SP!KED: Starmer’s crackdown on pubs reveals the megalomania of the technocrats.
Sometimes I think we need to retire the phrase nanny state. It has its uses. It’s a good shorthand. People know what you mean when you say it. But it rather downplays the activities of the control freaks and megalomaniacs who are hell bent on dictating how we should all live our lives. It makes them sound almost quaint, and ultimately benevolent.
The truth is quite the opposite. You do not need to be the sort who hysterically compares sugar taxes to something out of North Korea to realise that the preoccupation of the 21st-century state with policing what we eat, drink and do in our private time speaks to a depth of authoritarianism that is not at all normal – and upstream from more potent flavours of authoritarianism.
Logically speaking, if we are not to be trusted to dine unchaperoned, why should we be allowed to think, speak, even vote, for ourselves? There’s a reason why the same people who want to punish you for what you stick in your gob also want to punish you for what comes out of it.
Well, those people now run the country, it seems. Not only has this new Labour government embraced lifestyle despotism with a remarkable zeal – with plans to ban smoking in beer gardens, ban junk-food ads and weigh people at their workplaces already being announced – it has clearly emboldened all the joyless nags and bores of the ‘public health’ blob, too.
Labour is now floating the idea of curtailing licensing hours. Public-health minister Andrew Gwynne – apparently displeased that only 50 pubs a month are closing down at the moment – told the Labour Party conference this week that it’s time to consider ‘tightening up on some of the hours of operation’. » | Tom Slater, Editor | Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Who wants to be weighed in the workplace?: ‘Health MoTs’ for middle-aged men are the latest harebrained scheme from Starmer’s nanny state. »
We need a smokers’ revolt: A smoking ban in pub gardens is the final, joyless straw. »
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