Guilty of not wearing a seat belt.

You miss the topic’s issue by being too literal.
Guy’s of my generation used to say “Never trust anyone over 30”.

And we used to say never trust anyone who wants to be a politician. Still do, in fact.

Now they’re in power, not only are they “The MAN”…they’re passing laws and regulations they would have called fascist 40 years ago.
Even Richard Nixon (or insert the name of any reviled conservative here) on his worst day, never dreamed about limiting actions, and choices to the extent we now see.

The companies wouldn’t have liked that; look at how long it has been known that smoking was bad for you and then think about how powerful the tobacco companies are/were or whether those in government were employed by tobacco companies (as at least one UK government minister was in the last 20-30 years).
But things change: look at all the disease’s that have been wiped out or effectively tamed, the understandings of what causes things like cancer (or some, anyway) and environmental damage, how important things like the rain forests are to our continuing existence. We know things now that weren’t known in Nixon’s day (obviously) but this knowledge means that things like lead must be taken out out of fuel and low cholesterol will help you live longer, little things like that. Now, if they kept things under their hats and not informed the public that certain insecticides actually were bad for us or not tried to cut back industrial scale pollution how do you think the people would have voted when they found out?

Sometimes, the ‘man’ must be acknowledged.

Yes, being told you can’t have a Coke is a minor thing to people starving in some hellhole or under the thumb of a real bad guy.

Strangely, that was not my point.
There are better things than a Coke (or Pepsi) to slake that thirst. Something else that is a relatively recent discovery.

How much say do you want to give strangers into deciding what you can…and cannot do?

It is all relative.
Faceless strangers make those decisions about/for people they usually don’t know and will probably never meet, everyday. The local council/government, insurance companies, banks, doctors, blah, blah, etc. Unfortunately you cannot choose those whose decisions affect you.

…(since that seems to be the image you’re trying to conjure up with “…with a bucket of Coke before tucking into a burger – with all the trimmings….”)…

Nope, nothing personal. In fact, if you read it properly, I was inviting you to join…etc.

But I do care about individual rights.

This is a subject worthy of serious discussion as opposed to dismissing it with a health lecture about electrolytes and fizzy drinks.

Just looking out for your health.

And in response to your smart **** comment about a “Ouija” board, I’ll suggest you summon a time machine and go back in time to the 617 Squadron mess.

Ha. Don’t believe in it, but it apparently gives solace to some.

YOU can tell they guys they aren’t allowed to smoke inside after coming back from a mission. You should really share your knowledge and let them know…smoking might kill them! 🙂

And then again it might not. But please remember that when they flew they wore seat belts; not that they would have helped after a direst hit from flak or a dedicated nightfighter…

The case rests, I think!;)

What you state in your last paragraph would, I suggest, make you anything but the average normal ‘bloke’ in today’s society!

Do you remember a couple of weeks back when ‘Wonga’ wrote-off all those debts that people had run-up? There was another ‘average bloke’ being interviewed on TV and he was bemoaning that he had got into serious debt problems with ‘Wonga’ and they hadn’t apparently shown enough due diligence in assessing his ability to repay the loan he had taken out.

What had he spent the money on? A holiday!

Re 95

CD. Whichever way round – the chicken or the egg – the result is the same; a risk averse society that has abandoned personal responsibility and therefore personal freedom. Hence the seatbelt laws and similar.

How many times do you hear the public being interviewed on TV as to some complaint or another, only to hear the now ever present refrain: ” I couldn’t get no ‘elp ! ” uttered most plaintively and for usually the most trivial of reasons.

Never any suggestion that they should look to their own resources to provide a solution.

I do not regard myself as anything other than an average, normal bloke. But, also one who would go to any lengths to help myself, my family or, anyone who required assistance, wholly from my own resources. And if such was not possible, then to consider such alternatives as may be available without tapping into official help of any kind.

Charlie at 94 is right.

No.

You don’t see it as being the other way round? Increased government interference in our lives because of our failure to take responsibility for our actions or an inability to apply intelligence to the decisions that we make?

Re 89

It isn’t simply the ‘wrong connotation’, it is the wrong interpretation ! There was simply no understanding of the meaning or implications of the term ‘nanny state’. The future and gradual removal of personal freedoms would have shocked and appalled the people of the emerging welfare state.

I don’t blame any Govt.!

Exactly so – you reinforce my point. However I do think there is a degree of government blame. The last decade or so has seen an increase in the management of our lives by “the state”, illustrated in a number of ways and not least by the huge growth ion quangos to monitor, manage and govern so many aspects of our lives. The corollary of this is of course the loss of personal responsibility for our actions and therefore our ability to apply intelligence and/or common sense to the decisions we make.

