Public Spirit Levels

A Good Start

There is a certain cast of person who believes he or she are called to hector everyone else about what is good for them.  They are lifelong professional nannies.  A previous generation would have called them "busybodies".  They operate within the realms of certitude so infallible they do not hesitate to advocate what is good for everyone else.  They harangue legislators, bureaucrats, regulators, the media--anyone that will listen.  Their dedication and passion are compelling.

Some examples spring to mind--drawn from just today's newspapers.  First up is the anti-tobacco crusaders.  Now the "big thing" that would deter everyone from smoking tobacco and which would make New Zealand smoke free by 2025 or whenever was plain packaging of tobacco.  No brand recognition.  No advertising allowed.  Except it appears to makes little impact on actual smoking rates.  And, in any event, smokers--as a class are not that bad.  They actually benefit the public purse.  They are more likely to die from various diseases at earlier ages, thereby reducing their fiscal drain upon government health and welfare spending. So the fiscal gnomes in Treasury are reportedly, oh-so-quietly, advocating increasing smoking rates as a way to reduce government spending increases over the next fifty years. 

So, say the professional nannies, we need to do more to stub our smoking.  What now?  How about a legally enforced change in the colour of ciggies.  Well knock me over with a puff of smoke.  Why didn't we think of that earlier?  If plain packaging won't work, coloured smokes will.  Why?  Well, they can be coloured in unattractive hues.  This, from the NZ Herald:

Public health researchers say the Government's next step after introducing plain packaging for tobacco should be to make cigarettes ugly by changing them to a dark green or brown colour which made young people think of "slime, vomit or pooh".  A tobacco control lobby group told a parliamentary committee that cigarettes themselves were the "new canvas" for anti-smoking initiatives.

Clearly all those dirty, brown cigars that generally resemble (how to put this delicately?) human stools have deterred smokers for decades, so ciggie brown will be the new down.

Then, in the same edition of the Herald, veteran nanny, Sue Kedgley launched yet another broadside, this time against against cell-phones.  They are killing us with electro-magnetic radiation.  We desperately need rules, restrictions, and regulations for our own good.

We thought we might offer a bit of advice to our public spirited citizens.  Firstly, alcohol.  It's a killer and needs to be expunged.  But extensive scientific research demonstrates that almost all alcoholics began their tippling careers by imbibing milk.  The small number who did not were Irish babies: they apparently went straight on to whiskey.  Therefore, ban milk for infants, and alcoholic rates will necessarily plummet.  Milk is the slippery slope to perdition.  It's only big businesses, like nefarious Fonterra, which use their dirty money to create smokescreens against the dangers of milk and its propensity to cause habitual drunkenness.  If citizens can rise up against the milk-alcohol industrial complex, and insist upon plain packaging of both, we will all be better than what we would otherwise be.  And if we can win on this issue, we can win on every issue.  There'll be no stopping us.   

Secondly, Sue needs to sharpen up her act.  Instead of appealing to this scientific study or that piece of research evidence "demonstrating" the harm to humans from cell phone use, she needs to get smarter.  Instead of writing weasley stuff like the following:

Around three billion people on the planet own cellphones, and cellphone use is growing exponentially. So you would hope governments would take these studies seriously and seek to reduce our exposure to cellphone radiation, rather than sit on their hands waiting for conclusive proof before taking any action.

. . . she need to be more definitive and declarative.  Try this, Sue: "the science is settled.  Cell phones cause cancer.  Cell phone sceptics are not just anti-science, they are murderers."  That's the spirit.  That will get you some traction.  No-one likes to have the ultimate execration of  "anti-science" hurled at them. 

Then, there is the biggest nanny of them all, Michelle O who has been working for the good of all by promulgating rules and decrees about what children must eat.  This, from her nemesis, Michelle M:

. . . the L.A. Unified School District pronounced the first lady’s federally subsidized initiative a “flop” and a “disaster.” Principals reported “massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away.” The problem has only worsened. The Los Angeles Times reported last month that the city’s students throw out “at least $100,000 worth of food a day — and probably far more,” which “amounts to $18 million a year.”

Draconian federal rules dictate calorie counts, whole-grain requirements, the number of items that children must put on their trays, and even the color of the fruits and vegetables they must choose. Asked for a solution, LAUSD food-service director David Binkle told the Times bluntly: “We can stop forcing children to take food they don’t like and throw in the garbage.”

Or you can do what Arlington Heights District 214 in Michelle Obama’s home state of Illinois just did: Vote yourselves out of the unsavory one-size-fits-all mandate. Last week, the state’s second largest school district decided to quit the national school-lunch program altogether. Officials pointed out that absurd federal guidelines prevented them from offering hard-boiled eggs, hummus, pretzels, some brands of yogurt, and nonfat milk in containers larger than 12 ounces.  The district will deliberately forgo $900,000 in federal aid and instead rely on its own nutritionist to devise healthy choices that students actually want. One local parent summed it up well: “The government can’t control everything.”

That parent, who dared voice a treasonous notion about there being some limits to government controls, needs to be hunted out and cut down.   It's just unpatriotic to believe, let alone voice, such things.

As Winston Churchill was once reported to have said, if you took all these loving Nannies like the anti-tobacco people, the Sue Kedgleys, and the Michelle O's and their like and laid them face down in a long line head-to-toe, head to toe . . . why, that would be a good thing to do.

Or, as another old saw has it, "What do you call one hundred Nannies at the bottom of Auckland Harbour?"--answer: "a good start".