Academics give green light to bully state
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 
A report to be published today by the "well respected" Nuffield Council for Bioethics will claim that government is not doing enough to help people live healthy lives. The report argues that increasing taxation on alcohol and banning smoking in people’s homes are justified if they improve public health.
Yesterday I was sent an advance press release and gave the following quote to The Times (which they used in their report, HERE):
"People accept the need for government to educate and advise people about their health, but politicians should take care not to over-indulge in social engineering. Potentially, this report is a manifesto for a bully state in which people are increasingly forced to behave in a manner approved by politicians and evangelical health campaigners who want unprecedented control over our daily lives."
I have long argued that things will get worse before they get better. The nanny/bully state brigade is on a roll and it is going to be a major battle to derail it. But derail it we must. The good news is there are some influential voices on our side. For example, a leader in today's Times makes it very clear where they stand:
John Stuart Mill held that the only justification for state coercion was to prevent harm, or “evil”, being done to others. It is a stretch to say that eating too many hamburgers, or smoking at home, meets that definition. Yet in seeking to modernise Mill, the Nuffield group comes dangerously close to arguing such a line.
It is not the British people who need treatment, it is Government - for its hyperactive insistence on interfering in private lives. The sooner that it kicks that bureaucratic habit, the healthier society will be.
Full article HERE. Definitely worth reading.
Reader Comments (9)
I have just watched an interview on TV with Prof Brownswood from Nuffield. He said people are capable of making a sensible choice, but if they don't we will (more or less) make them.
Lord Krebs, chairman ofthe committee, said on the Today programme this morning, that Government intervention was ethically justifiable because of the huge harm to others caused by excessive drinking. But will this now be exaggerated and inflated by health zealots into a massive and disproportionate 'passive drinking' scare?
Simon - The very last sentence of your piece should have read....."The sooner that New Labour is kicked out of office, the healthier the nation will become."
It has not taken the lunatics from the asylum to leap into action with respect to saving ourselves from alcohol, since the Smoking Ban Experiment was introduced. These people must be challenged and rebuffed at every opportunity - they are like a virus eating away at our freedoms and ability to make our own choices.
Bill C.
If we are apparently not responsible enough to look after ourselves, then the Nanny State should be just that and look after all of us, including paying us to stay safe at home instead of going out to work; they should arrange to have meals and drinks delivered to us, so that we cannot be in danger from traffic, but with this system, of course, there would be a lot less traffic, therefore a lot less pollution. But, if they insist on keeping us safe so that we can stay alive (not live) for much longer, then this is the way they will have to work it!
Don't know who they will get to provide our food and drink, etc, but I guess there are enough of them to share the duties!
It is not beyond belief that the next stop, along this twisted turning, is the microchip - linked for each of us to a central computer. Which will bleep every time we take a drink, eat something potentially fattening, smoke or break wind. We would then receive a letter threatening our livelihood, insurances and pension 'for our own good' if we didn't take stringent action for our "health". Remember, you read it here first.
They're damn slow witted on the "passive alcohol" number. They're trying to define passive alcohol solely in terms of social damage when alcohol is breathed out into a room as all breath is. Go out on a cold day and watch how far your breath travels. In addition, alcohol (ethanol) is a class "A" carcinogen.
During the prohibition in America during the 1920s, the propaganda stating: "Don't breathe alcohol over your baby'" was a ploy used. Yes, these repressive doctors are now showing themselves to be dimwitted indeed, but we know that already as there are many of them who believe their own propaganda on passive smoking.
Who needs a doctor? Get a practitioner of magic instead.
Chris Hulme was interviewed this morning on "The Politics Show" following a report (which included an interview with Iain Dale) in which the reporter suggested that the LibDems might romp to power (OK, at least be in the race) if they committed to redressing the balance of Labour's interventionist policies and he actually suggested repeal of the smoking ban.
CH, when directly asked, responded with the condescending chuckle that we've come to expect whenever criticism of the ban is made, and the insight that there was very good evidence that passive smoking harms others.
Now there's a man in need of one of the several critiques of the so-called evidence. I'd like to see Simon post that he has sent one to him and to any other influential figure who needs setting straight. The ban will never be overturned and will be extended unless the "evidence" is exposed as the nonsense that it is. A politician might not heed individuals writing to him in such a vein but he might still listen to FOREST especially after the drubbing that Simon, by all accounts, recently gave ASH in the form of Deborah Arnott.
You're on a roll, Simon, go for it!!
Despite checking that I was spelling Chris Hulme's surname correctly, I now find that he isn't Chris Hulme at all but Chris Huhne!
There are three possibiities:
1) my hearing's shot
2) I don't read the right papers
3) everyone else is getting his name wrong, too
He's already started a public row with Nick Clegg (I may have HIS name wrong) - so maybe it
won't be around for too long anyway!