Ir may or may not be legal but you can stll be locked up for it!

I did a double take this morning - a very cold and frosty morning - on the way from the dentist's surgery to my office at the sight of a billboard saying words to the effect that going topless in Whitehaven is legal.

I would have thought that women going topless in public except on a designated nudist beach would normally risk prosecution under the laws on decency. However, when I picked up a copy of the Whitehaven News later today there was a story, appropriately on page three (though not illustrated) about a book which has apparently just been published called "The law is an ass" with details of daft or unusual local laws.

This book includes the allegation, for which the Whitehaven News was unable to track down a scintilla of supporting evidence, that a local by-law has at some point been passed allowing women in Whitehaven to go topless.

Hmm. Even if this is right, someone silly enough to do it at the moment might still find themselves detained as a guest of Her Majesty, though the responsible secretary of state might be Jeremy Hunt rather than Chris Grayling.

At one stage of my career, while I was a health authority member and for some months afterwards, I served on mental health act appeal tribunals.

I can only say that if I were still serving on such a tribunal, and an appellant either male or female who came before us had been wandering around Whitehaven with their upper half naked in anything remotely resembling the sort of weather we have been having in the town at the moment, I doubt that the medical professionals would have too much of a struggle to make the case that the individual should be detained under Section Two of the Mental Health Act for his or her own protection!