THERE are, I suppose, a thousand and one things more important for MPs to bother their head about.

Nonetheless, the private members' bill being prepared by Tory Ann Winterton to control the willy-nilly renaming of fine old pubs - so that the Red Lion becomes the Slug and Lettuce and the King's Head is changed to the Rats and Parrot or something equally silly - is one that deserves the attention and support of the whole House of Commons.

For this is our heritage that is being mucked about and destroyed in town after town.

Historic names that have been part of every community's fabric for generations - many of them having fascinating stories to go with them - are being junked and replaced by these idiotic and puerile ones dreamed up by bumptious marketing wallahs. They and their pub-owing bosses don't give a fig for our heritage or the pub's unique role in our heritage.

They don't care much about the ale either, given greed-driven attempts to fill it with chemicals and gas.

All they are concerned about is squeezing more profit out of their units - which is probably how they refer to their pubs - mainly by appealing to the youth market which is apparently taken in by these laddish, supposedly larky pub names such as the Dog 'n' Donut and the Rattle and Ham.

Presumably, this is because these whiz kids, who are also responsible for the rash of fake Irish pubs all over over the place, consider that the oafish yobs, whom they charge up to £2 a time for half-pint bottles of brewed-in-Britain 'American,' 'Dutch' or 'Danish' lagers, associate good old names like the Rising Sun, Duke of York and Rose and Crown with boring old beggars who nurse a pint of mixed for at least half an hour and prefer conversation to wide screen mega-decibel pop videos and to drinking out of bottles and throwing up outside afterwards among shards of broken glass.

But why on earth should these panderers to the lager louts be allowed to mess about with the centuries-old institutions that our pubs are?

And why, when it is backed by MPs of all sides - and, I'll warrant, by most of the country - should Mrs Winterton's Public Houses Names Bill be allowed to die for lack of parliamentary time next month?

If the People's Prime Minister Tony Blair can pop up on the Richard and Judy show to spout about all sorts of trivia, he can, surely, put the government's backing behind this worthy Bill and give it the time it needs.

Your round, Tone.

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