The nanny state is a sinister state

THEY TELL US what we should and should not be allowed to eat and in what quantities; they tell us not to smoke, and ban it in public places, and now want it band from parks; they tell us that alcohol is costing the NHS billions of trillions a year and very soon we will face the same totalitarian approach to its control as has happened with smoking; they are now beginning a similar campaign on e-cigarettes…who are THEY?

            

            They are the masters of the universe. They are the professional apparatchiks of the state controlled system of healthcare known as the NHS. They are doctors and consultants; or the chief medical officer, one Sally Davis, who is the bright spark who says that smoking should be banned from the nation's parks because it encourages children to take up smoking. Where is her evidence? She needs none of course – tobacco is evil, and she is a trained medical professional and this is sufficient.

            

            The NHS has £113 billion of the people's taxes spent on it each year, and it remains the people's champion. It is, despite its well advertised cruel practices, still popular with the public. Like all state run institutions, those working for them sooner or later come to believe that we are there to serve them rather than the other way round. Complacency sets in as it did at Stafford NHS Trust.

WHEN A WOMAN seeks an abortion, her primary argument for doing so is that it is her body and therefore her choice. But when it comes to smoking, obesity and alcohol, the same argument is ignored. Smokers, drinkers, and the obese, are told that they are a financial burden on the NHS, and therefore need to either stop doing something or moderate and limit something else, with the implied threat that in the future NHS treatment will be limited to those imbibing in those vices.

            

              If we take those categories of smoking, alcohol, and over eating; then it just about covers the whole of the adult population to some greater or lesser extent. In other words the taxpayer as a whole; who keep the masters of the universe solvent and in work. These so-called public servants can educate and do little more regarding the behaviour of their patients. The medical professionals are there to help and warn people about their vices, not promoting an illiberal political attitude toward them; trying to influence politicians into forming and passing anti-civil libertarian laws of the kind, the chief medical officer would like to see.

IN AMERICA, where private medicine is practised; the medical professionals are true servants of the people; for they charge for a service, and have to provide it. It matters little whether the patient that walks through their door is clinically obese, or an alcoholic with liver damage, or a smoker with emphysema or any other related disease brought about by indulging in what are after all pleasurable activities – human beings never indulge in un-pleasurable ones unless they are sadomasochists.

            

            When you can afford to pay, or have sufficient private health insurance; the medical professionals are masters of nothing; merely servants in the true sense of what public service was meant to foster within the state sector.

            

            Under state healthcare, the people are not in control of anything. They are under the control of the nanny state; a quaint word for something much sinister. Soon all our vices, deemed unhealthy by our medical professionals, and deemed a threat to NHS funding will be put under the microscope until our behaviour will be overseen to see who deserves and does not deserve treatment for an arrange of subjects.

            

             At least under the American system, whether through wealth or through an insurance based system, the patient is treated without moral judgement regarding their illnesses incurred through their vices. Human beings are prone to the lure of enjoyable vices that may in the long run ruin their health –this goes as much for sex (i.e. Aids) as anything else.

            

            The best compromise is the market based system, and not the Victorian judgmental system of a state regulated and politically directed arrangement  (paid for by the tax payer) – an arrangement based upon the kind of medical determinism where the medical professionals decide who can and cannot be treated based upon their behaviour. This is not happening now; but it is the direction we are going in. The direction medical professionals like the chief medical officer Sally Davis are leading us.

            

            A direction where illnesses that have found little favour with the medical profession because they were brought about by the vices mentioned above; have no welcome within the NHS. It will come to this eventually, if the likes of Sally Davis and those who come after her have their way. We are on the infernal slippery-slope.

            

            Would Sally Davis for instance warn off homosexual's from indulging in anal sex because of Aids? A practice which no doubt has an impact on NHS spending. Would this vice be pilloried by her in the same way she seeks to end smoking in parks?