QUICK. WE haven’t much time left. We need to make a list of things that should be banned in public places.

Beetroot, obviously. (Cold pickled beetroot that is. I had cooked beetroot once when I was having lunch in a ball-bearing factory in Sweden and, annoyingly, it was quite nice). Films starring Ben Stiller. Television supplements that tell you what is going to happen this week in your favourite programme. The clear plastic wrapping on CDs that can be opened only with your teeth. And Gerald Kaufman, who is, I think we can all agree, clearly surplus to requirements.

I can’t imagine anyone wants to take issue with any of these. But I would like to proffer a more controversial candidate. A public ban is overdue on people who use the phrase “it’s political correctness gone mad”. I mean a complete public ban, not just a ban in places where food is served.

Now I don’t want you to get me wrong (you’re always doing that, and frankly it’s beginning to get on my nerves): political correctness can be a serious evil. In many American universities, for example, an attempt has been made to suppress ideas and opinions by declaring them “incorrect”. The failure to have a serious debate about this country’s immigration policy is another example of the damage political correctness can cause.

When not actively evil, PC behaviour can be absurd. For instance, the insistence of some spokesmen (usually male) that they be referred to as “spokesperson” is ridiculous.

The PC crowd can also be curiously selective. After several days of a Guardian website debate entitled, unbelievably, “David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man anti-Semitic”, one reader complained that the title was prejudiced. It should instead read: “David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man or woman anti-Semitic.”

So why my call for a ban on “it’s political correctness gone mad”?

Naturally, it’s a cliché and some people might be ready to join my campaign because of this. Yet while I am hoping to create a broad popular front, no one should feel left out, your membership card is in the post etc, etc, I haven’t actually got a problem with clichés. They usually capture a truth, a blindingly obvious, oft- repeated truth. I don’t mind that the phrase is a cliché.

My problem with “it’s political correctness gone mad” is that on more than half the occasions on which it is deployed it isn’t appropriate. It is attacking something that isn’t politically correct and hasn’t gone mad.

Insisting that a political orthodoxy is insulated from challenge is bad, inserting the words “and women” in every sentence may defy common sense, but this doesn’t mean that it is wrong to use different language or to reform institutions to reflect the fact that Britain is now home to many different ethnic groups, or that women demand and deserve the same rights as men. This is simply correct; political correctness has nothing to do with it. Some so-called political correctness is just good manners.

The latest target of the “it’s political correctness gone mad” brigade is the Scout movement.

The Scouts are allowing members to change the promise to do their duty to God and the Queen to reflect the fact that they may not believe in God (they may, say, prefer to refer to Allah) and that they may not be subjects of the Queen.

Lots of people are furious. My word, you wouldn’t believe how furious they are. This is the end, I’ll have you know, the end of everything that knits the Scout movement together.

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