The smoking ban was a mere tasty morsel. It has roused the appetite of the beast without bedding it back down again. The hungry beast has drawn blood and it wants more:
Government ministers should shrug off media accusations that they are running a nanny state and introduce tougher public health measures, experts say.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics said the time had come to consider a whole host of interventions in the UK after the introduction of a smoking ban.
Its proposes raising alcohol prices, restricting pub opening hours and better food labelling to fight obesity….
The report by the panel of experts, which include scientists, lawyers and philosophers, said there was a balance to be struck between individual freedom and wider public protection.
Welcome to the latest phase of the old ‘public choice’ paradigm. You have to choose between freedom and prosperity. You have to choose between freedom and fairness. You have to choose between freedom and safety. And the wheels of the world turn round and round to the music of the rhythm of history.
Okay. let’s gird our loins, saddle up and prepare for battle again but, this time, let’s make sure that we don’t go charging off in the wrong direction. It would be easy to lose this stage of the war and, as always, the odds are stacked against us. But lose we will for sure if attempt to fight it on the enemy’s ground and what I mean by that is accepting that there is a such a thing as a choice between freedom and health and then attempting to persuade people to choose freedom and to hell with their health. If the public believes that this is the choice they must make, then they will choose to be healthy and, before we know it, we’re standing around scratching our arses and wondering what went wrong while the triumphant, braying beast tramples everything in its path.
We must not make the mistake of arguing that health does not matter. It does matter. As every exhortatory elderly relative has croaked at one time or another, health is the most important thing. But that is exactly why we need more freedom and less compulsion. The healthiest societies are the the most liberal and prosperous ones, while the unhealthiest are invariably the poorest and most statist and centrally planned prescriptions for health will be no more successful than centrally planned prescriptions for the economy. The public must hear, again and again, that the “choice” being presented to them by the likes of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics is vexatious, counterfactual and perverse.
The beast will not stop. It will not change its mind, grow tired, get distracted or give up. The stakes are too high. But that is not the same as saying that it is unstoppable. We just have to make sure that we shoot its legs from under it. Nothing less will do.
We must not make the mistake of allowing somebody else to tell us how much our health should matter to us! The point here is not that health does not matter, but that the decision as to how much it matters should be an individual one.
The argument that planned societies generally are less healthy is not a very strong one in this context. It would most likely boil down to an argument about the most efficient way of prescribing a healthy lifestyle.
The argument that you should be permitted to decide for yourself how much you value your health is a strong one: If the state is in principle allowed to value your health on your behalf, what is to stop it from reversing its priorities? What is to stop it from demanding, at some point, that people sacrifice their health for the common good?
And if you really want to take a health risk that others don’t approve of -on what basis would it be legitimate to stop you from doing so?
The statist argument is priceless. The NHS has a 5-year cancer survival rate roughly the same as that of Poland. So, some bright spark (a Miliband, perhaps) has come up with this idea that if we’re all slim, non-smoking, tee-totallers then… we’re just not going to get sick. Now, if they get all of this through are they going to disband the NHS? Obviously not. Especially not with all the extra cash they have to spend on it by taxing fatty foods and the like.
If the NHS could even hit the EU average it would save 10,000 lives a year. More than would be saved if we all lived on mung beans and smoothies.
The other piece of grit in the vaseline is that all of NeuArbeit’s public health “initiatives” have utterly failed. I heard just yesterday that the ban on advertising “unhealthy” foods during kiddies TV has failed because apparently most 10 year olds don’t just watch kid’s TV. Well, ain’t that a surprise? When you were ten was it no TV after “Newsround”? What sort of a world do these people inhabit? The solution apparently is not to come to the bleeding obvious conclusion that “kids like sweeties”, it is to suggest banning all ads for “unhealthy food” before the 9am watershed – you know the point before which you can’t show brutal prison rapes and the like. Is an advert for Walker’s crisps in the same territory? Apparently so. And what is “unhealthy food” anyway? Olive oil is practically 100% fat but we keep hearing that it’s the reason Italian octogenerians are all sex-crazed beach volleyball players. At least that’s what the (soon to be banned?) Bertolli ads keep telling us.