I propose a Restriction Of Calories Act, 2014.

Perhaps this idea has merits, an interesting aviation related story – New chopper rules for ‘larger’ offshore workers.

(Heads-up provided by a post on UKAR).

I propose a Restriction Of Calories Act…

You jest, at least, I hope you jest…

…but the rise of the seriously obese is no myth. And it is no government ‘plot’ either.

The NHS is still an election issue, and will always be a political football, but with an ageing population, and the irresponsible way we treat our ‘freedoms’ to abuse alcohol, criminalised drugs and food the whole economics of the NHS will prove unsustainable.

I’ve just returned from a brief holiday where I saw more significantly and seriously obese people than I have ever seen gathered in one place.

Who goes on holiday to Glasgow anyway?

Re 89

It isn’t simply the ‘wrong connotation’, it is the wrong interpretation ! There was simply no understanding of the meaning or implications of the term ‘nanny state’. The future and gradual removal of personal freedoms would have shocked and appalled the people of the emerging welfare state.

I don’t blame any Govt. I blame the unquestioning public who refused to observe their personal responsibilites – referred to by another member – and continue to do so.

I’ve just returned from a brief holiday where I saw more significantly and seriously obese people than I have ever seen gathered in one place. Endorsing the principle of the seatbelt law, particularly because of the cost to the NHS and in view of other comments about the individual and the majority, we should support and endorse a law to restrain eating.

I propose a Restriction Of Calories Act, 2014. People trained as Food Police will enforce.They will patrol cafes,restaurants
supermarkets or any establishment selling food, armed with graduated, measuring calipers. If fat levels, at preselected sites on the human body are judged to be in excess of certain agreed percentages, the alleged criminal will be fitted with a compulsory (how I love that term) AFGD – (anti food gagging device) with an access slit for fluids administered with a straw.

All the many on this forum who support the loss of personal freedoms wil support this very sensible proposal. Just think of the savings benefit to the NHS !

Perhaps ‘nanny state’ has the wrong connotations but the NHS and the welfare state certainly became a reality.

That last paragraph is a gross misrepresentation of what happened in 1945. You were not there and I was a lad so we had not lived through the privations of the late twenties and thirties nor the sense of anticlimax once the victory celebrations had died away. We had fought a war and won but at huge cost to the nation and it’s families.

And most importantly the “nanny state” was not what Beveridge’s dream was all about. That came much much later and he would be appalled by what has happened in his name.

Simply put, people have a right to be stupid…in their lack of safety and health actions as well as political opinions.

Are we facing , to coin a phrase a “Tyranny of good intentions”…where personal freedoms are abridged for “nanny state”/PC concerns? I’m not sure the men who died fighting for our freedom from tyranny would be amused by this turn of events.

People have a right to be stupid…..where that stupidity has negligible impact on others!

The situation is slightly different in the UK and the US; in the UK we have the NHS in the US (I think) most rely on some form of private healthcare insurance, those that can afford it, with some basic level of state care for those that cannot afford it.

Therefore in the US the impact of ‘stupidity’ will presumably reflect directly in healthcare insurance premiums; people will have to pay directly for their stupidity. In the UK everybody gets to pay more tax and gets worse service for the ‘stupidity’ of everybody else. It is estimated that diabetes alone is costing the NHS 10% of its annual budget; that is over £10billion.

And as for those that fought tyranny, in the UK at least, the first thing they did when they got home from the war was to ensure that they voted for the ‘nanny state’ of the NHS and all that came with it.

…that it would feed a family of starving Africans for a week…

You miss the topic’s issue by being too literal.
Guy’s of my generation used to say “Never trust anyone over 30”.
Now they’re in power, not only are they “The MAN”…they’re passing laws and regulations they would have called fascist 40 years ago.
Even Richard Nixon (or insert the name of any reviled conservative here) on his worst day, never dreamed about limiting actions, and choices to the extent we now see.

Yes, being told you can’t have a Coke is a minor thing to people starving in some hellhole or under the thumb of a real bad guy.
But still, it’s an erosion of liberties that were once taken for granted…or if you think they’re “minor liberties” (though I’m not sure there is such a thing)…
you might look at it as simply more government intrusion into one’s daily lives. How much say do you want to give strangers into deciding what you can…and cannot do?

And I say this and not being a smoker, drinker or unhealthy-eating first world pig (since that seems to be the image you’re trying to conjure up with “…with a bucket of Coke before tucking into a burger – with all the trimmings….”) as well as being a proponent of seat belt use (though I do draw the line at wearing a helmet when I bicycle to the post office 1/4 mile away in my rural village…the reckless scofflaw that I am).

