One of my first diaries on this page took a sideways look at a particularly silly idea from the Government: The promise of Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to outlaw “gay hate speech”. I argued that free speech demands rough-and-tumble and give-and-take, that from time to time insults and condemnation must inevitably fly; that honest opinions and religious beliefs on the morality of different kinds of sexual behaviour do differ; and that to treat homosexuals as a pathetic minority in need of special protection from harsh commentary was, itself, insulting.

These days we gays can stand up for ourselves. In 1980 we could perhaps have done with protection like this, but that was before sexual tolerance became fashionable in the media, the Government or the Opposition. As Rowan Atkinson says, the point at which criticism of any group is considered so outrageous that it's a vote-winner for politicians to outlaw it is probably the point at which the law's protection is no longer needed.

Well, just before midnight on Monday the House of Lords went a long way towards squashing the Government's proposals. By a substantial majority it approved a clause that would protect our present freedom to criticise or question sexual practices.

The clause was backed by many for religious reasons. Of course, religions and their followers are themselves protected by the recent religious hatred restrictions on free speech; and it would be nice if “faith” leaders took as robust a view of the public's right to attack them as they take of their right to attack homosexuals. I'm tempted to remark that they (the bishops, not the gays) don't like it up 'em. But we who believe in free speech must accept support from any quarter, even those who only want it for themselves.

So two cheers for our Noble (and in many cases Reverend) Friends. In the Commons Mr Straw may now try to overturn their amendment. Instead, the Commons should push it further, and restore the freedom of speech casually to insult as well as seriously to criticise sexual practices.

What is it with Gordon Brown and flags? Has he been spending too much time at clambakes on New England lawns? His latest gimmick (yesterday) was to fly the Cross of St George over Downing Street, and apparently the Welsh and Scottish flags will follow suit for St David's and St Andrew's day.

Flags and stickers are for mad people. Mr Brown is getting like those activists you see at party conferences whose lapels are a sea of badges, labels and slogans; or motorists whose rear window tells the world everywhere they've been and everything they support or oppose. The irony is, this flag business is deeply un-British, un-English, and (frankly) uncouth.

My weekly Catalonia Today has just arrived. My eye falls on a small snippet. On March 22 during the Easter holiday 40.8 per cent of all the electricity consumed in Spain was generated by wind power. The figure is nowhere near typical: somewhat freakish, in fact, in that a spike in wind-generated electricity (caused by strong winds from the Atlantic, generating 9,862 megawatts) coincided with a trough in national demand (caused by the public holiday) but it's nevertheless an encouraging and surprising antidote to the pessimism of those who say that wind can never make a significant contribution to Europe's energy needs.

The missing link between the innate variability of wind energy and the steady supply of power we require is (and has been for more than a century) storage: our failure to develop a cheap and efficient means of keeping large quantities of electrical power until we need it. The hydrogen fuel cell, which uses electricity for the production of hydrogen, and about which there has been much in the media this week, may be the beginning of the answer.

On the wonderful Jon Stewart Daily Show in America, the interview with Barack Obama on Tuesday night was excellent: funny yet penetrating, especially when Mr Obama was challenged to try saying a couple of standard, boring sentences in an uplifting way. But Stewart's payoff (about Mr Obama) was sublime. You know (he said) Obama had brought such hope to his country. If he were to win, there was only one question left. “I wonder how he'll break our hearts? I hope it's a financial scandal.”

Why is there nothing like this in Britain? Face it: the humour's too clever, too sophisticated, too deep for a mass British audience.

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