Grim stuff. When I object to some ban or another on the grounds that I’m a grown up and should be able to choose for myself, I’m usually met with slack jawed stares. For most people it seems, such notions as self determination or self discipline have very little meaning. Thats how we get the Nicola Sturgeons of this world.
Great, if very depressing, article. There was a classic interview/debate on the Today programme many years ago (when I could still tolerate listening to it) between David Hockney and some anti-smoking campaigner, in which David Hockney kept saying to the latter, accurately, “You’re DREARY! You’re just DREARY!”. A treasured moment.
PS Typo: there is a missing ‘not’ in this sentence: The trouble is that their desire to have the state push them around has an obvious impact on those of us who do want to be pushed around.
How did we get into this appalling position? It could be that I just wasn’t so aware of these things 30-40 years ago but my perception is that, apart from health warnings on fag packets which of course weren’t restrictive even if they were discouraging, back in the 1980s we could do what we wanted. Yet we have gone from that position to a default assumption that we should be micromanaged by the state just in my adult life.
And now we don’t just have the “public” health gangsters interfering with our food we have the climate doomsayers trying to stop us eating meat for the health of the planet. You can’t win.
I can only hope that because most politicians drink alcohol, as does the majority of the adult population, that they won’t dare to try prohibiting it. It’s relatively easy to oppress an increasing minority like smokers, but another thing to attack the pleasures shared by the bien pensants.
Grim stuff. When I object to some ban or another on the grounds that I’m a grown up and should be able to choose for myself, I’m usually met with slack jawed stares. For most people it seems, such notions as self determination or self discipline have very little meaning. Thats how we get the Nicola Sturgeons of this world.
Great, if very depressing, article. There was a classic interview/debate on the Today programme many years ago (when I could still tolerate listening to it) between David Hockney and some anti-smoking campaigner, in which David Hockney kept saying to the latter, accurately, “You’re DREARY! You’re just DREARY!”. A treasured moment.
PS Typo: there is a missing ‘not’ in this sentence: The trouble is that their desire to have the state push them around has an obvious impact on those of us who do want to be pushed around.
How did we get into this appalling position? It could be that I just wasn’t so aware of these things 30-40 years ago but my perception is that, apart from health warnings on fag packets which of course weren’t restrictive even if they were discouraging, back in the 1980s we could do what we wanted. Yet we have gone from that position to a default assumption that we should be micromanaged by the state just in my adult life.
And now we don’t just have the “public” health gangsters interfering with our food we have the climate doomsayers trying to stop us eating meat for the health of the planet. You can’t win.
I can only hope that because most politicians drink alcohol, as does the majority of the adult population, that they won’t dare to try prohibiting it. It’s relatively easy to oppress an increasing minority like smokers, but another thing to attack the pleasures shared by the bien pensants.