Take a wild flight of fancy with me now and imagine if the prisons were full. Whilst of course we know this would never happen under a Labour government, what with their organisational excellence and financial nous and everything - just imagine...

What if you could take your common garden recidivist - reclassify them - so as instead of imprisonment when they knife a 90 year old lady for her pack of Polo mints, they go into long term mental health wards? It's a little Orwellian sounding isn't it? The prison of the mind - eternally medicated drones living out their lives harmoniously chemically enslaved to their mental imprisonment.

As opposed to being an eternal absconding risk, psychotic, smash the face in of any fellow inmate or prison officer who toddles within ten feet kind of affair - replicated a hundred thousand times in Her Majesty's Hotel Service, up and down the land... is it more preferable to continually dope up prisoners and deal with them within the mental health system, as opposed to the penal system?

Well, it seems to be the way things are going to go. Straight-jackets instead of brick walls, Thorazine instead of Heroin, and Nurses instead of Wardens. All this coming to you courtesy of The Mental Health Act 2007.

This fear of the lines between mental illness and criminality becoming conveniently blurred, is only one of many dystopic nightmares made more possible for UK Plc by virtue of this dog-shit piece of legislation. Dog-shit as you will appreciate being a very technical term - basically meaning that this legislation is in many terms, worse then the earlier 1983 Act it amends.

Here are some other important highlights from this new act:

Everyone is now mentally ill, according to the government, because whereas before one's mental illness had to have reached a stage where it had to be proved a 'danger to oneself or others' now, there is no such qualification. A mental illness is just  "any disorder or disability of the mind". Nice... why make madness anymore complicated then it already is eh?

Legally when this Act receives the Royal Ink , it's possible to section anyone... When one is cognoscent of mental illness in the round, it is realized that not a single person on this entire planet is 100% the full ticket. In fact, our emotional and mental frailties are exclusively what makes us HUMAN! Before,when one had to be a danger to others in order to be classified as having a mental disorder. Not anymore Timmeh...

Sex maniacs better zip up and watch out as well, apparently promiscuity, makes a person more likely to be defined as 'mentally ill' under this Act then the old one. So next time you get lucky, better make sure it isn't with a Nurse or Doctor!

The Act also pokes it's nose into questions of Immorality. Although not the 'rip off a million peoples pension scheme' kind of immorality. Heaven's No! The kind of immorality that comes from drinking or drugs, or probably a slice of cake too far. That kind of immorality. Of course, with the extremely clear, concise and laymens language the Act is explained in it must be understood that this is only for those people with 'dependence' on the Immoral substance in question. So choose wisely, before ordering that second after-work pint, please!

Then again, maybe this Act isn't all that bad. Perhaps if we'd have had it in 2003 we could have Tony Blair sectioned for taking us into an illegal and deeply immoral war, and being very lax with regards Britain's war machine, slagging our soldiers out promiscuously to American Energy interests. Although, maybe I'm just mad and need sectioning...

Who knows anymore? Your answers on a chewed up postcard please.

addendum: How strange! check out this BBC News Article for a soften up. Sorry, I meant Follow Up: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7058654.stm

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