100 years is too long to put up with Bully State

Published on Sunday 4 October 2009 21:25

A WEEK does not pass without the announcement of a new health scare that suggests we shall all die sooner if we drink too much coffee, take too many aspirins or smoke any cigarettes – when other research suggests that coffee, aspirin and yes, even smoking tobacco, can have beneficial side-effects.

To confound all these health scares, just last week we were told in an article in the respected Lancet journal that half of the children born in recent years should live to 100 – contradicting all the doom and gloom that single-issue campaigners, lobbyists from pharmacy companies and gullible politicians have been overdosing on for the past 40 years or more.

In Britain a minority of people drink to excess, costing society billions in lost economic production, avoidable health costs, needless violence and family breakdown.

The politicians' solution to these alcohol-fuelled problems? Punish the majority of moderate drinkers by introducing rules and regulations that are helping to close 52 pubs a week, make alcohol more expensive for everyone and more difficult to legitimately come by.

The result of these illiberal measures? The hardened drinkers continue unabashed, switching from one strong drink to another while the grumbling well-behaved silent majority shrug their shoulders and get on with life, paying more for their Pinot Grigio, socialising less and wondering why the local pub is boarded up.

Similarly, a minority of people eat more and exercise less than is good for them, costing society millions through what government bureaucrats incorrectly call the obesity epidemic that will be the downfall of our society. The politicians' solution to this eating and exercise imbalance? Dictate the foods and their ingredients available to the majority of people so that they can't make the wrong choices, pushing up costs and reducing choice. The result? The cost of food production is forced up and regulations lose all sense of proportion as Marmite becomes banned in school breakfast clubs (for being too salty) and the humble burger, pizza and mutton pie are all demonised for being fast foods.

In each example responsibility is taken away from individuals – is it any surprise then that when the state treats adults like children they in turn behave more like children? The expansion of the so-called nanny state has been the stock answer to all our collective mortal fears – but it is not the smoking bans, the seat-belt laws, the motorcycle helmets and the transfat free, low-salt diets that have brought about the expectation of living for a century or more. The trend to living longer preceded the nanny state. Smoking rates were already falling in western countries before the recent bans were introduced (and, ironically, have since climbed in Ireland).

Likewise any reduction in car crash deaths put down to the legal enforcement of wearing seatbelts has to be set against the comparative deaths and injuries of the riskier driving behaviour that the belts encourage. Even if one accepts a marginal gain in lives saved, this has been more than cancelled out by the huge increase in car ownership since those laws were introduced. The real life-saver has been the improvements to passenger car safety standards driven by pure commercial interest of the manufacturers.

Even the epidemic of obesity scares and the resulting laws and regulations on what foods or ingredients we can or cannot eat are not expected to prevent us living longer. Researchers are now saying that we will adjust our exercise patterns and obesity will cause only a blip in life expectancy rates. Our improving health can be put down to better medical and surgical procedures and adults making better choices.

Stubborn to the last and ignoring the trends, politicians view with horror the fact that our free expression of choice results in us sometimes behaving in ways they do not care for. As a result Nanny is no more. She has been dismissed, sent packing, told she is behind the times. A bright, brash, young thing has replaced benign old Nanny. The bully is tough, malevolent and unrelenting in the pursuit of total control. The state is no longer content to allow people their hard-fought liberties while pointing out the choices it would like us to make.

The nanny state has been replaced by the bully state – in the shape of public officials armed with powers of entry to your home, the ability to issue spot fines, the capability of entering you onto a host of databases that can in future be linked.

It is bullying when it is no longer enough to warn of the dangers of smoking but instead limit the places one can socially smoke and put cigarettes under the counter – making them less visible than the magazines in the newsagents. It is nannying to make people think twice about smoking but leave them the choice, but it is bullying to denormalise smokers, make them filthy pariahs and deny them the ability to adopt children.

The lessons that have been learned in separating cigarette smokers out from the rest of us, humiliating them into silence, are now being taken around the world and taught to other aspirant bullies so that the same techniques can be used in restricting or banning alcohol, salt, fatty foods or anything else that should be controlled in our best interests.

Politicians seem to believe that while people are capable of electing their governments they are incapable of choosing when and how to eat, drink or smoke what's good (or bad) for them.

Examples of bullying are now becoming a weekly if not daily occurrence. I know because for two years now I have been running a "Google alert" monitoring instances of individuals being bullied because of their lifestyles by politicians and jobsworths.

One by one our liberties are infringed until we are living in a society so intrusive that we don't know how to begin to challenge it. It is all for our own good, of course.

Live to 100? Well, if it means I can't enjoy a peaty malt whisky, smoke my Partagas cigar or make my own Steak Tartare why would I want to?

&#149 Brian Monteith is policy director of ThinkScotland.org and his new book The Bully State, the end of tolerance is published on Friday 9 October.