I've written about my report, Defanging the Nanny State, which was released during the Christmas perineum, for Con Home.
It is in these first days of January that our minds turn to self-improvement. Good luck to you if you are starting a new diet or giving up smoking. The masochists among you may be abstaining from alcohol this month. Some of you may even have joined a gym.
For the killjoys in ‘public health’, this is the most wonderful time of the year. After weeks of over-indulgence, we are more susceptible to a bit of finger-wagging. In the past, the conversation would be about what we can do to make ourselves healthier. These days, it is about what the government should do to force us to be healthier.
The Alcohol Health Alliance was straight out of the blocks on New Year’s Day demanding a clampdown on booze advertising; the Obesity Health Alliance has been calling for “robust prevention measures” to protect us from “unhealthy [food] options”.
It is a bad time to propose liberalisation, but that is what I will do. With the help of European partners, I edit the Nanny State Index. It is a league table of 30 countries based on how much they over-regulate food, alcohol, soft drinks, tobacco and e-cigarettes. The UK is consistently at the wrong end of the table.
It is due to get worse thanks to the forthcoming ban on HFSS food advertising, the vape tax, incremental tobacco prohibition and other policies conceived by the last Conservative government and eagerly brought to fruition by the current Labour administration.
Another world is possible. Countries such as Germany and Luxembourg have relatively little paternalistic regulation and seem to do alright. Instead of trying to compete with Turkey and Norway to become Europe’s top nanny state, let’s try to beat Germany and be the best country for consumer freedom. What would that involve?
No comments:
Post a Comment