IT seems a shame in this season of festivities to make people cry but, sadly, I might be about to bring the odd tear to the cheeks of young and old alike. For the do-gooders and the politically correct brigade have even got their interfering fingers into our Christmas stockings.

We had a call from one of the Grand Curmudgeonlets on Christmas Day (yes, the Curmudgeonlets have sprouted) and I asked him if he liked the chemistry set we had bought him for Christmas.

Now this was a bit of a sore point anyway. Mrs C had been firmly opposed to the idea (too many smells) and daughter-in-law was somewhat hesitant ("Don't you think it might be a bit dangerous?").

But when I was a lad, a chemmy set (or "stinks" as we called them) were the source of endless fun and experiment. Iron filings, for instance, showed how magnetic fields worked and, when lit, let off great sparks.

And you could make your very own hydrogen dioxide, which sent mum mad cos she thought all her eggs had gone bad (if I remember correctly, it's the same gas given off by rotten eggs).

But, on the phone, the grand-Curmudgeonlet seemed distinctly underwhelmed. "Nothing smells or goes bang," he complained.

It was his dad, our son, who explained.

He has a proper job as an engineer and did a proper degree in science at university. He knows these things. And, he explained, all the things that smelled or went bang have been banned from kiddies' chemmy sets.

By European Union bureaucrats in Brussels who have drawn up a whole code of health and safety instructions about such "toys" - which no doubt gave them a few year's work and fattened the contributions we, the tax payer, make to their already over-inflated index-linked pensions.

Now I am not in favour of toys which maim or blind kiddies or burn their parents' houses down. But there comes a time in life when children should begin to learn that certain actions in life can be, well, hazardous if not done properly.

We teach them, hopefully, how to cross the road safely. A chemistry set not only teaches them how to handle chemicals with care but is also educational: it can show them how bits of the natural world work.

And this is where Dads of the world shed a tear. The number one Chrissie pressie when I was a lad was a Meccano set, which - I should explain to modern kiddiewinks - were strips of metal with holes for nuts and bolts, plus wheels and gears and motors and tools from which you could build almost anything on earth.

It was a complete mini-engineering set at a time when British engineers were still amongst the best in the world. Most of them, I am quite sure, learned their love of machinery from their Meccano sets and went on to give the world the computer, the jet engine, the hovercraft and simple everyday objects like the Thermos flask.

Meccano, manufactured in Liverpool when they still built great ships on the River Mersey, went bust some 30 years ago. So did the shipyards, there and elsewhere else in the UK.

Now, we turn out media studies graduates and wannabe pop stars. Or junkies, burglars and muggers. I wonder what they got in their stockings this week: miniature jemmies and grow-it-yourself cannabis kits?

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.