Wish we could ban banning.
(With apologies to Ian O’Doherty, on the Independent.ie, full link to his original article will be posted in the first comment. I took liberties)I didn't sign up for an unwanted mammy to tell me where I was going wrong and what I needed to do to buck myself up. When was the last time you allowed yourself to be lectured by someone about your moral failings? But that's the world we now live in; one which has become increasingly censorious and priggish.
We now seem to live in a climate where simply disapproving of something is enough to want to ban it. Cigarettes, alcohol, the 'wrong' food. The proposed sugar tax.
Even rugby is under the microscope of the unbearably smug who simply will not rest until they have managed to insert their grubby, interfering tentacles into every aspect of both our public and private lives.
When it comes to issues such as drinking, eating, or even watching the wrong thing, the personality types are the same. The common thread running through all of them is this astonishing arrogance which leads them to believe that they know more about your life than you do and are more qualified to make your choices than you are.
The most recent statement by freshman TD Jack Chambers, who wants to ban McDonald's from sponsoring a movie slot on RTÉ, is a perfect example.
Whether he realises it or not, what Chambers is calling for is a reduction in the right of parents to raise and feed their kids as they see fit.
We are surrounded and assailed on all sides by people who think they know more than you do. Surrounded by busybodies who used to be known as cranks, but who are now called health experts.
You could call it the salami effect, where people gradually chip away at your rights until, without you even noticing, you have no rights left at all. However somebody, somewhere probably objects to the promotion of such a fatty sausage.
The next time you comment with smug disdain about someone doing something you don’t personally approve of, think. Next time it could be someone complaining about something you DO approve of. Like, perhaps, the right to live your life your way.
Comments (45)
But then it comes to people being cruel to or hunting animals for fun, my views on that are well known & I'm not changing them anytime soon, if that puts me in the "insert their grubby, interfering tentacles into every aspect of both our public and private lives" bracket I'll plead guilty & save the cost of the trial
The PC term for what the Amish call 'shunning'?
'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.'
Ecclesiastes 1:9
...blogland is big enough for everyone...
Blah blah blah
Show their true colours
The fence sitters fall off...
This blog is a stand for all those who refuse to make a stand.
I would like to support you but ????
Sorry what was I saying...
And the blog is all about your right to have an opinion and think what you want to think, not what you are told to think? Just don't force others to think your way. I borrowed Ian O'Doherty's words, because I'm way too much of a wuss to put it into my own
At least no-one could ever call you smug
Want sugar in your tea? Better stock up - because there's talk of banning it. Unhealthy stuff.
Like American football? But people get hurt playing it. They may be prepared to take that risk but that's not good enough, it should be stopped altogether.
That sort of 'for your own good' nanny stuff ... we rather specialize in that in Britain.
However it will be a while yet before I am put in overall charge of everything and everybody. I can't WAIT.
Queen
Lyrics
Do you mean it?
Do you mean it?
Do you mean it?
Why don't you mean it?
Why do I follow you and where do you go?
You've never seen nothing like it no never in your life
Like going up to heaven and then coming back alive
Let me tell you all about it—
And the world will so allow it
Ooh, give me a little time to choose
Water babies singing in a lily-pool delight
Blue powder monkies praying in the dead of night
Here comes the Black Queen, poking in the pile
Fie-Fo the Black Queen, marching single file
Take this, take that, bring them down to size
Now I have to walk the dog. Be interesting to see if this blog is still up when I get back
Seems you have your own branch of the Thou Shalt Not brigade thriving there and it is always with a tag like 'for the health of our children' or 'only drunks could want the pubs open later' which make it difficult to object!
It must be true. The newspapers said so.
You just WAIT until the grumblers hear about this, they will be FURIOUS.
Toronto Star, which reveals just how many years of life Canadians lose with each bad habit.
Smoking slashes an estimated 2.8 years off of Canadians' lives, according to the researchers. Physical inactivity is next, at around 2.6 years of lost lifespan, followed by 1.2 years for poor diet and around 2 weeks for alcohol.
anyway at one time drinking red wine was good for heart now it is not. Statins were given out like sweeties and the side effects of those have been drastic.
So i say your own body will tell you when something you are doing or eating will tell you IF ONLY WE WOULD LISTEN
Here's the future. The FOOG brigade decide people are just too irritable, too uncontrolled. They need to be medicated, then they will be quiet, happy, biddable, hard-working (okay, slow, but hard-working) and it will all finally be a nice place to live.
That's not science fiction. That's happening. Ask anyone who has a lively kid in school, and has been told the kid is disruptive and needs to be put on Ritalin. That's today.
Can hardly wait for tomorrow.
We need more crankies talking out for our rights
Tomorrow it could be taken off the shelves or taxed to £50 a bottle. For your own good
Doctors have been brought in, or bought off, to aid and abet the drugging of the masses.
Drugging of children is expecially sinister. Daydreamers are now being drugged. Where are all the inventors and the artists of the future going to come from?
We're doomed, I tell you.
The red pull or the blue pill
I'd like a simpler version that those who most need to understand, could.
Much as I'd be a benign dictator at the beginning, being human would mean I'd probably turn as corrupt and power-hungry as the rest of them.
The Egyptians had it all sewn up handily since their pharaohs were either gods or part-god. I think a god would really be something for the paparazzi to enjoy?
The leader was treated like royalty whilst in power.
But if there were a bad harvest, he was the one who was sacrificed to appease the gods.
Worth trying a minor politician to see how it affects the harvest in his / her constituency?
They will pool together and buy stronger spirits if needs be, which is worse than having a couple of beers.