a gentle quid pro politico....

["Henderson, Dennis K." <Dennis.Henderson () umb com>]

Have a great weekend...



With credit to Tom Utley of the London Telegraph.
 
 
This flea bite on the ankle of freedom is reason to quit the EU
By Tom Utley
(Filed: 03/03/2006)

I will always remember one family holiday in the west of Ireland during my childhood when we were joined by my father's 
secretary. Our car at the time was a Fiat 500 - one of those tiny little Italian jobs, barely bigger than a bubble car. 
People never believe me when I tell them this, but I am almost sure that my memory serves me faithfully: all seven of 
us crammed into that baked-beans can of a car - three adults and four children, with luggage for a fortnight on the 
roof-rack - for the long drive from London to the Holyhead ferry and from Dublin to the west coast.

I will not pretend that it was a safe or a comfortable way to travel, taking it in turns to sit on each other's knees 
in the front and the back. But somehow all seven of us survived, and a good time was had by all. These days, we 
wouldn't have got further than the end of our London street before being pulled over by the police. 
Sometime soon - possibly as early as September - the risk of being stopped for driving a car full of children will 
increase very greatly. This will be after New Labour has rubber-stamped European directive 2003/20/EC, requiring that 
most children up to the age of 10 (and shorter children of 11) must be strapped into special child seats or made to sit 
on booster cushions.

We have all become so used to Tony Blair's restrictions on our liberties that this latest impertinence has attracted 
barely any comment in the British press (apart from a couple of sound observations from my colleague Alice Thomson, who 
knows a thing or two about the difficulties of persuading young children to belt up).

All right, directive 2003/20/EC is a mere flea bite on the ankle of freedom - nothing like the shark bite of the ban on 
smoking in private clubs, the prohibition of hunting with dogs or the proposal to force us all to buy biometric 
identity cards. It is just one more minor irritation, one more excuse for the police to make themselves unpleasant to 
their natural allies, and to distract them from the fight against crime, one more niggling interference by the 
authorities with matters that are none of their business.

Most people have greeted the Government's decision to enforce this new directive with a weary shrug. Some have thought: 
"Oh, well, this is an edict from Brussels and there is nothing that we can do about it." Others have told themselves: 
"Oh, well, it's probably a good idea that children should be safely strapped into special seats. There is no harm in 
making it compulsory." 

In fact, the new law will cause quite a lot of inconvenience and expense to a great many people. What about 
grandparents, uncles and aunts who occasionally help out by picking up their grandchildren, nephews and nieces from 
school? From this autumn, they will all have to fit special seats for the under-10s, or risk an on-the-spot fine of 
Ј30, increased to Ј500 if they dare to make a fuss about it in court. 

And what about the utter humiliation of short 11-year-olds (under "135cm", whatever that may mean), who will be 
required to sit on baby-seats, while their younger and taller siblings are allowed to use adult safety belts? I must 
say that I thought 135cm was about the length of a cigarette, but then I am 52 years old. My younger colleagues tell me 
that it is something like 4ft 5in. Will the police be equipped with tape-measures, to size up suspected offenders by 
the roadside?

What really stinks is the way in which laws such as these come into being. I have lived my entire life among 
opinionated people, but I have never once heard anybody say: "You know those booster seats for children, Tom? They 
really ought to be made compulsory." I have never seen a hint of this new law in any political party's manifesto - and 
if I had, I would certainly not have voted for the party that proposed it. 

What has happened is that some wretched Greek or Italian politician or bureaucrat has decided that he can make a name 
for himself by pretending to care more about our children's wellbeing than we do ourselves: "Look at me! I am the 
kiddies' friend! All parents are potential child-killers! Everybody in the entire European Union must obey me, and 
appreciate how much I care!"

The next step in the legislative process is that a Blairite minister reads the edict from Brussels, and decides that it 
is his duty to square it with the British people, whether they like it or not. So it was that, this week, the 
Government announced that the new law would prevent "2,000 deaths or injuries a year". 

That figure was so obviously plucked out of the air that it is hardly worth analysing (how many deaths, exactly, are 
directly attributable to children wearing adult seat-belts - nearer two, I reckon, than 2,000 - and what, precisely, 
constitutes an "injury"?)

So it is that, nibble by nibble, our freedoms are eaten away, life becomes that little bit less enjoyable and 
politicians assume responsibility for aspects of our lives that should have absolutely nothing to do with them.

Like most of us, I chuckled away at Craig Brown's column on Tuesday - brilliant, even by his standards - in which he 
imagined letters written to the newspapers, 10 years hence, by the likes of Lord Blair of Great Ham and Baroness Jowell 
of Boreham. "Further to your recent correspondence," wrote Lord Blair, "I welcome proposals by the Government to place 
a CCTV camera in every household fridge. How else are we to stop the forward march of clinical obesity? The innocent 
have nothing to fear…"

The great challenge for the modern satirist, as so many of them complain, is to launch flights of fancy even more 
absurd than what actually goes on in real life. Yesterday's parody has a horrible habit of turning into today's truth. 
I am not saying that a future Government will fulfil Craig's prophecy that we will one day be required to install 
cameras in our fridges, to monitor our consumption of fatty foods. But it is completely possible to believe that a 
future European directive will restrict the number of packets of oven chips that one is permitted to buy in a British 
supermarket.

There are few more cheering sights to be seen anywhere than an estate car, overloaded with children on their way to a 
treat. You will notice that it is always the children lying on their tummies in the luggage compartment, waving or 
sticking their tongues out at the driver behind, who are the happiest. Let's all try to enjoy life, instead of merely 
struggling to prolong it. I am now wholly convinced that the best possible start will be to pull out of the European 
Union. 
    

 


_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.