In many ways the situation now for gay people in the UK is better than it’s ever been. But if I was feeling happy about things, I was brought down to earth with a bump by the article on page 65, “The invisible children”, about the victims of homophobic bullying. The article is not available online, but I strongly recommend you hand over £4.25 at your local WHSmith for it, or buy the digital edition of the magazine.

It begins by telling the story of 15-year-old Dominic Crouch:

Dominic had been on a school trip where, during a game of Spin the Bottle, he kissed another boy. We don’t know if he was gay or not. As Roger says, that was something for him to decide in his own time. But back at school, video from a phone was allegedly passed around and Dominic was bullied with homophobic language. One day, Dominic walked out of school, climbed to the top of a six-storey council building, and after two hours, threw himself off.

The sad story of Dominic is far from an isolated case. In fact, it’s a serious problem, albeit one which is ignored by the mainstream media. A Stonewall survey in 2007 revealed that 65% of LGB pupils experienced bullying and that figure increases to 75% in faith schools.

Why do I mention faith schools? Because of this Guardian article about an anti-gay book which has been used in some British faith schools, which has incensed me.

The booklet, “Pure Manhood: How to become the man God wants you to be”, discusses a boy dealing with “homosexual attractions” which it suggested may “stem from an unhealthy relationship with his father, an inability to relate to other guys, or even sexual abuse”.

The booklet, which claims that “scientifically speaking, safe sex is a joke”, explains that “the homosexual act is disordered, much like contraceptive sex between heterosexuals. Both acts are directed against God’s natural purpose for sex – babies and bonding.”

The final insult: Michael Gove – Education Secretary for a government which seems increasingly determined to send society back to the 1950s – claims that the Equality Act 2010, which prohibits anti-gay discrimination, does not apply to, “any materials used in sex and relationship education lessons,” so the schools can continue pushing this dogma on impressionable children with impunity.

Therefore, any gay school pupils unlucky enough to be at a faith school don’t just have to contend with taunts from their fellow students. They could potentially have teachers standing up and telling him that they are disordered individuals. By allowing this material under the guise of “religious freedom”, the Tories are now actively promoting discrimination and enabling bullies. It’s disgusting.

I’ve decided to start my own religion. It’s called Hampoism, and takes as its central tenet that Michael Gove is an odious tossweasel. Give me my legal protection NOW!

In the first case, the Christian owners of a guest house in Cornwall lost an appeal against a fine for discriminating against a gay couple who were refused a double bed. The hotel owners claimed that they did not allow any unmarried couple to share a bed and therefore the discrimination was not on the grounds of sexual orientation, but the Court was not convinced by this argument.

I’m pleased that the original ruling has been upheld. It is not fair or right that a gay couple going on holiday should have to phone ahead and check whether the hotel owners approve of their sex life. The law reflects this, stating that no service provider can discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation. Incidentally, there are also protections for religious belief. Can you imagine the outcry if the situation described above was reversed and a gay couple turned a Christian away from their hotel? That would not be acceptable either, and there are laws in place for that reason.

The second case involved Bideford town council, who are at the centre of a row over the prayers held before council meetings. An atheist councillor, with the support of the National Secular Society, launched a court action, claiming that forcing councillors to attend prayers was a breach of human rights. Earlier this week the Court ruled that prayers are unlawful.

There was an outcry from Church leaders, and Eric Pickles took time out from lunch to condemn the ruling.

Again, I can see no problem with this outcome. Prayers now cannot form part of the formal council proceedings, but there is nothing to stop prayers being held before official council business begins. Surely this is a reasonable compromise – unless, of course, the Christian members of Bideford council feel the need to force their faith on everyone else, like it or not?

Leaving aside the issues of the above two cases, it is hyperbolic in the extreme to claim that Christianity is “under attack”. Last time I checked, there were churches in villages, towns and cities across the land, and Christians of any denomination could travel to any of them without impediment, to worship as they wished. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has a long list of countries where Christianity is banned entirely or subject to severe restrictions. For the Daily Mail to claim British Christianity is under attack is an insult to those Christians worldwide who live in fear of government-sanctioned persecution or even death because of their faith.

