though.

Overheard in St Andrews tonight

"Oh no! I've been waiting all this time for the commercials so that I could go and have a fag*. But this is the BBC isn't it? F****** BBC and its f****** licence fee. Don't they realise that some of us need commercials?"

"Welcome to Britain, Vince."

*Despite being American, he was using the term in its British sense.

What's going on in this country?

Maybe my brain has been addled by too much wine tonight, but on reading this, I was shocked by this:

In the first government defeat, the Lords voted to rule out using sexuality, criminality and cultural or religious beliefs as grounds for diagnosing a mental disorder.

Naturally, I welcome any government defeat on anything, even a tiddlywinks match, but I'm still rubbing my eyes in disbelief that such criteria for locking people up could even be on the table. Sexuality I could just about understand, although not approve, since we've been there before. (But don't we now live in an era of compulsory tolerance of all sexual tastes that don't involve children or animals?) Criminality? Well, we already lock up criminals regardless of whether they are mentally disordered, so I'm not too bothered by that.

But cultural or religious beliefs? Isn't that tantamount to giving someone with a medical degree a license to have you locked up on the grounds that he thinks you're a bit odd? Or because you disagree with the political ideology that happens to be in vogue at the time?

Somebody tell me that their noble Lordships were merely correcting a mistake that the drafters of the legislation hadn't noticed. But if so, why is this being described as a "government defeat"?

Perhaps I should look at this again with a more sober mind.

UPDATE: It has just occurred to me that blogging whilst inebriated was not ruled out in the government defeat. I'm done for.