Friday, March 12, 2004 AD
Ban it! Compel them! Just do something!
The BBC has a "consultation" on its website asking for people's views on "what the government should do" about health issues such as obesity, smoking and alcohol abuse.
In fairly typical BBC fashion, all the questions are predicated on the idea that the answer to all these problems is for the Government to "do" something - ban this, make that compulsory. The format seems calculated to produce bogus statistics of the "74% support compulsory screening for STDs" variety.
Without wishing to overstate the case, the vision of the world conjured up by this survey reminds me a bit of Christopher Hitchens' great comment about North Korea, where "everything that is not absolutely compulsory is absolutely forbidden".
British readers - if you value your freedom to take responsibility for what you do to your own body - if the reason you are, like me, quite frankly a bit lardy is that you choose to be lardy - then I strongly suggest you go to the BBC website now and vote "no" to every question...
In fairly typical BBC fashion, all the questions are predicated on the idea that the answer to all these problems is for the Government to "do" something - ban this, make that compulsory. The format seems calculated to produce bogus statistics of the "74% support compulsory screening for STDs" variety.
Without wishing to overstate the case, the vision of the world conjured up by this survey reminds me a bit of Christopher Hitchens' great comment about North Korea, where "everything that is not absolutely compulsory is absolutely forbidden".
British readers - if you value your freedom to take responsibility for what you do to your own body - if the reason you are, like me, quite frankly a bit lardy is that you choose to be lardy - then I strongly suggest you go to the BBC website now and vote "no" to every question...