I watched the HD version of Encounter at Farpoint, the show’s pilot episode, tonight, and was impressed – it genuinely does look lovely. TNG was shot on film but then transferred to videotape for editing, resulting in a slight but noticeable loss of picture quality. To get the best picture quality possible, CBS have gone back to the original film footage and painstakingly re-edited the episodes exactly as they were first time around, guided by long-serving Star Trek guru Michael Okuda. Pleasingly for TV purists, the episodes are still in 4:3 (the temptation to go widescreen must have been immense).

The YouTube clip below is a promotional clip from CBS, but I can say that it genuinely does look that good. It’s safe to say that TNG has never looked better.

The special effects have also been redone, but the producers, thankfully, have resisted the urge to do a complete CGI makeover or add in pointless extra guff for the sake of it (Star Wars and Red Dwarf, I’m looking at you). For the most part, they have stuck with the original model shots (space jellyfish and all), re-composited in HD. All in all, it’s a wonderful upgrade to a wonderful series, remaining utterly faithful to the original while taking advantage of today’s TV technology.

The consequences of this are that I will probably be parting with my hard-earned cash for TNG on Blu-ray, despite spending a considerable amount of money buying the DVD box sets a few years ago. Well played, CBS. Well played.

“I don’t think it is the role of the state to define what marriage is. It is set in tradition and history and you can’t just [change it] overnight, no matter how powerful you are,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

“We’ve seen dictators do it in different contexts, and I don’t want to redefine very clear social structures that have been in existence for a long time and then overnight the state believes it could go in a particular way.”

Dr Sentamu fled Uganda during the rule of Idi Amin, so you’d think he’d be a bit more careful about comparing people to dictators. If the Church wants to stick to its narrow definition of marriage, I think it is wrong, but in a free society it should be free to do so. However, it cannot enforce these rules against the wider population who are not bound by the Bible (or specifically, Dr Sentamu’s interpretation of it). They should be free to marry whomever they want.

I agree with David Cameron on very little, but I hope he pushes forward with the gay marriage consultation in the face of a backbench revolt. Or should that read “revolting backbenchers”?

On Thursday the microblogging site announced a new policy on deleting or withholding Tweets. A lot of users have interpreted this as censorship and have gone so far as to call for a Twitter blackout in protest.

I’m all for a good Twitter mob wielding virtual pitchforks, #flamingtorches and 140-character protest chants. But in this case the mob is wrong – here’s why:

1. The new policy is almost exactly the same as the previous one. Twitter has always responded to legitimate demands to remove illegal content, such as DMCA takedown notices against tweets linking to pirated content. The main difference now is that content can be removed on a country-by-country basis rather than censored worldwide.
2. Oppressive governments will block Twitter anyway. During the height of the Egyptian protests last year, the internet was effectively turned off in that country. During the disputed 2009 election in Iran, the government blocked access to Twitter and other social networking sites, forcing users there to find ways round the block. In China, Twitter is blocked entirely. Is a censored Twitter worse than no Twitter at all?
3. Twitter is being open and accountable about their policy: affected users will be informed when a Tweet has been “censored”, and Twitter has teamed up with Chilling Effects to list all takedown notices it receives, so users can see for themselves what is being censored.

Mashable has a good post about Twitter’s announcement and why the new policy could actually be good for activists in the long run.

The mayor would not be as powerful as London’s (for example, Liverpool’s mayor would lack the sweeping powers over transport and policing enjoyed by Boris Johnson) but would be in overall charge of the city’s day-to-day running. In theory, there would be less beauracracy and more accountability.

It all sounds great, until you see the terrifying list of potential candidates identified by the Liverpool Echo. After sensible people like current council leader Joe Anderson and LibDem councillor Paula Keaveney, we get Ricky Tomlinson and – yikes – Phil Redmond (“Being mayor is a bit like a Scouse wedding”). I don’t know why they didn’t throw in Jimmy Corkhill and Harry Enfield in a curly wig for good measure. Perhaps Ken Dodd could take over; his zero-rate tax policy would be popular (at least, until voters realised it only applied to him).

Hopefully we will get someone rational, not a celebrity candidate or the next Derek Hatton. We could hardly fare worse than Doncaster, who elected the English Democrat candidate Peter Davies in 2009. His valuable contributions to civic life have included “stopping political correctness” and saying that Britain could learn from Taliban family values.

