Since it came to power, the Labour government has introduced 2,685 pieces of legislation every year. And each has been either ill-conceived, draconian, bonkers, bitter, dangerous, counter-productive, childish, wrong, thoughtless, selfish, or designed primarily to make life a bit more miserable for everyone except six people in the BBC, 14 on The Guardian and Al Gore.

Still, with such a torrent of new rules and regulations pouring onto the statute books every day, it was statistically inevitable that one day they’d accidentally do something sensible. And last week that day arrived.

They decided that everyone who’s capable of reaching the takeaway shop without being shot in the face is eating far too much Trex and that the way to get them eating fair-trade lettuce and organic tofu instead is to make cooking a part of the school curriculum for children aged 11-14.

Immediately head teachers came up with all sorts of objections. They didn’t have the space for normal lessons so where would they find the room for cookery classes? Had they considered, perhaps, using the school’s kitchen?

Then the health and safety nutters woke up. “Aha,” they said, “PE has to be taken by someone with a degree in sports paramedicry and similarly qualified people would be necessary for cooking classes or children would be going home with knives sticking out of their eyes and pans of boiling water on their heads.”

Oh puh-lease. I spent five years in the chemistry lab playing with sulphuric acid and I’m fine. Sure, Jenkins minor got a bit disfigured one day but his hideous face is hardly a reason to refuse to teach anyone science.

No. Teaching cookery is a great idea. It’s all so 1956. A class full of kids in aprons, baking bread, talking like the Queen and then pausing on their way home to scrump a few apples for tomorrow’s crumble. Yum. Yum. Rhubarb will become the new crack. And the only thing those new school gate metal detectors will find is Fotherington’s cheese grater.

However, once cooking classes are under way, I think it would be a good idea to overhaul the entire curriculum.

I’ve argued since I was a boy that school, in its present form, is almost completely useless. The dim kids work and work and work until their little hormones are fried and then emerge after five years, suicidal, mad and with an A-level in media studies. The bright kids, meanwhile, lounge around all day, knowing that a CV will never be checked so, when asked how many A-levels they have, they can lie and say 264.

All school does is put you off things that might, in later life, be interesting. Having been forced into chapel every Sunday for five years, I vowed I would never set foot in a church until the day I died. And not even then. I’ve said in my will that I want my funeral service to be held in a burger van. What’s more, by being made to read William Shakespeare at the age of 14, I developed a lifelong aversion to the Bard and his silly witterings. And I still can’t eat meat pie.

I look back now at those wasted hours in maths lessons, learning about algebra and matrices and sines and I think, what was the point? It’s the same story with linear air tracks and oxbow lakes and civil war battles. They’re all as pointless as a blunt stick.

This is why I fervently believe school should be rather more than a factory numbering system, churning out kids with a C or a D or an A*. It should be a place where you learn how to be an adult. And cooking is a start.

Polish is a good idea too. Why teach us French when we all know that they can understand what we’re on about perfectly well if we poke them in the chest often enough? Far better to be able to say, in a Warsaw burr, “My boiler is broken. Can you come and mend it?” Or better still, why not teach everyone how to mend their own boiler instead. Seriously. Why not have plumbing lessons? Because basic welding, I promise, will stand you in better stead as an adult than being able to conjugate Julius Caesar’s table.

Do you know something? I distinctly remember being put onto the school minibus when I was 14 and driven, on vomity roads, to the Peak District simply so that I could see a millstone grit outcrop.

Why? Who thought that would be in any way relevant to anything I might one day do for a living? Couldn’t they have spent the time instead teaching me how to change the spark plugs on a car, or how to remove a low-voltage bulb without burning my fingers, or how to carve a leg of lamb, or how to play poker or how to cut hair?

Or, and this brings me on to the most important point of all, they could have opened my eyes to the joys and importance of reading a newspaper. I really do mean this.

My children can tell you about Portia’s gentle rain and when to use the imperative but they don’t have the first clue about what’s going on in Kenya or why Hillary Clinton is a loony. No teacher sits them down and discusses what we used to call current affairs. This is madness.

If we can find 45 minutes in the school timetable to teach the children how to make food out of tofu and lentils, then surely we could also find a similar period for them to discuss the issues of the day. This way they would be less round and, er, more rounded. If you see what I mean.

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