MUMMY wears a pinny with a pretty pair of Marigolds tucked into the waistband. She gets up at 6.30am every day to cook Daddy's breakfast before he goes off to do important work. He wears a nice crisp suit with a shirt washed and ironed freshly by Mummy the night before.

He polishes his own shoes, though.

Mummy kisses him fondly on the cheek at the front door and turns her attention to the children who have wakened and are already preparing themselves for school having brushed their teeth and combed their hair.

Recognise the scene? Thought not.

It only happens in one corner of Scotland: Shangri-Lanarkshire, world-renowned for its marital bliss, perfect parenting and angelic kids.

And to maintain those high standards South Lanarkshire Council is about to deny a group of wannabe parents the chance of adopting children . . . and with good reason.

Potential child abusers? Certainly not, in fact quite the opposite. They adore children but, through a cruel quirk, nature has denied them the chance to conceive.

They might drink alcohol, eat raw cholesterol, wash it down with liquid sugar and just possibly be the most-stupid people on earth, but none of that matters to the local authority's politically-correct-to-the-point-of-fascist social-workers.

They are about to slap a ban - rubber-stamped by woolly-minded councillors taking the easy way out - on children being adopted by smokers.

I had always been under the impression that adoption was about finding good, stable, loving homes where couples would cherish children abandoned by their natural parents.

The kind of place where early mornings are chaos, the closest Mummy comes to a marigold is pushing the lawn mower and Daddy wouldn't know a tin of boot polish from a black pudding.

In short: a normal household with fall-outs and fall-ins, praise and punishment, retribution and reward. A sound, healthy and occasionally anarchic environment.

Shangri-Lanarkshire's bleeding hearts argue they are out to protect children from the terrible effects of passive smoking but that is a feeble excuse for rejection.

One adoption charity claims 17,000 under-fives are admitted to hospital each year with passive smoking-related illnesses, though fail to back it up with sound science - rather like me claiming that staying smoke-free guarantees a cancer-free life.

Sounds good . . . but doesn't make it true.

Were officials really so concerned about health, no child would ever be pushed in a buggy at car exhaust height, let alone be allowed to travel in one.

Diet would form part of the adoption contract: no naughty E' numbers or health destroying junk foods.

Schools would be a no-no lest the child be stabbed, become a ned or run the gauntlet of perverts lurking in every hedge.

Social workers have deliberately fudged the difference between minimising risk and eliminating it altogether while branding smokers bad parents.

Now pass the heroin and hand me a pen, there's a form to fill in.