I've resisted blogging about the story this week about an increasing number of complaints about children in pubs, mainly because this kind of story inevitably leads to harrumphing about kids taking over the world. "No longer can one enjoy an adult evening without feeling that one is dining in a crèche," one pubgoer told the Good Pub Guide.

Besides, bad behaviour in pubs is hardly restricted to the under 12s.

If we're considering banning folks who intrude on our self-determined "pub experience", I'd like to suggest we also ban men who refer to themselves in the third person, groups of girls who squeal with laughter, people who talk to much about real estate prices, old men who go on and on about how children ruin everything and Australians, because they can get pretty trolleyed and start calling everyone "mate".

whether they're 19-year-olds

or a family of five - they should be taken in hand and that's management's responsibility.