This is madness. This is not Sparta. I’ve been to Sparta and I dined there repeatedly in a most excellent kebab shop run by a Greek American. I’m 34 and have the same trim waist size I had at 16 so basically they can go fuck themselves because I achieved this on a diet of red meat, beer and Marlboro Reds. These Millibands sound like Lisa Simpson exhorting vegetartianism and pushing her gazpacho soup at a BBQ. Lisa Simpson though was merely a fictional, precocious 8 year old and within the allotted 23 minutes had, following the advice of Paul and Linda McCartney (& Apu) decided to live and let live. Fat chance of that from the Millibands.
I would rather we were governed by Lisa (better yet Maggie) Simpson than this bunch of loons who are clearly a few clowns short of a circus.
PS. That bit on The Simpsons was practically an advert for the McCartney’s range of vegetarian food. Some of which is probably high in fat and salt – BAN IT NOW! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! I, by all accounts, make a most excellent gazpacho BTW.
The trouble with socialism is its combination of boundless enthusiasm and energy for making the world a better place, combined with too limited an understanding that their ambitions are not all achievable and those that are almost invariably take longer than their collective patience can bear. This is not least because, particularly in the West, solutions have been found for the easier problems of society.
Thus socialists thrash around frantically trying to make things go better faster, and often end up making any improvements occur more slowly or ‘improving’ the irrelevant. They do this largely by misdirecting themselves, ignoring evidence, common sense and human motivation, over-optimistically exaggerating every crumb of argument or evidence in their favour, failing to see that progress really is being made, emphasising tackling the less important sub-problems well off the path towards the more important solutions, often changing direction when they stumble, on a molehill or through carelessness.
The biggest error, in my view, has been made in education. To the essentials of primary schooling: reading, writing and arithmetic, I would add a fourth: learning to tell the difference between advertising and evidence.
Best regards
Apologies if this is a bit of an incoherent rant.
Well, well, after having “sorted out” smokers it is drinkers n tubbies next. I really fear about the direction we are heading on this, as the state gives itself more and more power to intervene in our daily lives and it is always in our best interests of course. Quite frankly if I choose to drink like a fish, eat raw lard and chain smoke, well that is my business thank you very much, after all we are all dead in the long run.
I was really scared when Julian le Grand (I think thats his name) popped up with the new buzz phrase “Libertarian Paternalism” a gob smackingly Orwellian phrase and one I am waiting to hear from the mouth of a minister. It appears as though any intervention ranging from smoking to ID cards and Extyended detention, gets justified on the grounds of common good, protecting freedom etc. it is also really interesting to me that the current gov views coercion as the answer to any problem. Looking at the drinking thing, it appears as though the many (i.e. people like me, I like a pint or two now and again, can hold my beer, never been in trouble etc) must be punished in order to curb the activities of the few.
As a little side rant, is it just me or is the official definition of a binge (i.e 5 or more units in one go) a little ridiculous? Recently I went on a walking holiday, and one evening I had two pints and a large glass of wine with my meal. on the way back to my hotel, it ocurred to me that I had been on a binge and was therefore a scourge on society. Indeed so damaging was this binge that the morning after, I got up early had a hearty breakfast, and then walked nearly 20 miles. Or could it be that the binge is level is set so low to give the puritanical crypto-fascists who rule us yet another stick to beat us with
But what really depresses me is that it appears as though the Great British Public actually doesn’t give a toss about its own freedom, and I deeply suspect actually welcomes the nanny state. I hope I am wrong but whenever I discuss this stuff with other people (i.e. not the sort who tune into this site) I get derided as a “rabid libertarian” Meanwhile thier own freedom is getting cut away salami slice by salami slice.
Anyways rant over!
So, the UKGov is going to fix public health. Is this the same Government that’s basically a puppet with Brussels’ hand rectally inserted?
