I’m unexpectedly going on a very brief visit to Canberra tomorrow, and my itinerary includes attendance at Question Time, which should be a historic occasion. I’ll give a full report when I can, but there will probably be no more blogging until Friday.

Everyone has their pet hates and one of mine is people who block the road while they reverse into a parking space where the norm is to park forward. I used to think I was being irrational about this – after all, what does it matter whether people drive in and reverse out or reverse in and drive out. Today, I suddenly realised the asymmetry. If you reverse out, you have to give way to the traffic using the road. If you reverse in, you’re already on the road and through traffic has no option but to give way to you. So people who reverse in are in the same position as queuejumpers – violating a social norm for their own convenience.

Tim Blair, as usual, defends his right to play with dangerous toys, like guns and fast cars, devoting a comprehensive fisking to a piece by Hugh McKay about speeding. I didn’t find McKay’s article that interesting when I first read it, but judging by Tim’s response, it hit the target.

On libertarian grounds, I’ve been planning to suggest some sort of theme park, analogous to smoking rooms and safe injecting rooms, where lovers of guns and dangerous driving could act out their Grand Theft Auto fantasies without endangering the rest of us. Then it struck me that much of the US is like that already, except for all the ordinary decent people trying to live there. I don’t suppose it would be too hard to persuade most of the population of, say, South-East Washington DC, to move somewhere nicer, leaving the gangsters and drug dealers behind. The park would be there, ready-made, for Tim and friends to enjoy.