Nanny state - agree/disagree

ClubMan said:
Why? If it used to be OK in the past then why not now? At least that's my conclusion when I follow your logic on the general issue.
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There are very sound reasons why most airlines decided voluntarily to implement no smoking policies. Not least because it allows them to cut fuel consumption. It also appears to be popular with customers. When Northwest Airlines banned smoking on their flights in 1988, many predicted a massive loss of customers but the opposite occurred. The increased revenue forced other airlines to follow suit. That said, I would support (though not necessarily fly on) all smoking airlines such as Smintair.

I don't see why hospitals couldn't have a smoking room for visitors and staff but it makes sense not to allow people to smoke in the presence of ill people. Although I'm sure this could be covered by hospital policy without the requirement for a government-knows-best act.

ClubMan said:
Would that not be in breach of equality legislation?
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Don't get me started on that crowd! Although I guess if they support the right of [broken link removed] not to hire smokers, they can hardly complain about the opposing case.
 

I'd agree with you completely if I'm allowed the freedom not to contribute that portion of my taxes which goes to cover the publically-funded medical costs of those who for example develop smoking-related diseases. Couldn't that be described as 'inflicting pain on others (me specifically) as a result of bad choices'?
 

Do you also want to not pay the portion that is ordinarily spent on the health implications of other poor lifestyle choices as well such as drinking too much, not exercising or taking illicit drugs? What about people who are involved in accidents after knowingly taking stupid risks like driving too fast, getting involved in extreme sports or wandering around certain areas of the city late at night? Maybe you'd like the option not to have your taxes fund these too?
 

how about pay no taxes and look after yourself...
 
The term 'nanny state' really annoys me (whoops, maybe I'm posting in the wrong thread.) It smacks of unthinking tabloidism, a term that means nothing and yet will rile people into agreeing. Many things we organise as a community for the overall good. Most of these are generally acceptable - laws against stealing, aggression, speeding; gathering together contributions to enrich the community as a whole - health, education, hygiene. Only when a person disagrees with one thing (and they will - nobody is the average person) do they then react against it and use an emotive term lifted from the tabloids: the nanny state.

OK maybe my rant is really against the tabloids.
 

Well of course I would! I used 'smoking-related diseases' as an example. I was attempting to be ironic however. It's as impractical in my view to suggest that we should be allowed to be free to exercise responsible choices as it is to be able to be selective about paying tax.

Society works only because we agree to exercise individual restraint, ideally on a voluntary basis but in practice some degree of 'encouragement' is required. In former times when people tended to live in tight-knit, static communities, social pressure helped to impose the necessary restraints. In today's anonymous, highly-complex and highly-mobile societies there is a much greater need for 'encouragement' via the legal system. Level of affluence has an impact also I believe. When survival of the community depends upon cooperation between individuals - as it still does in parts of the world - the need for policing is significantly less.
 
ClubMan said:
What unnecessary restrictions are there on driving in your opinion?
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The vendetta against speed. Limits too low on good quality roads, too high on bad quality roads. Basically the lack of intelligent decision making with regard to the setting of limits. Also the drink driving issue, which is ruining publican livelihoods in rural areas. Enforce the law, punish drink drivers to the limit. Again we are being told that at some time in the future any alcohol taken will have you off the road. Tiredness from a long journey impairs more than 1 drink! VRT basically protects the interests of the motoring moguls in Ireland and blocks our european right to source higher spec vehicles for better value than here.....

ClubMan said:
There are no laws against smoking and drinking as much as you want. There are laws against smoking in a workplace environment but that's all. And licensing laws have never been as liberal in this country as they are today.
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What about this new proposed change to limit the opening hours of the off licence etc. Adults can make a decision as to how much they want to drink and how often? No need to legislate here. Just enforce the law around unsociable behaviout due to drink. It is the idividual, not the drink that causes the problem?


ClubMan said:
What pre-emptive stuff?
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Basically all of the above. Trying to legislate every facet of our daily lives. Reducing a persons ability to make their own decisions in regard to their daily lives.
 

A nanny state is one which is excessive in it's desire to control its citizen's lives, right down to behaviour which affects no one other than themselves. You may not like the term, but it is as useful a term as any for an overly controlling state.

Do children learn from being restricted and controlled until they are 18? Or do they learn by being given responsibilities, and consequences for abusing those responsibilities?

