Strike up the ban...

This isn't true in a strictly speaking, sticking-to-the-known facts sense, but it gets the ball rolling, so long as balls haven't been banned also, for being round and potentially dangerous when combined with gravity and a careless kick.

Banning things is the modern way, and sometimes this doesn't worry me, so long as the proscribed activities are not the ones I favour.

That's the problem with prohibition: one person's treasured habit is another's blessed nuisance - unless it's smoking, when it's a nasty, nicotine-drenched, eye-watering annoyance that should be banned within a radius of 20 feet from non-participants, especially those bearing the surname Cole.

This train of thought has been set rattling by a report from the Future Foundation think-tank. Before we step through that door, it may be worth wondering if reports should be banned, for they clog up life, reporting about this and that, brandishing enough statistics to fur the average brain.

Anyway - and it's a good job the word 'anyway' isn't on a list somewhere, for where would that leave columnists needing to link a couple of paragraphs? - this report is called Assault On Pleasure. More and more young adults want to ban things on a long list including cigarettes, alcohol, sweets, chocolates, holidays and four-wheel drive cars in cities.

And don't even think of taking your four-wheel drive, cigarettes and chocolate into the countryside - some 25 per cent of those who responded would also like to restrict numbers at national beauty spots.

Those who would ban things are known as the new puritanicals - and, in a sense, they are turning against the hedonistic pleasures of their parents' generation. All very well, but some of us were at the back of the queue when the hedonism pass was being handed out.

By all means trample on the doctrine that pleasure is the chief good, so long as two or three pints of beer a week, a glass or three of wine and the occasional honeyed slurp of malt whisky doesn't count as hedonism. Other people's pleasures? Oh, that's for them to sort out. Anyone wanting to share mine can form a queue behind the middle-aged bloke with glasses and diminishing hair.

Respondents to this survey also suggested that pregnant women seen puffing on cigarettes should be ticked off by police officers.

This is a tricky one. Women who smoke while pregnant harm themselves and their unborn child, which is stupid and selfish. But it's not the job of the state to force such women to stop. To educate them, yes, to influence their attitudes, yes, to tax their foolish habit into extinction, yes - but to force, no.

This report on banning things leads naturally to the present Government, which likes a good ban.

Hunting has been the main casualty, while smoking has faced even greater restrictions. Driving while using a mobile phone has also been banned, which is funny because every other driver seems to have a mobile in their hand.

Fast-food has had its greasy knuckles rapped but has not been banned so far as I can tell, although I never put the rancid stuff near my mouth if possible.

Deep textual analysis of all the available material - or a quick Google search, as it is known round here - reveals that someone somewhere has urged that the following should be banned:

Fireworks; cars; the book of Revelation; homophobic rap music; mercury thermometers; male circumcision; the peanut; cats in public places; animal testing; and gays in Australia (none of these, by the way, has been made up by me).

I wish to add to that list those infuriating TV ads for Tesco, voiced by assorted celebrities - even copper-bottomed, fully talented ones such as Timothy Spall - that are on all the bloody time. Every little helps drive me to the nearest Sainsbury's.

Shaving oil used to make a hypocrite of me, because my favoured brand was sold at Tesco. But they don't stock it any more, so I can happily ban myself from the too-powerful supermarket (unless they put it back on their shelves again, of course).

Updated: 09:05 Thursday, July 21, 2005