First they banned Christmas lights in some towns and cities and now they ban hot cross buns and pancakes - because these traditional and harmless opportunities for enjoyment "might offend non-Christian minorities".

In the London borough of Tower Hamlets - a mile from where I live - officials have removed hot cross buns from school menus this year. A spokesman said: "We are moving away from a religious theme for Easter and will not be doing buns. We can't risk a similar outcry like we had about pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. We will probably be serving naan breads instead."

I wish I could report that, immediately after this lunatic pronouncement, the spokesman was visited by the men in white coats who took him away and locked him up for life. It's not just the soppy socialists in the politically-correct metropolis who have succumbed to this latest insanity. In Liverpool, the Liberal Democrat council announced: "The symbol of the cross has the potential to offend, and so buns will no longer be served to children at Easter."

Even in Yorkshire - a county in which they were long famous for calling a spade a spade - they have gone utterly barmy. No hot cross buns in York but, you might say, plenty of fruit and nut cases in Wakefield, where the council spokesperson said: "There will be no buns. We have decided it would be more appropriate to tailor the Easter menu to information technology instead." No bites for the kids then - just bytes.

What next? Are we to ban bacon sandwiches because they might "offend" Jews and Muslims? Anybody who can get upset about pancakes and bacon sandwiches would be daft enough to be offended by poached eggs on toast. But I'd better watch what I say. Today's absurdities have a habit of turning into tomorrow's political orthodoxy. There's sure to be a religious sect of Ecumenical Aztecs somewhere ready to start a holy war at the very sight of a poached egg.

It is treachery, at a time when civilised people the world over are in daily threat of terrorist barbarism and our 3,000-year-old western civilisation has almost resigned, for those who are in charge of what's left of our national institutions to brainwash our children with political hatreds of this sort. The young generation is being taught to despise its own culture - by the very people paid by us to uphold it.

They will not take me alive. When the last cross is ripped out of the last village churchyard; when flying the Union flag becomes an offence punishable by hard labour fortified only by a diet of naan bread; when Christmas cards depicting the Nativity of Our Lord are outlawed as offensive to atheists; when the Crucifix is banned as pornographic and the Giottos and Michaelangelos taken out of the galleries and destroyed; when the Bible and the Prayer Book and all the copies of the B-Minor Mass have been burned - you will find me standing atop St Michael's tower listening to the church bells and stuffing my face with an illegal pancake and a plate of hot cross buns.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.