An overly controlling state restricts our freedoms in the same way the church did in the early part of the last century. The more people that roll over in the face of this excessive control, the worse (and less mature) our country becomes.

Then the choice must be made: Would you prefer to be treated like a responsible adult and live in a country that treats you as such? Or do you want the state to do everything for you ?
 

Surely it is just as impractical to imagine that some sort of benevolent quasi-dictatorship can be established to prevent people from making poor lifestyle choices? Is this even desirable? Today the apparatchik are banging on the door of someone's office because they're having a cigarette, tomorrow it's the door of your home they're banging on because you decided to kick back with a beer and a slice of pizza. Maybe the problem is the provision of universal healthcare - socialising the cost of poor lifestyle choices.

Your personal liberties are always in the minority - whether it's your sexuality, your religion or the fact that you enjoy collecting old postage stamps. It is only by defending everybodies liberties, regardless of how we feel about them, that we can prevent the state deciding to confiscate our own.
 
room305 said:
Surely it is just as impractical to imagine that some sort of benevolent quasi-dictatorship can be established to prevent people from making poor lifestyle choices?
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What's the difference in principle between me hitting you over the head with a club in order to steal your watch, and subjecting you to the harmful effects of my cigarette smoke or knocking you down with the 1-ton blunt instrument I'm driving while drunk? All such practices in my opinion are highly anti-social, all can kill or seriously harm you even if in dramatically different time-frames, so if we choose to legislate against the obvious one, i.e. the use of the club, then in principle we should legislate against all.

You see I don't believe that people can be left to themselves to make responsible decisions. In theory, being 'intelligent' we should be able to be so left but there is a world of a difference between 'intelligence' and 'intelligent behaviour'. How by any stretch of the imagination can speeding or drunken-driving be described as intelligent behaviour? Is there any doubt that such behaviour is anti-social? I wouldn't care if people want to shorten their lives through making poor life-choices but it's virtually impossible to do so without affecting other people and that is the problem that I see. John Donne said it well "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind...".

None of the above should be seen as an argument for the imposition of a dictatorship, benevolent or otherwise. As in so many human situations the art is in knowing where to strike the balance. At the end of the day, the individual is free to use his or her vote to decide where that line is drawn. I have yet to see any marches protesting against legislating against drunken driving for example. The fuss made about rural drinkers and their inability to get to their locals was no more than a poorly-disguised attempt to make political capital out of the situation in my opinion and who in general actually gave a damn thereafter about their supposed plight? As for smoking, well I'll cheerfully admit to being partisan on the issue having watched too many of my friends and relations succumbing to smoking-related diseases. If the State can't save people from themselves then who can? Now that's ironic isn't it - we don't actually have the right to harm ourselves because as I've said we can't do it without involving other people to whom the State therefore owes a debt of protection.
 
I think the level of 'state interference' we have now, even at it's worst, is infinitely preferable to the influence and pressure that has been exerted by the catholic church on the day to day lives of the people of this country.

Having said that, if the other much more damaging ills of society like street crime etc were considered,debated and legislated for with the same fervour as smoking etc, I'd probably be happier to live in a so-called 'nanny state'.
 
shnaek said:
A nanny state is one which is excessive in it's desire to control its citizen's lives, right down to behaviour which affects no one other than themselves.
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Can't rmember any laws on masturbating in private and out of sight....
 
Caveat said:
Having said that, if the other much more damaging ills of society like street crime etc were considered,debated and legislated for with the same fervour as smoking etc, I'd probably be happier to live in a so-called 'nanny state'.
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Thats a very good point. Theres plenty of other more harmful phenomenon which could be prioritised instead.
 

Well it's a matter of degree which is important too but your argument has merit and I'm not against any of the situations you have described here. However, there's simply no reason in the world why the government needs to legislate in areas concerning what we ingest into our bodies, what consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own homes, or what a business owner has decided is acceptable behaviour from a consenting clientele.

None of this interferes with your right to breathe clean air in public or not be knocked down by drunken fools.


And if tomorrow in its infinite wisdom the government decided that YOU should no longer be given the freedom to decide what you want to eat, watch on TV, listen to, read, or what religious practice to adhere to, would you be fully supportive of such measures as long as they could prove it was in some way for the greater good?

