The proposed blanket ban on street and beach drinking of alcohol (The Argus, May 1) again demonstrates the dangerous road to totalitarianism down which we are allowing ourselves to be led.

It is, of course, far easier to ban all drinkers, however benign, just as it is to curfew all children for daring to be young, rather than take targeted action against those individuals who behave anti-socially regardless of their age or degree of sobriety.

This sloppy thinking is beginning to pervade all aspects of our lives.

How long before all peaceful protests are banned because a few demonstrators (who could well be agents provocateurs) cause injury to property and people? How long before concerned parents who decline to voluntarily allow their children to be inoculated with questionable substances are, "for the public good", visited by the full might of the law. (As an aside, if vaccinations are so effective, what do those who have been vaccinated have to fear from those who have not?)

Many more people are killed or maimed, the happiness of many more families destroyed, daily by motorists who drive recklessly or dangerously. Should the next step be to ban all motorists from the roads?

Of all the anti-social behaviour that causes pain, death and destruction, the worst is that of politicians such as Blair, Blunkett and Bush who, with their small-minded, religion-fuelled bigotry and egotism, create ever more questions with every "answer" they impose upon us.

Perhaps for the good of all mankind it is they and their ilk that we should place in Guantanamo Bay.

-Vince Wild, Bodiam Close, Brighton