Restore UK has decided one of Britain’s great lost treasures is smoking in pubs.

Restore is a wonderfully appropriate name because, if we’re restoring things, let’s stop being half-hearted about it. Why cherry-pick one outdated idea when we can bring back the entire catalogue?

Why stop at smoking in pubs?

Let’s bring back polio. It will give children something to talk about. It’s character building.

How about a dose of Rickets. Nothing says “golden age” quite like a Vitamin D deficiency.

Outside toilets should make an immediate return. There’s nothing like crossing an icy garden at two in the morning, clutching your dressing gown shut while praying you don’t meet a hedgehog.

And while we’re modernising backwards, let’s have nylon sheets again. Reopen Brentford Nylons. The younger generation have never experienced the joy of waking up electrically charged after spending the night sliding around like a supermarket carrier bag.

Lead paint deserves another chance too. Bright colours, excellent durability, and if you started seeing imaginary rabbits after accidentally touching the windowsill, well, that’s just free entertainment.

Asbestos roofs? Absolutely marvellous. They lasted forever, which was fortunate because some of the occupants didn’t.

Discipline Made Great Again

Children today apparently lack discipline.

Simple solution.

Bring back the birch.

Nothing says “healthy emotional development” like a headmaster who could remove several layers of skin with a well-practised flick of the wrist.

National Service should return too.

Imagine today’s teenagers discovering that “I identify as unavailable” isn’t a recognised military exemption.

And while we’re rediscovering Britain’s glorious heritage, let’s reopen the workhouses. These feckless single widowers need to contribute.

People often bang on about the good old days without mentioning that quite a few of those good old days involved starving if your employer fancied saving sixpence a week.

A Return to Wartime Spirit

I’ve also become convinced rationing should make a comeback.

Nothing builds community quite like queueing for an egg while someone tells you they’d heard oranges might be arriving next Thursday.

In fact, why stop there?

Let’s reintroduce smog so thick you couldn’t see your own front gate. It brings the community together to compare asthma attacks.

Replace antibiotics with “a nice cup of tea.”

Ban central heating because real Britons should be able to see their own breath indoors until Easter.

Bring back three television channels that stopped broadcasting before midnight and ended the day with the National Anthem.

Progress has clearly gone too far.

The Austin Brexit

Perhaps we should relaunch the Austin Maxi and call it the Austin Brexit.

It would have exactly the same build quality, occasionally refuse to go into reverse, leak in unexpected places and require constant reassurance that everything is actually going according to plan.

Owners would insist it’s a magnificent return to British engineering while quietly keeping the AA on speed dial. Actually, speed dial can go as well. That’s just lazy.

Raise a Party 7

To celebrate this glorious national rebirth, Watneys Party 7 cans are also making a triumphant return.

Finally, families can once again gather around seven pints of warm, metallic-tasting bitter contained in something resembling an unexploded naval mine.

The slogan writes itself.

“One can. One family. One collective disappointment.”

The Past Wasn’t Better. We Just Forgot the Awful

Nostalgia is a wonderful thing.

It edits out the damp houses, the terrible cars, the smog, the appalling food, the diseases we’d rather not meet again, and the fact that half the country smelt like an overflowing ashtray.

We remember the music, the football, the freedom, the mates and the laughs.

We conveniently forget the outside loo in January.

There’s nothing wrong with missing parts of the past.

Just be careful not to accidentally restore the whole bloody lot.