I feel like this more and more – I ride trailbikes, and they are being shooed off the green lanes; I ride motorbikes on the road, and am fed up of being called “a victim waiting to happen”. I’ll soon be riding a recumbent tricycle, and people tut-tut at the apparent danger in which I am putting myself, as if I am not fit to choose.

I don’t smoke, but I am not in favour of a legislative ban on smoking in public places, because I can choose not to go into a pub.

I’m pro-fireworks, but expect people to behave responsibly with them, because I can’t avoid living within the blast radius, having to comfort my cats and find bits of spent rocket on my lawn for the next week.

I’m pro-foxhunting[1] but I’m anti-being-a-dick-about-it. I’m pro-the-right-to-protest-about-foxhunting, but anti-being-a-dick-about-that-too.

I try to identify NIMBY-ism and try to avoid it without opening myself up to charges of laissez-faire – but also I desire balance and respect for other people.

No doubt some people’ld call me naive for trying to act like this.

They’d be wrong. You have to be far from naive to live like this.

[news.bbc.co.uk]

Let’s ban banning

Should banning be banned? In our new Readers’ Column, Lewis Graham says we should stop calling for bans on every little thing and learn to be more tolerant. If you’d like to write a column, tell us using the form below.

[…]

Surely it is better to think beyond the small and encourage tolerance. We need to respect others and consider their needs, but that doesn’t mean living bleak lives shorn of any risk or fun. Nor does it mean if someone is annoying you on the tube that you can’t tolerate him or her, just for a few minutes.

When something trivial begins to annoy, I try to reflect on the annoyance and consider it from the other point of view. Perhaps if children are playing noisily outside, they are getting away from TV and enjoying some exercise.

Another tactic is to think about why someone is doing what he is doing. This can, admittedly, lead to some odd conclusions. Recently I concluded that the barista at a station coffee bar was slow because they were, in fact, an undercover MI5 operative watching for money laundering in the ticket office. Unlikely, but amusing enough to defuse my tension and improve my day.

And if a trivial annoyance isn’t worth trying to stop, then it isn’t important enough to get annoyed about. Apply the frozen halibut test: if a personal stereo is too loud on the tube, is it bad enough to find a frozen halibut to use to persuade the miscreant to stop?

…continues at [news.bbc.co.uk] – several people I know could do with reading it.

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[1] angher’f ivbyrag naq oybbql, fb trg bire vg; naq vs lbh pbzcynva gung cenapvat nebhaq va cvax ba ubefronpx vf abg angheny gura v’q nterr, ohg v’q fhttrfg gung lbh pbafvqre ubj yvggyr lbhe arkg irtrohetre npghnyyl ybbxf yvxr nalguvat lbh’yq svaq tebjvat ba n gerr.