Nanny state meddling, Lynn News Letters
The elderly and children are being mainly targeted but details are not very forthcoming. However in the light of previous government legislation this smacks more of nanny state meddling sanctimoniously in people’s lives.
As a pensioner and part of one community to be targeted one can envisage being asked a series of patronising questions with the following examples. Does the caller at the bingo club say good evening to you? Does the card dealer at the whist drive talk to you? Tick 1 in the box if the postman smiles at you! This may sound far fetched to some, but those with experiences of bureaucracy will resonate with this.
There is an ongoing process of officialdom regulating people’s lives without qualification and aptitude. The latest example is new legislation to counter conversion therapy at the behest of minority pressure groups. Also being considered are measures to monitor home schooling where there will be a state conspiracy of ideology trumping academic excellence. In Inverness the Scottish Parliament is piloting a scheme called the Named Person Policy, in which every child has a designated official with more rights to check the wellbeing of a child than its parents. The list goes on and on.
Much of this has been enacted under Conservative governance a party which was founded with freedom as one of its core tenets . On social issues there is no clear blue water between all the United Kingdom main parties, which is a frightening spectre to discerning voters at the next general election who value liberty.
If Tracey Crouch redistributed some of the overseas aid budget to the bona fide needs of the mentioned groups with onus of expenditure on them, it could be a starting point to addressing loneliness for real.
In my decades of political activity especially elected assemblies, politicians, myself included, fail abysmally when it comes to running peoples’ lives. My lasting conclusion is that ‘the government which governs least is the government which governs best’.
David Fleming
Downham
