Language changes, new words are invented all the time. Whether a freshly minted coinage makes it into the lexicon depends upon both luck and whether we actually need it: does it describe something for which we previously did not have a word? If it does then there is a good chance that it will make its appearance in dictionaries, the thesauruses and even columns in serious newspapers.

One candidate is the verb “to bansturbate” (origin, Harry Haddock, who blogs at nationofshopkeepers.wordpress.com). The word – a fusion of “ban” and the term for self-abuse – refers to both the public abuse of the rights of the citizenry as things that some people simply disapprove of are made illegal, and the near-sexual frisson of pleasure gained by those who pass such laws.

Much of the urge to ban is driven, just like Puritanism, by the fear that some people, somewhere, may be enjoying themselves; the rest by the terror of politicians and bureaucrats who fear that if they don’t do something, anything, we might begin to wonder why we pay them.

One recent example is the ban on smoking in pubs. That the dangers of passive smoking have been hugely overstated is one thing, but even if they were as advertised they still would not trump the rights of consenting adults to do as they wish on private property. But banned it was; and as calls to ban puffing in our homes show, once we’ve started down the path of pleasurable “bansturbating” kinkiness, then ever greater doses must be consumed to maintain the effect.

Further examples abound as a random sample from the past couple of weeks reveals: the EU Justice Commissioner suggests censoring the entire internet to keep those who might copy the Glasgow bombers from learning how to make bombs. This week we learnt that the European Commission wants to ban the very word “sunblock” for fear that we are all too stupid to realise that it is a relative, not absolute, term.

The singer Feargal Sharkey asked of the Licensing Act 2003 that regulates live music: is it really necessary that old men should be stopped from singing folk songs to each other in a room above a pub? Stopped unless they apply for permission to do so?

And let’s not forget that, seven years ago this month, the “metric martyr” Steve Thoburn had his scales confiscated by trading standards officers for the heinous crime of not weighing loose fruit and veg in kilograms.

Of course, none of the above advances the cause of human civilisation, happiness or freedom: yet ever more such regulations pour from Parliament and committee rooms. The future is not, as Orwell forecast, a boot stamping on a human face, for ever. It is our masters and rulers, grinning wildly in their mad bansturbation.

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