There are very few positive aspects to having the world on the brink of war, but I must thank Bush and Blair for one thing. I've been so busy recently worrying about their plans to start a war in Iraq that I completely forgot about that infuriating anachronism, the House of Lords. Temporarily forgetting about the Lords can only have been good for my blood pressure.

Unfortunately, their Lordships have been back in the spotlight this week, after once again doing what they've done so often in the past: taking an absurdly reactionary position on an issue that affects a lot of people's lives.

The Lords' latest stroke of genius is the rejection of a humane, sensible government bill intended to give thousands of children currently residing in institutions the chance of a family life. The bill sought to change UK adoption law so as to allow unmarried heterosexual couples and gay and lesbian couples the chance to become adoptive parents - subject, of course, to the usual stringent checks on their suitability for that very responsible role.

The bill would have rectified an absurd anomaly in the law. At present, unmarried people can adopt children in Britain - but their partners have no legal standing in the adoption unless married to the child's official guardian. The bid to change the law was misleadingly presented in some parts of the media as an attempt to 'legalise gay adoption'. In fact, it's already perfectly possible for a homosexual person to become a child's legal guardian in the UK: it's just not possible for their partner, however long-standing and stable the relationship, to be legally recognised in an adoption. The same applies to an unmarried heterosexual couple.

What this means in practical terms is that a child can grow up with a couple, but then be legally 'orphaned' in the event of the death of the partner whose name appeared on the adoption papers. The other person who had acted as a parent to that child for years has no legal status in such a situation - a state of affairs which can only add to the suffering in an already traumatic situation.

The elected representatives of the people in the House of Commons voted by a large majority to change the law in May. It was a free vote, with the party whips standing aside to let MPs vote according to their consciences. But a small majority in the unelected House of Lords decided that the 5,000-plus children currently waiting for a new home would be better off staying in institutions than moving in with couples who didn't fit their image of what a family should look like. That means that the bill must return to the Commons and be voted through again in order to have a chance of becoming law, and time constraints may make that difficult to achieve in the near future.

Perhaps the most depressing sight in the whole story was that of a Christian pressure group, the Christian Institute, taking an action that seemed like a sick joke but was actually all too serious. They produced cards for parents to carry that resembled the donor cards many people keep with them, giving consent for their organs to be used in transplant operations in the event of their death. The huge difference was that while donor cards carry a generous, public-spirited message, the Christian Institute's cards carried a message of fear. They read: 'In the event of my death I do not want my children to be adopted by homosexuals'.

To be fair, those who opposed the new legislation also advanced some arguments that did not seem entirely founded in homophobia. It was argued that children are better off with a stable family background, which is undoubtedly true. It's also true that, statistically, married couples are less likely to split up than unmarried couples.

But I can't agree that, as a result, any married couple is better able to bring up a child than any unmarried couple. I know a lesbian couple who've been together for over 20 years and would probably make great adoptive mothers if they so chose. I've also known some bickering married couples whose stormy relationships would have provided seriously grim backgrounds for any children brought into them. Each application by a couple to become a child's guardians should surely be treated on its own merits, looking at the personal qualities of the people concerned rather than their marital status or sexual orientation.

Perhaps the most outrageous argument put forward in favour of the House of Lords' position was that children being brought up by same-sex couples might be teased or bullied at school. Children can certainly be very cruel, and there is undoubtedly homophobia in many playgrounds. But there's racism in playgrounds too, and no-one's suggesting that black people should therefore be banned from adopting children. Politicians often behave like playground bullies, but this is the first time I've heard politicians suggesting that playground bullies should be allowed to dictate public policy.

The government, to its credit, plans to have the matter debated again in the Commons as soon as possible. Given the size of the Commons majority in the last vote, it seems certain that MPs will support the changes again, and I hope that when that happens the Lords will accept the will of the elected House of Parliament.

But in the longer term, this sorry saga demonstrates that the reform of the House of Lords hasn't gone far enough. It is outrageous that a group of privileged people, elected by no-one, can thwart the will of those the public actually voted for.

In his speech at the recent Labour Party Conference, Tony Blair declared that his party was at its best when it was at its boldest. But in matters of constitutional reform, the changes introduced by this government have been piecemeal and timid. The number of hereditary peers in the House of Lords has been greatly reduced, and there are now proposals to have some elected members in the Lords. Those are steps in the right direction, but they're nowhere near enough.