But I do care about individual rights.

This is a subject worthy of serious discussion as opposed to dismissing it with a health lecture about electrolytes and fizzy drinks.

And in response to your smart **** comment about a “Ouija” board, I’ll suggest you summon a time machine and go back in time to the 617 Squadron mess. YOU can tell they guys they aren’t allowed to smoke inside after coming back from a mission. You should really share your knowledge and let them know…smoking might kill them! 🙂

Re 73

Now we know you to be a very good, law abiding, obedient, model citizen. Would that there were more, just like you.

Re 81

Very well put

Personally, I agreed wholeheartedly with the indoor smoking ban; even if I (or the bar staff) didn’t contract cancer through secondary smoke it used to make my clothes stink.

Remember Roy Castle?

Castle was found to have lung cancer in January 1992. He was predicted to live only another 6 months. He underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy and went into remission later that year. A non-smoker, he blamed his illness on passive smoking during his years of playing the trumpet in smoky jazz clubs. On 26 November 1993, Castle announced that his illness had returned, and once again underwent treatment in the hope of overcoming it…

…He died in Buckinghamshire on 2 September 1994, two days after his 62nd birthday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Castle#Illness_and_death

In addition, about 11 or 12 years ago I was in a bar somewhere in Brighton that had a memorial on the wall to a previous – apparently non smoking – landlord who had died of lung cancer about 10-15 years previous. Who knows how many pub and bar staff have died over the years of lung cancer acquired or, if they were already smokers, exacerbated by working in a smokey atmosphere?

Here in America we have people trying to tell us how to eat.

Uh oh…

Yes, some people eat stupidly….

It isn’t just an American thing though.

Most famously, the mayor of New York wanted to ban large soft drinks…(but not large beers). I know we need to watch calories…but anyone who was really thirsty (say after working outside in the summer) could just buy 2 soft drinks.

Oh come on, if you are really that thirsty then your body will be dehydrated so drinking one soft drink is hardly going to be of much use, and two would be overkill in filling you up and making your body excrete even more of the electrolytes your system needs: a fizzy, sugary, cold drink is not going to replace them. Drinking alcohol would be even worse.

I can see a day when meat is banned for environment (cow gas) and animal rights issues.

Never happen. Not unless the world collectively made that decision and that is as likely as ISIS developing a guilty conscience.
If it did happen…most of the species currently being bred for consumption would die out – they wouldn’t be needed and having no other use would be deemed uneconomic to maintain.

I’m not sure the men who died fighting for our freedom from tyranny would be amused by this turn of events.

Why not get out your ouija board and ask them? In the meantime get real and join those of us who understand that tyranny is not someone telling you to wear a seatbelt, not to smoke or what you can and cannot eat and instead try sparing a thought for those actually living in the ‘luxury’ of a real life tyranny, for example North Korea (other tyrannies are available), and not those whose biggest gripe is the fact that they cannot pollute the restaurant with cigarette smoke, are being forced to wear that fashion faux pas the seat belt against their wishes, and can’t wash the dust from their mouths with a bucket of Coke before tucking into a burger – with all the trimmings – of such proportions that it would feed a family of starving Africans for a week…

Oh, such are the many perils of living in the first world?

I have read it three times and I think that is an exemplary final paragraph.

I agree with John Green’s concerns about civil liberties vs. nanny state.
As always, it’s a fine line.
Yes on seat belts…yes on indoor smoking bans.
But (and there is always a but) eventually, a line will be crossed.
Here in America we have people trying to tell us how to eat.
Yes, some people eat stupidly….
Most famously, the mayor of New York wanted to ban large soft drinks…(but not large beers). I know we need to watch calories…but anyone who was really thirsty (say after working outside in the summer) could just buy 2 soft drinks. That and the beer exemption made it look like a foolish law written in order to look good, not have any practical result or merit.
I’m 6’3″ and 190 lbs, so I’m hardly heavy. But I’d like the option of having a double cheeseburger or steak with chips if I occasionally want one.
Likewise, I can see a day when meat is banned for environment (cow gas) and animal rights issues.

Simply put, people have a right to be stupid…in their lack of safety and health actions as well as political opinions.
But a lot of people want to ban anything they don’t agree with.
Are we facing , to coin a phrase a “Tyranny of good intentions”…where personal freedoms are abridged for “nanny state”/PC concerns?
I’m not sure the men who died fighting for our freedom from tyranny would be amused by this turn of events.