He gets Jobseeker’s Allowance, but thanks to a crisis loan repayment and card debt (his bank refused an overdraft but happily offered him a credit card), he is left with just £20 a week to live on after utility bills are paid. He has plunged into a world far away from the £2,000 plasma TVs and massive houses that the Daily Mail pretends all benefit claimants get:

He goes once a fortnight to one of two local shops that offer heavily discounted food – packets of buy-one-get-one-free frozen burgers for a pound, two-for-£1 ice-cream tubs for his younger children who stay with him at the weekend, a bag of frozen chips, which, if he rations it correctly, he can get four meals out of. When that runs out he eats rice and pasta which he gets for 25p a pack at Tesco. “Sometimes you have to eat crap.”

Bebb looks healthy, but admits he sometimes feels wobbly when he does the 45-minute walk to the job centre (a £3.80 day bus pass is usually unaffordable), because he hasn’t eaten enough. “Sometimes I’ve had to stop because I’ve had the shakes, dizzy.”

Should we expect the Old Etonian Prime Minister and his cabinet cronies to understand any of this? Mr Bebb knows the answer to that question:

“If the prime minister can go out and spend £100 a night for his dinner and I don’t get that a fortnight, where’s the justice in that?”

We were promised a day of action, with high-profile web sites “going dark” for the day to draw attention to the chilling effect the proposed law would have on online free speech. Lots of big names were mentioned, but did they actually follow through? Well, yes and no.

Boing Boing and Reddit both did a full disappearing act, in both cases replacing their usual site with a holding page explaining the protest.

Wikipedia, at first glance, was also blacked out… but their blackout was a bit of Javascript trickery. Disable scripting (or go to the mobile site) and the information was still there, enabling savvier schoolchildren to continue cutting and pasting their GCSE coursework.

There was much excitement when Google announced they were joining the protest, but their “blackout” was little more than altering the Google logo on their homepage. Therefore, SOPA is at least as important to Google as the 110th anniversary of the Uganda Railway.

There was a rumour that Facebook would join in. They did post an anti-SOPA message, but the site itself is unaffected, to the relief of the millions who need to attend to Farmville and post photos of themselves drinking too much.

All things considered, today’s protest is a bit of a damp squid.

However, the lacklustre effort made by some today should not distract from the fact that SOPA is a real threat, not just in the US, but worldwide. Look at the case of Richard O’Dwyer, a British man who is fighting to prevent his extradition to the US to face copyright infringement charges, despite the UK authorities deciding not to pursue him. If SOPA passes, US officials could be knocking on doors of people all over the UK. Think about that next time you’re tempted to use a Katy Perry song as background music for that YouTube video of your cats.

I haven’t actually watched the programme. If I want to see Richard Wilson as a crazy old man irritated by every aspect of the modern world, I can watch his classic series Duck Patrol. But I was alerted by Twitter (cheers Seb!) that one of the features was about supermarket self-service tills.

I like supermarket self-service tills. Anything that reduces the amount of actual human interaction I have to do is fine by me. However, I was reminded of something that happened when I paid a visit to the Tesco Superstore in Liverpool city centre last year (I’m full of Tesco anecdotes, me).

I used the self-service till and happened to have a discount voucher with me, so I scanned it.

“Please insert coupon in the slot provided.”

Okey-dokey. I posted the coupon and waited for the machine to respond.

“Please insert coupon in the slot provided.”

Ah, right. The pleasantly-voiced computer hadn’t noticed me sticking it in her slot. Unfortunately the machine, believing that I was pulling a fast one, completely locked up, refusing to do anything else except repeat the coupon mantra over and over.

Noticing my problem, the supervisor came over. I explained my predicament to her.

“Ah yes,” she said, “this is a common problem. I know how to fix this.”

And with that, she placed her lips on the slot and gently blew into it. This satisfied the machine, allowing me to continue my transaction.

What a wonder of technology these machines really are. If the supermarkets ever follow through on their threat to replace staffed checkouts entirely with self-service machines, I can look forward to a wonderful future, filled with rows of shoppers lovingly French-kissing their checkouts.

It’s so exciting… I can feel an unexpected item in the bagging area just thinking about it.

I visited her in hospital a couple of weeks ago, with my Dad. She was sedated and confused, so opportunity for conversation was limited. He just sat and held her hand, communicating more than words ever could.

For the last week, my Dad and his other sister spent every waking minute with Betty. Wealth and riches may come and go, but a loving family is forever.