DESPITE Blackburn with Darwen chief trading standards officer Chris Allen's view that government proposals to make sure drinkers get a full pint are excellent and will make the law clear and enforceable for his colleagues, this consumer finds them as clear as a pint from a bad barrel -- and just as unwanted.

Hark at the gobbledegook in just one of the proposals on which consumer affairs minister Dr Kim Howells is inviting views -- that a pint be defined as 100 per cent liquid on average, including liquid in the head of the froth, but excluding gas in the head.

Just the stuff to send trading standards nit-pickers into raptures, I know. But clear and enforceable? Give over!

Show me the average pint-swiller or landlord who can work out whether there's too much gas and not enough liquid in the head of a pint without the aid of a portable chemistry laboratory.

And I see the minister's proposals are dusting off the dratted lined glasses and metered pumps again.

Because they are never filled to the top, those lined glasses always make drinkers moan that they have been given short measure when they never complained before with the old 'exact pint' ones -- and licensees get sick to death of being told so.

As for metered pumps, as well as being an encouragement for the return of awful gassy keg ale they are the curse of the drinker who almost drains his pint and says to mine host: 'Put us a half in there.'

And gets precisely that -- just half a pint and not the more generous measure that a landlord who values his customers will pull on such occasions.

Hasn't this nannying government better things to do than tinker with the fundamentals of life -- especially when too much ruination of our pubs has gone on already?