Big government and the nanny state – the democratic deficit
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at 16:07 Simon Hills, associate editor of The Times magazine, has written a great piece for The Free Society.
Ahead of next week's local elections, Simon argues that government become synonymous with arrogance, bullying, self-interest, ineptitude and incompetence, "chilling the heart of every libertarian":
Thirty years ago, the number of politicians in the UK was 3,000 including 650 MPs. In 2009 the BBC under the freedom of information act, discovered that in nearly 30,000 professional politicians and their, costing £500 million a year ...
There are infinite numbers of busybodies telling us to stop smoking, nagging the poor not to eat foods they disapprove of and introducing cycle lanes where they shouldn’t be and none where they should.
We are in an age with an unprecedented number of politicians acting on our behalf, but a steady erosion of the democratic process. About the only thing they do all agree on is smokers are the scum of the earth and should be denormalised. And how depressing is that when a quiet fag is the about the only respite from their peregrinations, we’re not going to be able to choose our own brand and we’re not going to be allowed to smoke it anywhere.
Full article: The West's democratic deficit (The Free Society)
Meanwhile, another Free Society contributor, Stuart Waiton, did a similarly impressive job on Newsnight Scotland on Monday.
Stuart, a lecturer at Abertay University in Dundee, writes the Take A Liberty blog and he was on the programme to challenge the nanny state orthodoxy that rules Scotland with a seemingly iron fist.
He was outnumbered two to one but got his point across nevertheless. You can see the interview on BBC iPlayer.
Belinda Cunnison has also written about it here.
Reader Comments (2)
"We are in an age with an unprecedented number of politicians acting on our behalf, but a steady erosion of the democratic process."
The 'erosion of the democratic process' has come about as a result of politicians backing themselves into a corner. They have put themselves into a position where they MUST accept the advice of 'experts'. Unfortunately, they have also created the conditions where the only 'experts' are the experts approved by 'the experts'.
That sentence makes perfect sense to me, but it may not to others. What efforts have the politicians made to gain the expertise of the 'non-approved' experts?
R4's Today this morning reported that David Camerson is 'scrapping plans to introduce plain packaging'. Not sure where the announcement came from.