I think the ballast is as small as they get for the time being. PL-T lamps have smaller ballasts, but not PL-L's.

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Agreed, most CFL lanterns come with electronic ballasts nowadays which are about the same width and length of the PL lamp itself. The bowl also needs to be a certain width (around 100mm min) to get a suitable optical performance.

Seems that I got confused over the lamp types   .

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From streetlighting to radio, dance through the night whilst the streetlights are glowing outside.

It's easily done when there's only one letter differentiating between the lamp types!

When I had my Gamma 3, the ballast stated on it SON and MBI.... now because it said "MB", I thought it was suitable for mercury - but just to be awkward, Thorn have decided that MBI will be their reference for Metal Halide lamps.

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MBF, high pressure mercury fluorescent, and MBI, high pressure mercury iodide aka metal halide.

I think bringing out the Selenium was the worst thing that Philips had ever done. I cannot see the point in it when there is the Iridium, Trafficvision, Koffer and SGS203. The Selenium otherwise may just be fine for cash strapped Eastern Europe or even Greece...

I have discovered a sight guaranteed to be even worse than mini Iridiums, Warwickshire Council had made the grave error of fitting Seleniums on 5m columns on a residential street in Leamington Spa. I reckon I have been down this street before as the original lanterns were GEC Z5670s with some Thorn Beta 79 retrofits.

EPIC FAIL, Warwickshire Council, epic fail!

that's enough to make a grown man fall to his knees in the middle of the road and cry!

that's just wrong in so many ways, and the uptilt is just obscene.

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There even worse when you see them in real life!.
Would like to take a chain saw to them  

Sadly the town of Sevenoaks is being destroyed by the sight of Seleniums which recently replaced the majority of older 1980s Philips SGS203s.

Sevenoaks Seleniums

Some older SGS203s still survive untouched because these columns are of 1980s vintage as the new Seleniums only replaced even older 1960s columns.

I do remember the 1960s columns with fondness because these were originally fitted with large fluoroscent lanterns before these were removed in favour of SGS203s on extended brackets on the very same columns in the 1980s. This style of installation to me was typically "Sevenoaks" however this is all gone now....  

Sevenoaks's 1960s columns before the Selenium's arrival

Kent likes the Selenium. They even install them side entry on 5m hockeysticks.