With their diktaks on air travel, gas boilers and even eating meat, QUENTIN LETTS says that… Labour’s hectoring killjoys are dragging Britain to peak nanny statism_Nhy
When we talk of finger-wagging politicians it is generally in the figurative sense. But the term recently acquired literal meaning. Ed Miliband was at the Commons despatch box to discuss his climate policies and as he did so, he brandished his left forefinger.
The Miliband digit is not a device to be derided. It could double as a carpenter’s ruler. Where the prophet Moses had his staff and Sir Simon Rattle his maestro’s baton, Energy Secretary Mr Miliband has that forefinger.
In the Commons he waggled it like a Zulu tribesman shaking a spear. The message? You will do as this finger says. You will comply. These are high days for finger-waggers. The boss-class thinks it has us on the run.
Mr Miliband’s eco-strictures on diet, domestic heating and personal transportation are but the tip of a burgeoning iceberg.
In recent weeks there has been a rat-a-tat-tat of official denunciations: of meat-eating, milk-drinking, nicotine usage, adverts for yogurts, air travel, internal combustion engines and gas boilers. The Left-dominated Commons have even informed us on when and how we may die.
From cars to coffins they tell us what to do. If it’s not fingers being waved in our faces it’s morphine-filled syringes.
The urge to instruct others how to live is only human. In Neolithic times some overbearing cavemen no doubt told others how to slay a mammoth.
A map of the Fosse Way, which still scores a straight diagonal from Exeter to Lincoln, shows that ancient Rome’s road builders had little regard for local planning concerns.
Where the prophet Moses had his staff and Sir Simon Rattle his maestro’s baton, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has that forefinger, writes QUENTIN LETTS
The Government’s anti-smoking plan will ban today’s 15-year-olds from buying a packet of fags, while their 16-year-old friends will be able to
After the Norman invasion of 1066 there was an explosion of bureaucratic interference thanks to the Domesday Book.
Words such as ‘prison’, ‘court’ and ‘constable’ come from Norman days. William the Conqueror was no lover of Anglo-Saxon freedoms. Later came the Puritans, among whom Mr Miliband would have found fellow travellers.
Oliver Cromwell banished Christmas, smoking and playing cards. Lord Protector Oliver would have loved the recent ban on household coal. He would have been a pioneer evangelist for electric cars and Linda McCartney vegan sausages.
Cromwellians tried to fix prices. They believed in big government as a form of morality or, to be more precise, their morality. England endured it only so long before booting out the hectoring killjoys.
Almost three million people have signed a petition seeking a General Election to rid us of Sir Keir Starmer’s authoritarians.
Today’s Roundheads, who seek to impose their own sparse creeds, may be no more popular than their 17th Century predecessors. Yet, for the moment, we languish at peak nanny statism.
The Government has revived Rishi Sunak’s anti-smoking plan, which will ban tobacco for anyone currently aged 15. In 60 years’ time, when today’s 15-year-olds will be 75, they will still not be able to buy a packet of fags, even though their 76-year-old friends will. Madness? Yes, it has a touch of that. But officialdom has decreed that it will be thus. Officialdom must not be gainsaid.
Vapes’ advertising and sponsorship are to be outlawed. There will be more fines. The authorities will be able to ban nicotine consumption outdoors as well as indoors. Edicts are loosed like a cloud of arrows at the Battle of Hastings. Sir Keir Starmer promised repeatedly during his election campaign to ‘tread lightly on people’s lives’.
Finger-wagging professors, asserted last week that we will have to consume less meat, butter, cheese and milk to save the planet
Two weeks ago, he added that climate policies would not involve ‘telling people how to live their lives’.
Yet his climate change committee, a nest of finger-wagging professors, asserted last week that we will have to consume less meat, butter, cheese and milk to save the planet.
China may be opening coal-powered stations but – no! – you may not have that mug of milky Ovaltine.
The committee told us to take more buses and trams. We will have to travel less by air (unless we are climate campaigners travelling to a summit in some far-flung dictatorship) and the car industry may be fined even more if it continues to sell petrol-powered vehicles.
Meanwhile, the now-former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh – that scarlet-haired charmer with the police record – suggested environmental road-pricing schemes to make driving even more of a hassle.
We may no longer suck our milkshakes via plastic straws. Junk food ads are denounced as something worse than pornography and are banned from the London Tube in case we start developing lustful thoughts about a dripping Whopper.
Our cars, even the sinful diesel ones, tell us when to wear seat-belts, when to beware ice on the road and when to take a rest.
Konjac jelly sweets have been banned as a choking hazard. Okra and curry leaf imports from India are forbidden owing to fears about fertiliser contamination.
Former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh suggested environmental road-pricing schemes to make driving even more of a hassle (file photo)
Ten days ago Action On Sugar a group of busy-body nutritionists, demanded that it become illegal for parents to include cakes or biscuits in children’s lunch boxes.
There was ‘an urgent need for a complete ban’, said Kawther Hashem, described as ‘a lecturer’ (you can say that again) in public-health nutrition.
Is this really about our health or is it about an appetite for power?
Bans can be as addictive as any Mars Bar or Mr Kipling cake. You impose one and soon you may sense a craving for another. Everyone knows electric cars are not ‘clean’. The energy and components that power them still create pollution. Yet they are marketed as entirely virtuous.
What is going on here, as I tried to explain in my book, Stop Bloody Bossing Us About, is something more discreditable: a deceitful desire for political domination.
In 1997, Tony Blair’s New Labour over-reacted to a health scare by banning beef on the bone. What happened? A black market developed. Britons developed an illicit craving for T-bone steaks and oxtail casserole.
In Gloucestershire, where I lived at that time, the local ‘dealer’ was a justice of the peace. We’d turn up at his back door and slip him cash for a couple of ribs of beef.
Prohibition in 1920s America merely created speakeasies and gin joints. There was more boozing by the end of Prohibition than at the start.
Yet the urge to ban persists and sometimes it is plain daft. Thankfully, the madness will not last. Trumpism is rising in the West. Europe’s Left-wing citadels are crumbling.
With industries going bust and economic growth sputtering, the castigating scolds of climate politics must soon give ground.
You see, the urge to tell others how to live is but one human instinct. Its counterpart is the equally strong instinct to tell finger-waggers, whether they be Cromwellian or Starmerite, and no matter how long and bony their digits, to get royally stuffed.
