KILLJOY BRITAIN

Banned: Donkey riding has joined ice-cream van music in the officialdom clamp down

With the summer holidays getting into full swing this weekend, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would find a way of banning ice cream vans.

Worcester Council has decreed that no van can play its chimes for more than four seconds every three minutes.

That's barely enough time to belt out the first bar of the Teddy Bears' Picnic. Cough and you'll miss it. And the noise mustn't exceed 80 decibels at a distance of 25ft.

OK, so Worcester isn't exactly everyone's first choice of a summer vacation destination. But just you wait until other councils cotton on.

Within a couple of years, there won't be an ice cream van left anywhere in Britain.

Soon, the jobs pages of The Guardian will be packed with adverts for Ice Cream Van Prevention Co-ordinators on thirty grand and a Toyota Pious - applications especially welcomed from members of the transgendered community, who are currently underrepresented in the field of frozen dessert enforcement.

Lollipop ladies will be switched from school-crossing patrol to ice cream surveillance duties.

Sea-fronts from Lulworth Cove to Largs will be over-run with council officials armed with decibel metres, stopwatches and tape measures.

It's happening already. Tom Davison, from the Ice Cream Alliance, says more and more vendors are being forced out of business by the bureaucrats.

Mr Davison, 54, said: 'It's harder and harder to make an honest living. Whether you play your chimes for six or seven seconds, does it really cause harm to anyone?'

Of course not. This is just another manifestation of Britain's killjoy culture. Government at every level works on the basis: find out what people enjoy doing and stop them.

Which of us doesn't have a happy childhood memory of the thrill of the sound of the ice cream van approaching?

Sadly, if the noise abatement nazis get their way, it is an innocent pleasure which will be denied to future generations.

Think I'm exaggerating? Councils from Blackpool to Bournemouth are already busy banning donkey rides, on animal cruelty grounds, and Punch and Judy shows, which they ludicrously claim glorify domestic violence.

They're sweeping away pavement tables and cafe advertising boards, which they say can obstruct the free passage of wheelchairs.

Some are even going as far as trying to ban smoking on public beaches - and the accident prevention brigade have got deckchairs in their sights, too.

Thanks to the food hygiene mentalists, it's become almost impossible to eat fish and chips out of the paper any more.

Wrapping in newspaper was outlawed years ago, in case we all fell victim to ink poisoning.

Instead, you'll likely be given one of those horrible polystyrene boxes and a plastic chip fork.

And, as I observed recently, the condiment communists are so hell-bent on preventing your arteries silting up that they're confiscating salt cellars with more than five holes.

We're told that more people will be taking their summer holidays at home this year, because of the collapsing pound and the usual chaos at the airports.

But millions more will break for the border. It's a fair bet many of you are reading this as you wait to board your plane or ferry.

This isn't just because a fortnight in Florida is still cheaper than a wet weekend in Frinton.

It's not that most British seaside towns are rundown dole-claimant dormitories, which seem to take a perverse delight in driving people away through a combination of rip-off prices, tatty boarding houses, disgusting food and draconian parking regimes.

It's that getting out of the country frees the spirit. For a couple of weeks, there's an escape from the grinding, soul-destroying onslaught of officialdom - a sanctuary from the pettifogging, hectoring, snooping, bullying, punishment freaks who are such a fixture of our lives in Brown's Britain.

One of the most striking aspects of holidaying in Europe is the conspicuous absence of any of those ridiculous rules which are imposed upon us at home in the name of 'Europe'.

There's no forest of speed cameras every few hundred yards, no clamping vans, no ripe harvest of signs telling you what you can't do and how much they're going to fine you if you disobey them.

Other countries seem able to come to a grown-up, amicable accommodation between the rights of smokers and non-smokers.

For a brief time, you're liberated from the constant badgering to cut your fat intake, eat your greens and watch your units of alcohol, otherwise you're going to DIE!

You might also notice that in Europe they take a rather more civilised attitude towards airport security.

Despite 'EU' recycling rules, they still manage to empty the dustbins every day - not once a fortnight.

(Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail)