I copied the following article out of the “Daily Telegraph” today. Well, you had to with a Headline like the one in Bold Blue below. So many thoughts go through your head that I don’t know where to start.
So I won’t.
Except to wonder whether the Westminster equivalent of the UK’s illegal Immigrant problem has already reached epidemic proportions, and this is the Government’s way of shutting the stable door long after the horse in question has bolted.
And anyway, if 27% of the Cabinet has also suffered in this way, that means there'a around 6 of them. Any ideas who they might be? I can think of a couple of racing certs.
Lovely.
'Idiots and lunatics' may be given right to stand for Parliament
By Joanna Corrigan
Last Updated: 12:57AM BST 21/07/2008
People labelled "idiots" and "lunatics" under archaic mental health laws could soon be allowed to stand for Parliament.
Ministers are considering scrapping ancient rules after complaints from mental health campaigners that they are discriminatory.
Laws created in Elizabethan times define idiots as "incapable of gaining reason" and lunatics as capable of only periods of lucidity.
They are banned from becoming MPs "in their non lucid intervals".
The ancient laws also ban anyone sectioned under the Mental Health Act from putting themselves forward for election, even if they have fully recovered, and require MPs to give up their seat for life if they are sectioned for six months.
A spokesman for Mind, the mental health charity, said it was wrong to rule out people that have suffered in the past but are still extremely capable.
"People who have suffered mental health problems can function at a very high level. Look at Stephen Fry. He has been open about his manic depression and people would be shocked if someone like him were not eligible to stand," he said.
A recent survey of MPs found 27 per cent had suffered some kind of mental health problem.
One in three said the stigma attached to that type of illness had prevented them being open about it.
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