ANYONE who watched the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire would agree that things needed to happen to make sure a disaster like that could never happen again.

But forcing a single pensioner living in a three-bed semi in Milngavie to spend hundreds of pounds on an elaborate system of smoke alarms by law, would not immediately spring to mind as a way of doing it.

Apart from being an open goal for fraudsters, what iexactly is the reason for forcing every homeowner in Scotland to have expensive government-sanctioned inter connected alarms installed?

Legislation was due to come into effect on February 1 next year as part of post-Grenfell changes meaning the standard which currently applies to private rented property and new-builds would have been extended to all homes.

The Government has now postponed the rules until 2022 due to the timescale which would have sent household insurance premiums rocketing for failure to comply.

Given the Covid crisis, it is a sensible move and hopefully they will have time to reflect and scrap the scheme altogether.

The vast majority of homes already have perfectly adequate smoke alarm systems and the Scottish Fire Service does a fabulous job with its home fire prevention visits.

Fire prevention measures are vital and the majority of homes having smoke alarms installed has helped to keep deaths from house fires at near historic lows.

But it should not be up to the Government to tell any homeowner what fire prevention equipment to install at a cost of between £200 and £600 any more than it is to tell us what to grow in our gardens.

It is just the latest example of meddling by ministers that shows no signs of abating. From the lamentable hate crime bill to the smacking bill that encourages people to call 999 if they see someone chastising a child in the street, the list grows ever longer.

At a time when the NHS is in perpetual crisis, school standards are dropping, unemployment is soaring and a host of other social problems hit the country, ministers really should have more than enough on their plates.

But as we have seen from the reaction to the pandemic across Europe, when governments control virtually every aspect of our lives, they are very reluctant to give any of it up.

It has become increasingly clear that the government cannot trust the tax-paying population to make the right choices, so it will make them for us.

Nanny knows best after all and is becoming increasingly confrontational in telling us so.