What is - or should be - really embarrassing for the Labour Party is that it is now the most conservative of the three major UK political parties when it comes reforming the upper House of Parliament. Both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats now favour the establishment of a Senate to replace the House of Lords, with most of the senators directly elected by the public. Such a move is long overdue. I hope the Blair government will soon find the courage to make really decisive changes to the ancient, undemocratic institution that has thwarted its plans on this and many other issues.

There are times when I feel as though the world predicted in the book and film Minority Report is becoming a reality. In Minority Report, a special 'pre-crime' police force arrests and punishes people for crimes they haven't actually committed yet, but were going to commit in the future according to predictions the police force believe to be infallible.

The plans for war with Iraq are essentially based on Minority Report principles. Iraq, we're told, must be attacked not because of what it has done, but because of what it might do in the future. It's a new and alarming approach to international relations, but it is being proposed in deadly earnest by the American government and its echo machine in London.

And now the Blair administration is bringing the same principle to the home front, with its dreadful new proposals on mental health. A draft Mental Health Bill proposes that anyone deemed to be suffering from a dangerous personality disorder should be subject to detention even if they have committed no crime. The same bill proposes that mentally ill people living in the community should be forced to take their medication if they refuse to do so voluntarily.

The proposed bill seems designed primarily to soothe public fears about 'dangerous nutters', but it could make matters much worse by deterring people suffering from mental health problems from seeking treatment. I know from recent personal experience how difficult it can be to approach your doctor and confess that you feel mentally unwell. How much more difficult might it be to approach a doctor if you knew that they were under instructions to order the imprisonment of anyone who they felt might be unstable, regardless of whether that person had ever troubled the police?

This concern was reflected in the result of an opinion poll conducted by the polling organisation NOP for the mental health charity Mind in September. The poll found that 37 per cent of British people would be deterred from seeking treatment from their doctors for depression if the government's proposals passed into law.

The proposal to force those being treated in the community to take their medication may seem slightly less sinister, but it ignores the fact that doctors can and do sometimes get their prescriptions disastrously wrong. I have a friend who's currently, like me, successfully battling a drink problem. Normally, she copes with life very well. But she was recently driven temporarily insane, to the point of suffering hallucinations, when a doctor inexplicably prescribed a drug for her that's normally given to psychotic patients. As soon as she stopped taking the medication, the hallucinations stopped and she was back to her usual self again.

Even when there isn't such a drastic effect on the patient's mental state, some psychoactive drugs have severe side-effects, including liver and heart damage. It's hardly surprising that some patients decide that the treatment is worse than the disease.

So alarming are the government's proposals that a remarkable coalition of people concerned with mental health in the UK has been assembled to oppose them. The Mental Health Alliance is an umbrella group comprising over 50 other organisations, and its core members include the British Psychological Society, the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

This week the Alliance organised a protest rally outside the Houses of Parliament, and in response the Prime Minister said: 'I entirely understand the concerns the Mental Health Alliance have. I think it is important that they realise there is pressure also from the public in a different direction because the public worries that some people who maybe tragically, have a severe mental disorder can pose a danger and threat to the public. We need to balance these two things together.'

I sincerely hope that when the government draws up the final version of its bill, it pays more attention to the experts in the MHA than to tabloid headlines. Given this government's record of pandering to popular prejudices, I'm not overly optimistic about that.

But perhaps I'm just being a bit paranoid.

Here's further evidence of life imitating Minority Report. For me, one of the most alarming things in the film was the idea of advertising hoardings that actually spoke to people as they passed by. Now, a Scottish company has come up with something pretty similar.

Fife-based industrial design consultancy Harris Hynd Ltd has designed billboards and posters equipped with an infra-red sensor that detects the presence of people, and activates a recorded audio message. A transducer turns the surface of the billboard or poster into a speaker.

Harris Hynd director Norman Harris has warned: 'Where before you might have had a picture of a drink being poured into a glass, now you can hear the drink being poured. Or you might hear a voice talking to you.'

If this frightening prospect becomes a reality, I hope the technology then moves on to the logical next step: interactive ads that don't just talk at you, but also listen to your reply and respond accordingly. I look forward to the day when a billboard shouts down the street after me: 'Well really, Sir, there was no need to use language like that.'

Ormy's 'Notes' and Other
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