shuggy's blog
makes me want to neck about 10 Es and five bottles of champagne in a techno club just to fuck them off....
I don't agree - I think it's government trying to find a role for itself post-Thatcherism.
People will always want the government to intervene to cure their ills since the idea of minimal government is anathema to the vast majority of Britons, but all the grand visions of yesteryear are gone - all that remains is a managerial duty to provide the best outcome for the maximum number of people.
Governments can't offer big visions to make themselves relevant to the public, so they try to keep the punters happy by fucking about in the margins while reducing politics to an empty game of one-upmanship in crime fighting.
In other words, libertarianism+reality = smoking bans.
Curiously, those that are complaining loudest are those that were most complicit in the reduction of politics - the Thatcherites themselves.
I'll let your other commenters shoot me down in flames now, I'll crack a few gags next time.
Hmmm - interesting. Social moralism replacing moral socialism, ya reckon?
I'll just say that the notion that all politicians are bastards who only want to fill their own pockets now rules triumphant - that's a storming victory for Thatcherism.
So now the problem is that Brits expect government to solve social problems, while still cursing everything politicians do.
What's the best way to connect with the public? Well, look at Ireland, where Bertie Aherne got himself lionised on the front of every newspaper for banning cigs.
Public health benefit + popularity = where do we sign up?
Communism isn't the only twentieth century ideology that worked better on paper than in practice, I reckon.
Agree with Rodent.
On top of that.
"NuLabour" -- please fuck off with that shit Shuggy. The only people who use or insist on that particular appellation are tory filth, thick, or scumbags or are both. So fucking stop it. You hear?
One more thing..."Is it just me or are our lives increasingly governed by people terrified at the prospect of us having fun?"
When has it ever been otherwise? The Thatcherite bastards and the oh so radical 'centre' 'right' and other assorted dupes and ignorant philistines have been ruling over us for a fucking eternity. Haven't you noticed?
When has it ever been otherwise?
'Increasingly' was the operative word. And please fuck off with the shit about shit: I'll use any word I damn well please.
I just wish the Government (In this case Nu-Lab Nu-Lab, so good they named it twice - but I am sure Dave the Chameleon wouldn’t be any different) would keep it’s collective beaky puritanical nose out of our lives.
What business is it of theirs if someone quietly has one bottle of wine, or beer, too many in the privacy of their own homes? They have already made an additional more than generous contribution to the Bogeyman’s coffers, just by purchasing the stuff.
Worry not Shuggy, none of this strategy applies to you unless you move to England or Wales.
"increasingly being the operative word"
Well in that case you're even more wrong. Governments/politicians in the past were much more afraid of us having 'fun' than this current lot. And they had more power to make it so.
Cynic!
Oh - and you're also sounding more and more like a mystical romantic idealist - harking back to some long gone (never existing) utopia where everything was all hunky-fucking-dory. If only the evil politicians would just leave us all alone!
Cynic!
Bollocks! I'm not being mystical or utopian. I'm simply recalling a time not so long ago when we didn't have to put up with all this shit. Since you're about the same age as me, I'd have thought you'd remember. If you can't, it's your problem. Cynicism's got nothing to do with it.
Fan of the smoking ban are we? I know you're not, so what the fuck is this all about, Will?
There used to be bans on lots of things that now aren't banned. Regulation of our lives was much more on the micro level in the past than is the case now.
Of course I'm against the smoking ban. But that doesn't mean I look at petit-bureaucrats and there actions today as being somehow a qualitative break with the past.
"what is this all about?"
Nowt really - just blog comments box winding up 
"People will always want the government to intervene to cure their ills since the idea of minimal government is anathema to the vast majority of Britons."
"People"? What people? I don't want any government bureaucrat to intervene in my life thank-you very much. That comment makes you sound just like the typical new labour EUroland champagne socialist.
Do you know "most Britons"? You'd have to to make the comment you did.
And isn't it so typical of the loony left to bring up Thatcher. The truth is you lot have stuffed things up. You're like little children. Oh well, the thatcherites did it, it isn't new labour's fault. Bollocks!
New labour can't stand what is going on. The idiots refuse to face reality. THE PEOPLE DON'T WANT YOU IN POWER. It has nothing to do with Thatcher.
"Is it just me or are our lives increasingly governed by people terrified at the prospect of us having fun?"
I think it's more a case of power crazy idiots wanting to run everything mate. You know the sort. They are always right, even when they're not right!
Do you know "most Britons"? You'd have to to make the comment you did.
As it happens, I know 51% of all Britons, and they all agree that I am 100% correct.
People will always want the government to intervene to cure their ills since the idea of minimal government is anathema to the vast majority of Britons
People? Winy timid pathetic people who don’t want to have to be adults more like. Too lazy to think half clearly, or scared to decide. People who think someone else always knows better than they do.
It’s a real shame there are always other people who think they know better than you do and that you can’t be trusted to do something yourself. Maybe smug, self satisfied, self righteous, puritanical, humourless people.
Mutter, mutter....
Yes, the party has obviously been infiltrated by the more softline members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. But pre late sixties there would have been a lot of stuff of a sexual nature you couldn't have read, all plays had to go through a censor before being put on and you could be arrested for having gay sex. And I can't see them advancing their control on that front. The govt. tends to make concerned noises about private behaviour but except for the smoking ban doesn't do much that is effective about it.
My take is that having largely abdicated their responsibility for managing the economy and providing basic public services to the all-encompassing market, politicians are now left with less and less that they can actually DO and so transform themselves into moral monitors in a desperate search for relevance.
So actually its the minimal state bollocks that is the problem - bring back real politics based on the great simplicities of class and nation and politicians will be far too busy to pass laws regulating what we can put in our various orifices.
Roger says in two sentences what I took three times as long to say - well done, that man.
People? Winy timid pathetic people who don’t want to have to be adults more like. Too lazy to think half clearly, or scared to decide. People who think someone else always knows better than they do.
Real people with real votes, mate, and they outnumber you millions to one.
People who have to deal with unpleasant realities like their spouse running off with their kids, for instance.
Or having a mentally ill family member institutionalised and working out how to take care of their possessions, or obtaining maintenance from an absent parent, or finding out how to be declared the legal guardian of your partner's child.
Would you know instinctively what to do in the above cases?
It always amuses me to read these kneejerk libertarian bullshit artists proclaiming their independence, since they're always the first on the phone to me when a noisy neighbour is making their lives miserable.
If you want to complain about government generally, it's traditional to actually know what it does first.
Agree with Rodent.
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