Saturday 27 December 2014

The Detached State

Tell us something we didn't know, Express.
Eighty per cent of Britons ‘hate the meddling nanny state’
BRITONS hate the nanny state and think the Government should stop meddling in people’s lifestyle choices, says a survey. 
Researchers found significant opposition to stealth “sin taxes” on products such as tobacco, alcohol or sugary drinks. 
Instead more than 80 per cent of those questioned, excluding ‘don’t knows’, believe it should be down to individuals to make their own lifestyle choices without official interference from Government.
There's life in the British public yet.

Sadly, though, there is nothing but entrenched denial in the ranks of the establishment.
Speaking at his party’s Spring Conference, Mr Pickles said: “We have stood up for (protecting) hard-working people from stealth taxes and nanny state interference. 
“Come the general election, I’ll be very happy to defend the record of Conservatives in Government against all-comers.”
He means the Conservatives in government who installed the tobacco display ban despite being staunchly against it in opposition? Because, you see, they were very clear what was going to happen if they were elected in 2010.
Shadow Health Minister Mike Penning said the Conservatives would seek to repeal Labour’s move if they win the election.
And they certainly can't blame their coalition partners on this one ... unless to say that the Lib Dems are bigger liars than the Tories.
Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary Norman Lamb said it was "the nanny state going too far."
Both parties simply waved it through.

As for the "record of Conservatives in government", they boast the Chancellor who increased tobacco duty by 50p per pack in 2011, 37p per pack in 2012, then 26p in 2013 and 28p earlier this year. They have since brought in a ban on smoking in cars (which will be all cars including e-cigs at some point), and laid legislation in front of the EU for pointless plain packaging.

This is just on tobacco. We could list this government's incessant nagging about alcohol, unapproved foods, sugar, fizzy drinks etc too, but what's the point? They don't listen to us.

Instead, their austerity 'cuts' have actually increased the wasteful shovelling of our taxes to the people they do listen to. State-funded quangos and fake charities which holler for more and more intrusive laws against our free choices are now better funded than they were in 2010 - in fact, this government proudly created Public Health England and its £500 million per annum budget - and they have even delved into freely chosen aspects of our sex lives.

This is protecting us from nanny state interference, is it? And they wonder why we increasingly despise every man jack of them. Sheesh.


4 comments:

Junican said...

It all seems to be very biblical, does it not? Plagues of frogs, newts, carcinogens, wizards are falling from the sky. The plagues seem to have a variety of volcanic eruptions from the UN, WHO, IPCC, World Bank, EU. But rather than the plagues etc being real and physical, they are ephemeral and epidemiological.
The Lib/Lab/Con construct of a spider's web of ephemeral control, when, in fact, the abdication of responsibility to academics and other charlatans can be shown to be true, condemns them as mere 'facilitators'. The politicians merely facilitate the desires of the academics and charlatans.
Why is it that none of the party leaders have written a learned paper about Government? How can they be considered to know what they are doing when they have produced no EVIDENCE, in the form of papers about Government?


Neither Clegg, Cameron nor Miliband have produced any evidence of their quality. Mere election as party leaders means nothing at all. One might as well elect Joe Bloggs, the plumber, as the local doctor.

What the.... said...

Simon Clark notes that it’s really 70% of Britons hate the nanny state; still a hefty amount. Information on the actual poll:

HEADLINE FIGURES

Seven in ten (70%) British adults say it should be the individual’s responsibility to make their own lifestyle choices and the government should not interfere. Looking at those expressing a preference, this figure rises to over 80%.

Half of Britons (51%) believe indirect taxes are too high, this rises to seven in ten (69%) among only those who declared a preference. Eight in ten (78%) giving an opinion believe they hit the poorest the hardest.

A majority of Britons believe the government should not offer financial
incentives to people who are trying to lose weight (61%), stop smoking (60%) or stop drinking excessively (62%).

UKIP voters are the most hostile to government intervention on lifestyle choices across the board.

http://comres.co.uk/poll/1359/iea-lifestyle-taxes-poll.htm

There’s another recent poll that seems to be tapping the same sentiment.

New polling by Ipsos Mori for NPC warns that the mistrust many UKIP supporters feel for ‘the establishment’ is now extending to the charity sector.
Over half of UKIP supporters said that they had no trust in UK charities, adding them to the list of institutions in which they have lower than average trust – MPs, the BBC and the police.
The new data, which is the first of its kind ever published, finds that 53 per cent of UKIP supporters declare low trust in charities, compared with 33 per cent of Conservative voters, 28 per cent of Labour supporters and 24 per cent of Lib Dems.


http://leftfootforward.org/2014/12/the-disillusionment-of-ukip-supporters-could-damage-the-charity-sector/

It could be argued that a significant amount of the “nannying” (bullying) comes from a government-connected/aligned segment of the “charity” sector, i.e., “lifestyle Gestapo”. The article has a very nasty slant in that it fosters the impression that UKIP supporters are the “problem”, this time for charities too. Rather, it would seem that a significant portion of the population is disillusioned with an overbearing establishment that fails to
represent them. Expecting much of the same from the mainstream parties and media, this disillusioned segment is flocking to UKIP. The article never
entertains the idea that a segment of charities in its bullying, megalomaniacal conduct is responsible for its understandably bad name with this group of voters.

truckerlyn said...

Why are we surprised?


We all know that the charlatans in government will say what they believe we want to hear when it comes to election time and we all know that anything they say in their doorstep chats, local and national speech venues, is not worth the paper it is written on! We know there is the manifesto to hopefully win them the election and then the REAL manifesto for if they get in!


Liars and cheats, the lot of them in the 3 main parties!

Sam Duncan said...

And yet they keep voting for the buggers. The full poll results (thanks, What the...) are typical. Ask people if the government interferes too much in people's lifestyles and they all say, “Oh, yes” (70%). Then ask them if there should be compulsory warning labels on fizzy pop, and they all say, “Oh, yes” again (72%). The only thing most people seem to be against is more tax.


And yet they keep voting for the buggers. (Don't give me UKIP, either. I'm in Scotland. Up here they're all flocking to a gang of nationalist-socialists who make Cameron look like Ayn Rand.)


I'm increasingly of the opinion that “democracy” - so called - is utterly incompatible with liberty.