Good news: Intolerant B&B owners are now required by law to be LESS tolerant

..which is, when you think about it, terrific stuff.

As a grownup might put it:
As the holiday season gets under way, Meg Munn, a junior minister, has emphasised that it is illegal to allow married couples to share a room at a guest house or hotel while not allowing homosexuals the same right.

If gays are turned away, the only way a Christian or Muslim guest house owner can lawfully stay in business is if he or she offers single bedrooms to all guests - straight or gay
Top notch work by our political masters there. If there's any way at all of making a stay in a seaside B&B remotely tolerable, it's by introducing the elements of a Whitehall farce into the proceedings.

I quite look forward to ducking in and out of bedrooms after dark. Great entertainment.

The Top 10 really horrible places on Earth

As enumerated by the fine minds over at Stuff.

Please note, not one of them is in, or even near, the UK.

It's almost as if we live where all the really evil wars, weather and other worrisome events aren't.

There's a lesson there, if only I could tease it out....

Oh, hang on - Maybe THIS is picture of the day

I'm not saying airports are incredibly stressful, but...

How many people Caulkin their kids when they're not on holiday?

Picture of the Day

Yay. Road trip.

Ready to buy some Michael Moran books yet?

The fine people at Love Reading sorted out my author profile, which was showing a whole other Michael Moran who writes brainy books about politics and such. I'm not suggesting I'm all that better looking but the photo that they  had of him, wearing some sort of sun-hat and obviously on his hols, made me chuckle a little.

It's changed now and there's a nice picture of me and a shed. Far better.

The list of other books by me still makes for pretty droll reading though. Australia? Erotic Tickling? hard to estimate which is the less likely.

The other books I have worked on, if you are at all interested, are:

Shopping While Drunk - with Amanda Astill, Tom Bromley, and Simon Trewin.

Intended as a followup to our Guilty Pleasures book it's rather a better read in my view. It's a catalogue of useless tat that everyone likes. There are jokes. A few of them still stand up. Best of all it's a hardback, so you can use it to prop the window open on hot days.

The Encyclopaedia of Guilty Pleasures - with Tom Bromley, Simon Trewin, and some damn Yankees.

Exactly what it sounds like. A retooling of the US title of the same name that we probably lavished rather more love on that was necessary. Which was a shame, because it really didn't sell at all well. And whose fault is that? Well, unless you bought it, yours.

Rock and Pop Elevens - with Tom Bromley and Simon Trewin

I can't pretend this is a terrific book. It has its moments but the comedy is rather weighed down by a little too much fact. And who likes fact?

Check 'em out. You can find them in libraries, bookshops, and wherever unwanted books are dumped.

Good news for air travellers!

The much-publicised 'credit crunch' means fewer people will be booking flights this summer.

Don't worry though, you won't be all alone on the plane with no-one to talk to.

Because oil prices are at an all-time high, most carriers are cutting back on how many flights they'll be offering meaning that every plane will be as crowded and indeed overbooked as it's always been.

Perhaps 'good news' isn't quite the phrase I'm looking for.

It's good news for me though. I'll be at home, sunning myself in my garden, laughing at my own jokes.