Say what you like about politicians, but you've got to admire their willingness to make unpopular decisions guaranteed to incur the wrath of the nation.

If it's not Jeremy Corbyn doing his best to bring the Labour Party to the edge of extinction, it's David Cameron making a mockery of the honours system by appointing his wife's stylist OBE in his resignation honours list.

I mean, come on, one of the highest honours in the land for the ability to say to Samantha Cameron "Try this dress on, Sam: it's only £1,000 and it'll look great with your hair colour." What nonsense.

And now we have Lord Ahmed. Now, I've never heard of Lord Ahmed until this week. But he's just shot straight to the top of my list of people I really dislike.

The good lord has come up with a suggestion guaranteed to go down like a lead balloon with airline travellers, namely a ban on 24-hour drinking at airports.

Lord Ahmed, the aviation minister, wants to cut the number of air rage incidents by limiting travellers' access to booze before they board their flights.

Fair enough in theory – but in practice this is guaranteed to make the hell of flying anywhere even worse than it already is. Unless you're travelling business class or above, travelling by air is a miserable affair.

We're corralled and forced to queue; we've got to go shoeless, beltless, jacketless and liquidless in order to get on a plane; and onboard we're subjected to a degree of discomfort that makes veal crates look positively luxurious.

One of the few ways of getting through the trauma is by making sure one is thoroughly anaesthetised – courtesy of the airport bars – before getting on board. Personally, I've always drawn the line at getting stuck into the booze before a morning flight. Anything earlier than 11am for an airport glug of pre-flight Chardonnay seems inappropriate. But I am clearly far from typical in that.

Airport bars are invariably stuffed with people necking pints of lager – even at 5am. I have thankfully never witnessed nor been subjected to an incident of air rage, so I wonder just how big a problem it really is.

The nearest I've ever come to worrying about other passengers' alcohol intake was on a flight from Blackpool to Prague early one morning, where my husband and I found ourselves entirely surrounded by about 40 members of a stag party.

As the plane took off, all was fine – apart from the knock-out beer fumes emanating from the stags. But when the seatbelt lights went off, I thought my number was up. Their bladders clearly on the full side, the entire stag party made an immediate surge to the back of the plane to the loos – and I honestly thought the plane may tip backwards out of the sky as a result.

Thankfully, the stags were hastily redistributed around the plane by the cabin crew and we reached Prague without further incident – bar some raucous singing. But I just couldn't help myself. Getting tanked up before taking off is one of the traditions of the great British getaway; and Lord Ahmed should ban it at his peril.

Anything which makes the flying experience just that bit more bearable should be embraced, not banned. Let's just hope this particular political flight of fancy never gets off the ground.

By Louise Allonby