I flew back from Ghana yesterday. As ever, long periods of blog silence from me mean I am in Africa and my internet access plans did not work out.

We are now very close to recovering the craigmurray.co.uk address, which will get many thousand old links across the internet working again.

My eye is caught today by this story from the Telegraph.

A man has been placed on the sex offenders’ register after being caught trying to have sex with a bicycle.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/cgi-bin/mt.cgi?tab=comments&__mode=list_comments&blog_id=2&saved_deleted=1

Of course this lends itself to humour. Questions of “What? How?” spring immediately to mind. Never having claimed to be politically correct, I can make jokes about having slept with a few bikes myself. (That joke may not work outside the UK).

But in fact this raises very serious questions indeed, and I believe Mr Robert Stewart’s rights have been very seriously infringed. It is plain from the report that he was conducting his sex act in a locked room. What is the difference in principle between pleasuring yourself with a dildo, a blow up doll or a bicycle, your pillow or a vibrator? People masturbate with all kinds of things – is masturbation in private a crime? The consequences of being on the sex offenders register are very severe, especially for employment. Mr Stewart’s rights have been most severely infringed. We should stop sniggering and start being outraged.