Hello folks.

I am afraid to report that the world has just got dafter and dafter.

Members of morris teams attending The Durham Folk Party this weekend were barred from 'The Swan and Three Cygnets' pub there who refused to serve them.

It wasn't because they wanted to dance and therefore 'entertain' inside or outside the pub or because they were dressed 'entertainlingly' in colourful costumes or wanted to have a a pint or two between dance spots and perhaps wanted to sing a few songs.

Oh no. It was because they were wearing 'bells' on their clogs, like many morris sides do, which made a sound when they were walking about in the pub, like they do, which could be interpreted or inferred apparently as a form of making music or musical sounds and therefore a dreaded source of 'entertainment'.

I kid you not. This really happened.

We all know that the chairman of Samuel Smiths' brewery will not allow any of his pubs to pay for an 'entertainments licence' and therefore no form of 'entertainment' is allowed on their premises but, come on, surely this is taking it to an absurd and absolutely ridiculous level.

Some members of one of the 'barred' morris sides, the Slubbing Billys from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, may apparently be interviewed about this 'incident' after the local Durham rag got wind of it, so some more publicity about this 'event' might come out.

It really makes you want to lose the will to live, it really does.

What kind of a sick controlling nanny state are we living in here in the UK when the 'entertainment police' just won't allow free, innocent, well meaning working folk to have a slim chance of having a good time?

But I also feel for the hard working people who run Sam Smiths' pubs under the despotic rule of a mad man who has lost all sense of what it means to be a human being and who live in daily fear of breaking his tyrannical rules and being kicked out into the street at little or no notice.

For this reason I know it is not all their fault and they cannot be held entirely to blame. They are in a difficult place because of him and god bless them. But when will they collectively decide that this is all folly and that despotic rulers have had their day and when will this stupid law be overturned by politicians who have woken up and can see the light?

We can only hope that they will see sense and act upon it.

I hope so.

Chris