Apparently the family of a 13-year old boy who choked to death on a plastic pen lid are campaigning to ban them.

Now of course I have sympathy for the loss of their son, but I do think campaigning to ban pen lids is ridiculous. What next, shall we start a campaign to ban kitchen knives, because sometimes people cut themselves on them?

I’m sure someone, somewhere has died from drinking bleach, so we’d better ban that too. Oh, and all household cleaning products. People die in car and motorcycle accidents, so we’ll have to ban those too. People occasionally die in aeroplane crashes, so let’s ban them too. Same for buses, trains and boats. Glass windows can be dangerous when the glass is broken, so we’d better not have any windows either.

When it comes down to it, just about everything can be dangerous when mis-used.

Once we’ve banned everything that could be harmful, we’ll be left with nothing. Sure, we’ll be all safe wrapped up in cotton wool (wait, no, people could choke on that if they tried to swallow some of it, or it might present a fire hazard).