I read an article last Sunday.

I was going to mention it at the time but it slipped my mind.  Time to make up for my little lapse?

Booze-hating prohibitionists need to give up the boos

I will ignore the pun in the headline [it grates on my nerves] but urge you to read the article, as it sums up the entire anti-alcohol crap very eloquently. 

One paragraph stood out in particular –

It would be laughable if those behind this high-handed tinkering didn't have such an evangelical belief that they are doing the work of the righteous. It's classic tokenism. It's not being undertaken because it will do any good, but simply to send a message to like-minded do-gooders that you're "one of them".

That paragraph sums up the entire Nanny movement.  They appear to have this league table and each country vies with the others to be top of the league, whether it is alcohol, smoking or anything else they fancy.  Every country wants to be "leading the world" in whatever flavour of nannying.

To confirm this, I read a nice little open letter to our esteemed "health" minister [h/t to @GordonAlanBeard on Twitter].

Frankly I was nauseated.  Here in black and white are the Nanny Statists congratulating one another like some kind of school report [“Excellent work Leo, but you maybe could try a little harder?”].  We have all the little phrases so beloved by the Nannies –

"a landmark legislative package"

"widely recommended by the public health community" [Note: the PH “community”, not the experts]

"The duty to protect citizens requires resisting attempts by (parts of) the alcohol industry to derail the legislative process."

The last one in particular is vomit inducing.  Big Alcohol must not make any attempt to try to protect its [legitimate] business. It is as evil as Big Tobacco and is just lurking in the Land of Mordor waiting to pounce on unwary victims.

And what is this fucking "duty to protect citizens"?  The drones and the sheeple must be protected from themselves, but don't worry – Nanny knows best and will keep them safe?

The article and the letter illustrate perfectly the divide between the Nannies and the rest of us.  They are living in a little insulated world and feel they have a duty to make all our decisions for us as we are quite frankly too dim to make any decisions for ourselves.  It doesn't matter how wrong their decisions are, how bad their science is or how much damage they leave in their wake so long as the rest of their "community" cheers them on.

As the old essay topic used to say –

Compare and contrast.