From phones to cigarettes, PM is eroding right to choose!

From phones to cigarettes, PM is eroding right to choose!

 

These days, it seems to me that everyone has a personal strapline or slogan. I think it has something to do with the global rash of self-styled social media influencers.

Up to this point, I’ve avoided such a luxury. But no longer.

In light of the ever-tightening bullying of state institutions, desperate to justify their massive taxpayer-funded powers, I feel the need for a motto.

I would have used Atlas Shrugged, named after the book by the great Ayn Rand, libertarian extraordinaire. But I’m not sure if everyone would get the classical reference.

So instead, I’ve gone for alliteration: Ban the Banners!

And by banners, I don’t mean those big promotional hoardings or poorly crafted artwork carried by gobby, demonstrating lefties when they seek to intimidate Jewish citizens. No, I mean those politicians and state bureaucrats who seek to take away what remains of our rights to exercise choice as adults for personal good or ill.

There is nothing more these people want than a compliant country of neutered zombies unable to have control over their own lives – the easier to manipulate them for whatever the state wants to do with and to them.

The rate at which national and local government is seizing responsibilities, which for previous generations were self-evidently best exercised at the personal or household level, really stepped up during the Covid19 pandemic.

You may recall that was the period of time when various police forces fined people for allegedly breaking the two-metre rule whilst walking together in the open air for goodness sake, and when there was a debate, straight out of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, as to whether a Scotch Egg counted as a meal or not!

Since then the emboldened state has gone into overdrive. In the last few weeks alone, there have been efforts to ban everything from sweeties, to mobile phones in schools, and to the bureaucrats’ long-term enemy, fags.

These ongoing putsches against personal choice have been made easier by the white flags being flown at every opportunity by the Conservative establishment. Once the party of choice and responsibility, it is now led by a cabal of well-heeled bullies centred around the current Prime Minister.

Since he was appointed – he was not elected, remember - to his current role, this silly man’s virtue-signalling has emboldened every crank with a cause.

One particular victim, whose plight caught my attention was Kevin Hilliard, who has run a pick ’n mix stall in Saxmundham for over 20 years. His pitch license was withdrawn by power crazed town councillors because, apparently, his brightly coloured bon bons and foam sweets presented an existential threat to civilization. Or perhaps it was because his day-glo offer didn’t align with their desire to create a ‘healthy’ market, whatever that is.

After an outcry, the ban was reversed, but the threat remains in the longer-term. Surely, it is up to customers – the free market - to decide whether they buy Mr Hilliard’s gobstoppers or not, and not petty politicians with agendas?

Trusting parents to make sensible choices is also something seemingly off the agenda. New Government guidelines have been published which seek to ban the use by pupils of mobile phones in school, even during breaks.

The Department for Education suggest that this is “to minimise disruption and improve behaviour in classrooms.” Interestingly, there is no mention of the role of teachers in this regard!

Surely, though, it is up to parents – in consultation with their children’s schools - to agree the best way ahead. Most parents would recognise that it is distracting to use phones in class. But it might be a different matter during breaks, or to check their online timetable or coursework status?

My grandson was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes earlier this year, and in order for his parents to be alerted to any peaks & troughs in his blood sugar levels, he has to have his own  smartphone on or near him all the time. An absolute ban just won’t work for all.

So, onto fags. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’d rather that my grandchildren did not smoke when they are older. But then, I also hope that they don’t do many questionable things as they grow older, including take up extreme sports, seek employment with Putin-supporting mercenaries, or vote Liberal Democrat!

But it’s not for me to take away their rights as adults to make their own minds up, based on the evidence available to them. Sunak’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill will do just that.

As an article in the Spectator articulated the matter well: “adults should have the right to make personal choices about how they live their lives. Smokers will die younger on average, but this is a risk they are informed about on every cigarette packet. Since the ban on smoking in indoor public places was implemented, that risk has largely become a private choice, and personal lifestyle choices are not the government’s concern.”

Smokers are often stereotyped as low-information numpties. If only they could be made to see sense, they’d stop, wail the banners!

I’m writing this on the day that researchers from UCL examining data from nearly 200,000 adult participants in the Smoking Toolkit Study, concluded that the number of younger middle-class women who smoke had jumped 25% over the past ten years.

An interview on Radio 4 the same day with a woman who had taken up smoking in her 40s, showed that it was a conscious decision by her to have a cigarette now and then to help her relax.

The Banners must hate her. Time to ban them!

First Published in the www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk on Thursday 2nd May, 2024.