Your personal freedoms, whatever little things you enjoy that make life that little bit more bearable will be in the minority when measured against the broad base of freedoms enjoyed by others. If you don't support theirs because you find them personally repellant then you can hardly expect others to support yours if the government decides they are in some way a menace to society.


As I said - personal freedoms are always a minority issue. I have absolutely no sympathy for drunk drivers and the right to drive a vehicle on public roads while under the influence of alcohol can hardly be considered a personal freedom no more than the right wield a machete in a public school. If you support state intervention to prevent citizens from smoking within the confines of a private property, then will you stand by meekly if the government takes a similar stance on any of myriad of other costly societal ills such as gambling, drinking, caffeine abuse, over-eating, dangerous sporting pursuits and the like?
 
How about if the government decides it's for the greater good that we all arm ourselves. And that every boy and girl between 18 and 20 must serve a term in the army so they are ready to defend our country if we are attacked. Government can enact many laws which are for the greater good. Who's greater good is the question to ask.
 
Most usage of the term 'nanny-state' I've heard has been in relation to speeding, drink driving and the smoking ban, and used by people who think they should be able to do whatever they want no matter what the effect on others i.e. have zero sense of civil responsibility.

This is the first time I've heard it used in any other context . . I don't think the government is going to start randomly outlawing religions, stuffing your face on ice cream if you want to, or requiring everyone to be armed - we live in a democracy you know! What specific laws are you referring to which are overly restrictive on our nation full of responsible adults?

Schnaek, your point
>>Do children learn from being restricted and controlled until they are 18? Or do they learn by being given responsibilities, and consequences for abusing those responsibilities?<<

So how would we know what those consequences were if we didn't have law?

I was listening to a spokesman from Ash on Newstalk a couple of weeks ago and he was raving on about the evils of smoking and got a lot of abuse and angry texts in. But I thought he made one excellent point. All the anti smoking ban people who go on about a nanny state while they go out and spend millions of $ on a poisonous weed which will kill a lot of them! Pretty ironic of them to be complaining about manipulation. If they're really the responsible, intelligent adults they claim to be why are they spending their cash and health on fags? Different discussion I know.
 

We're still a democracy. We could vote them out at the next election if their policies really displeased us.
 
Gordanus said:
We're still a democracy. We could vote them out at the next election if their policies really displeased us.
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We as a country don't have the ability to filer out the FUD regarding our governments ability to improve our lives.

If that were the case FF would have been replaced. Not to turn this into a pro/con a particular party but there are a lot of policies that we seem to have huge problems with and we didn't have the knowledge or the conviction to make change.

So it's all well and good to say we are a democracy, but in Ireland I think we don't have the first clue on how to effect change using that power?
 

To my mind people who use the term in this way are doing so erroneously. If people want rights then they must understand that they come with responsibilities. Liberal licensing laws are not carte-blanche permission to drive drunk, or get involved in any other drink-related anti-social behaviour.

If you want your own rights to be protected you must respect the rights of others. The very opposite of a "nanny state" which seeks to abdicate all forms of personal responsibility to the jurisdiction of the government.


How can you be so sure? Already, the government has been tossing around the idea of additional taxes on fast food outlets. The Minister for Justice has talked of restricting the hours of off-licences and there have been calls to restrict below-cost selling of alcohol. Michael McDowell was forced to back down on a plan to further liberalise the licensed drinking market.

The trick is always to propose a certain measure - say extra taxes on fatty foods - on the basis of saving revenue on the health service. The debate then becomes one of a "balance sheet". Will say, the loss of jobs in the fast food sector outweigh the savings in the healthcare budget. This conveniently sidesteps what should be the central issue - "what right does the government have to try and control what we eat?". The debate should never be one of statistics but principles and governments that try to micromanage the lives of their citizens in the belief that they know what is best, do so in contravention of the constitution.


Look at the much lauded on this forum, attitude of continental Europe to drink. Note as well that they tend to have far more liberal laws in relation to drink.


How do we know smokers are being manipulated? It's not like cigarettes are even that heavily advertised anymore. Liberty should never be dictated by need or what (the state feels) is good, that's Marxism. Otherwise nobody would consider it preposterous if I suggested introducing a law restricting each citizen to owning no more than three pairs of shoes, on the basis that they couldn't possibly need any more than that. Or limiting the amount of airline travel they can take, or any of one hundred and one million different laws states could introduce for the so called "greater good".

You have to allow people the freedom to make bad decisions. Simple as.
 
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