Our powers that be are considering a ban on smoking in cars. Not theirs; ours. It’s all for our own good, and especially for the good of our children. Gosh, Dave, and I didn’t know you cared. In fact, the impression we’ve had for quite some time is that our government cares about our children only insofar as to turn them into little savages. Now we know that impression is wrong. But it’s easy to see how we were misled into this error.
Perhaps it was our state education that has elevated the use of condoms to an academic discipline. I wonder how long before our universities will be offering degree courses in condom usage: B.cu for knowing what they are for, M.cu for knowing how to put them on, D.cu for holding on to the tip so no air gets in. Oh pardon me, that’s not all our children learn. They are also taught that all religions are equal, and all are equally rubbish. That we’re all apes, which isn’t so much science as self-fulfilling prophecy. That multi-culti diversity is so good as to be God. That any way they speak English is fine as long as they understand one another (they may not understand us, and we them, but the whole point is to guarantee that our paths will never cross — unless our comprehensively educated darlings mug us in a dark alley). That any music is cool as long as they think it is. That they don’t have to learn how to read, write and add up to get ahead in life — the state will take care of them.
It’s our government policies that have allowed the state to squeeze its bulk into the place formerly occupied by the father, making the father redundant. Millions of children are brought up by intermittently single mothers, and 52% of those children live below the official poverty line. Millions of them are obese from all the slops they eat, and 86% of all children never have a meal at the table with their family.
But hey, now we know the government cares. However, can one be permitted to ask a few questions? Such as, why just cars, why not homes? Admittedly, cars tend to be smaller than flats, this side of America at any rate, so the concentration of nicotine would be higher. But on the other hand, people tend to smoke more at home than while driving, what with the sad necessity of steering with one hand and changing gears with the other. Why not classify nicotine as a Class A drug and be done with it? And the most subversive question of all: exactly where do you chaps get off? The car is my property; I can do whatever I want in it. The car is an extension of my home, my castle, where I’m lord and master. I can tell my passengers not to smoke; they can only ask me. If they don’t like my smoking, they shouldn’t get in the car with me. My children don’t have that option, or rather wouldn’t if I had any. But the ban will have to be blanket — you shall look after your children, you unfeeling bastard, even if you have none.
Now, even though the evidence against passive smoking is less than unequivocal, I’m prepared to accept that not smoking in my car is a good idea. But if history teaches us anything, it’s that a government that legislates supposedly good ideas will always turn into laws ideas that are definitely bad. The more the state does for the people, the more it will do to them. Thus it was Nazi scientists who first established a link between smoking and lung cancer. Hence, along with Nuremberg laws the Nazis passed one banning smoking for all women (extended life expectancy wasn’t an issue for the men in the trenches). As a result, well into the 60s lung-cancer statistics remained better for women in Germany than anywhere else. Why were the Nazis so solicitous? It wasn’t the good of the people; it was the good of the state (the healthier the people, the longer they’ll serve the Führer).
This is similar to the justification that HMG uses in this case: the healthier we are, the less pressure we’ll put on the NHS, which is to say the state. Now that is the strongest argument against the very notion of an NHS. Stronger even than the cull of wrinklies it is conducting, using such expedients as infections and neglect. Stronger than the waiting lists. Stronger than all those directors of diversity, facilitators of optimisation and optimisers of facilitation who are rapidly replacing doctors and nurses in our hospitals. We are (still) a first-world country with third-world medical care. No wonder then that our government isn’t above imposing third-world tyrannies.