Gay is an adjective meaning "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy"; however in modern usage, gay is a word usually used, as either a noun or adjective, to refer to homosexuals; persons sexually oriented toward members of their own gender.

"Gay", when used as an adjective, sometimes describes traits associated with both homosexual men and women, their culture, or perceived lifestyle. The term lesbian, on the other hand, is used exclusively in a gender-specific way to describe homosexual women.

Etymology

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BBC News | UK | World Edition

Brown visits UK troops in Helmand
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:43:02 -0000
Gordon Brown tells British troops they are "the heroes of our country", on a surprise trip to Afghanistan.
Big jump in top GCSE exam grades
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:21:51 -0000
There has been the biggest annual rise since 1990 in the proportion of GCSE exams awarded the best grades.
Drink-drive mother sent to jail
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:43:41 -0000
A woman whose child was seen shouting "stop mummy driving" is jailed for drink-driving after crashing into a fence.
Gary Glitter 'will fly to London'
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:24:43 -0000
Convicted paedophile and former pop star Gary Glitter has agreed to fly to London, Thai police have said.
Energy firm E.On to raise prices
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:09:53 -0000
Energy firm E.On is to raise gas prices by 26% and electricity prices by 16% on 22 August, blaming higher wholesale costs.
Guantanamo inmate wins ruling
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:40:12 -0000
A UK resident detained by the US wins a High Court ruling that the UK government should disclose material which he says backs his torture claims.

The Economist: Britain

The Tories and values:
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:49:44 -0000
A mini-revival of social conservatism is in the airBRITISH conservatives have largely eschewed the culture wars fought by the American right. Tories have had old-fashioned views on marriage and other moral issues, to be sure, but they have rarely given them much prominence. The lack of a vocal religious right partly explains why they have had a cooler relationship with the Republicans than the Labour Party enjoys with the Democrats. And David Cameron, their leader, began his stewardship of the party in liberal style, declaring himself eminently relaxed about the exotic lifestyles to be found in modern Britain.All the more interesting, then, that recent weeks have seen tentative but unmistakable stirrings of social conservatism from the Tories. In July Mr Cameron gave a speech (in a church, no less) denouncing moral relativism. The fight against crime and other ills was, he said, being hamstrung by society’s “refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad”. On August 4th Michael Gove, the party’s schools spokesman, deplored the portrayal of women in men’s magazines. Conservatives such as Iain Duncan Smith, the party’s former leader, and Ed Vaizey, its arts spokesman, have also criticised the British Board of Film Classification for giving the new Batman film a lenient 12A rating. Even the party’s embrace of the “libertarian paternalism” espoused in “Nudge”, the year’s most talked-about book among policymakers, is telling. ...
Inflation:
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:49:44 -0000
As long as prices surge the Bank of England cannot cut interest rates. That will not help a floundering governmentOVER the past few months the economy has developed a disquieting tendency to outgloom the gloomiest prediction. The housing market in particular has fared much worse than expected as house prices, turnover and residential investment have all tumbled. That is one big reason why economic activity is turning down sharply, trumping earlier forecasts of a moderate slowdown and pushing up the jobless count. But above all the upsurge in inflation has proved far more extreme than was once projected. The Bank of England has the task of keeping the annual rate of inflation, measured by the consumer-prices index (CPI), at 2%. As recently as March it appeared to be on top of the job: inflation, at 2.5%, was only a bit higher than the official target. But by May inflation had reached 3.3% and it vaulted to 4.4% in July. The 0.6 percentage-point rise since June, when inflation was 3.8%, was the biggest since the series started in 1997. ...
English spelling:
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:49:44 -0000
The rules need updating, not scrappingGHOTI and tchoghs may not immediately strike readers as staples of the British diet; and even those most enamoured of written English’s idiosyncrasies may wince at this tendentious rendering of “fish and chips”. Yet the spelling, easily derived from other words*, highlights the shortcomings of English orthography. This has long bamboozled foreigners and natives alike, and may underlie the national test results released on August 12th which revealed that almost a third of English 14-year-olds cannot read properly. One solution, suggested recently by Ken Smith of the Buckinghamshire New University, is to accept the most common misspellings as variants rather than correct them. Mr Smith is too tolerant, but he is right that something needs to change. Due partly to its mixed Germanic and Latin origins, English spelling is strikingly inconsistent. ...
Real ale:
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:49:44 -0000
Folk-drink or aspirational libation?EARLS COURT, a vast, high-ceilinged exhibition centre in west London, does not make for a promising pub. There are few seats, and the bright fluorescent lights do little to make drinkers feel at ease. But the lack of creature comforts did not dampen the high spirits of the students, beer connoisseurs and off-duty businessmen attending the Great British Beer Festival, billed as the world’s biggest, on August 5th-9th. They roamed from bar to bar, sampling over 450 varieties of beer and cider.Such good cheer may seem odd, given that beer seems to be falling out of favour in Britain. Sales have dropped by 9% over the past decade, in part because wine has grown more popular. But not all beers are the same. The festival was organised by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), a 90,000-strong lobbying group promoting traditional, unpasteurised, unfiltered beer, stored and served from casks wherein, with live yeast, it continues to ferment. ...
Nuclear disarmament:
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:49:44 -0000
The new nuclear pioneersBRITAIN as a “disarmament laboratory”? Tell that one to veterans of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Earlier this year they celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first Easter protest march to Aldermaston, home of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) where research and design work continues on Britain’s Trident-based nuclear warheads. Yet AWE has lately been turning its nuclear skills to a rather different purpose: finding solutions to some of the many difficulties that disarmament would pose if it ever turned from slogan to reality. To CND’s regret, and the annoyance of the Scottish Nationalists who want to eject the submarines that carry the country’s nuclear-tipped Trident missiles from their Faslane base on the Clyde, Britain is not about to disarm unilaterally. It remains one of the five officially recognised nuclear powers, alongside America, China, France and Russia. Over the protests of its own left-wingers, last year the Labour government persuaded Parliament to replace the deterrent’s ageing submarines; legislators will probably have to vote before long on replacing the missiles and warheads too. ...
Oyster cards:
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:49:44 -0000
The contract for London’s transport card is up for grabsFEW phrases in British politics are more radioactive than “Private Finance Initiative” (PFI), a convoluted scheme under which government pays private firms to carry out work on its behalf. Many such contracts have been plagued by delays and costly legal disputes. For all the talk of greater efficiency, the real attraction of building and running schools and hospitals, say, through a PFI arrangement is that it allows the government to shove spending off the official balance sheet (although that loophole is to be closed next year). Yet not all PFIs have been disasters. One of the best has been London’s Oyster-card system, which allows travellers to store their entitlement to use the Tube or city buses on a computerised card that gets them through ticket barriers with a simple wave of the wallet. The little blue card has been a big success: over 10m have been issued since its launch in 2003, 6m are in active use and four-fifths of the journeys on London’s public transport involve one. ...

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