Brussels being the home of the same Eurocrats who proposed to ban vitamin C in doses larger than 60-80 milligrams per dosing unit. For those that don’t know, vitamin C is almost impossible to overdose on (being water-soluble and all) and is actually needed in much higher doses (I believe that the current thinking is 500mg-1g/day for adults)
Back in the 1980’s, the US FDA started pushing low-fat everything. Removing fat from foods alters the proportion in which macronutrients are found (duh!), and most producers compensated by adding carbohydrates. After all, the then-current thinking was that people needed maybe 50g/day of protein for the average 150# male. What happens when you feed people a crapload of carbohydrates? Insulin insensitivity, which becomes adult-onset diabetes.
Granted, parents who a, fell for this shit and b, let their kids rot in front of the television rather than engaging in good wholesome petty vandalism and other exercise probably earned most of the bite for this one.
Good work, guys.
The point is, the state doesn’t know everything even if we assume it to be benevolent. I’m frankly a little fearful to see their exercise guidelines. If they’re as useful as the “30-45 minutes of walking 3x/week” that the US has been pushing for I-don’t-know-how-long, there’s a tiny bit of a problem here.[1] And I’m not normally the “USA ROOLZ YOUS GUYZ DROOLZ” type, but I can only imagine UKGuv being even more screwed up than ours.
Bah. Enough of this. It’s bedtime.
[1] Intensity is far more important than the average “walking and light jogging” moron lets on. 20 minutes at a heart rate of 170 is better for both weight control and for performance and for cardiac output (and therefore heart health) than 45 minutes at 120. (Well, assuming that you can do 170 without coding out. Substitute whatever is 80-90% of your theoretical maximum HR for the 170 and my point will stand.)
It’s difficult to discuss the issue without falling into the trap Thaddeus describes, even if only because they’ve framed the context by choosing the words.
That said, I don’t much fancy entrusting my health to a bunch who have comprehensively fucked up every single thing they’ve tried to do. Spectacularly so, in many cases.
Case in point: Nigel writes “The biggest error, in my view, has been made in education. To the essentials of primary schooling: reading, writing and arithmetic, I would add a fourth: learning to tell the difference between advertising and evidence.”
Wasn’t that what Ofcom’s media literacy remit was supposed to be about? Good job there, then.
On my point about teaching primary school children the difference between advertising and evidence, ‘the other rob’ wrote:
Here are a couple of links to help- explain what that is: Ofcom’s “What is Media Literacy” and another view on Ofcom’s media literacy concept.
Sadly, I have not been able to equate the topic these discuss with anything approaching what I meant, which was and is totally independent of the medium of dissemination.
Though I might admit that the medium of dissemination (or a multiplicity thereof) might give indicators. For example, evidence comes but rarely with music (stirring or otherwise); that is unless the topic is music or the medium.
Best regards
I loved the bit about training architects to design buildings that encourage physical activity.
All of you who work in Canary Wharf,
Sorry loves- they are taking the lifts out!
If I might suggest a strategy?
Lobby your MP to the effect that the public health programme needs its own public-sector IT project. Expensive but effective.
Nigel, you did make me chuckle:-) However, advertising is not the only medium that uses music. Occasionally, evidence does come with music, and one has to learn to ignore it, in order to evaluate the evidence correctly.
Since I was a young lad I have always taken the view that when it comes to health and longevity, short term quality of life trumped longevity. There is an underlying assumption in this debate that clinging onto life as long as possible is man’s chief end.
Now approaching 60 morbidly obese and still smoking my view has not changed. I will not accept that the health police have any right to make me change my point of view.
They say that the health service cannot afford people like me. However comparing myself with about a 50% chance of seeing 65 to those who aspire to clinging onto life into their nineties and beyond despite the massive incidence of Altzhiemers and other high dependence diseases in the over 75 I do not think that argument holds water.
I saw some interesting data recently that showed that during the last 50 years our mean life expectancy has grown by 2.5 years a decade, this is well known. What is less well known is that during the same period the mean healthy life span has only grown by 0.5 years per decade. My conclusion is that the strain on the health service is more caused by the ranks of crumblies hanging on to shadows of existence.
As to the idea that hiking the price of alcohol will make us all sober up, what a lot of twaddle. The market will adjust – more home brewing and distilling less spent on healthy food etc.. the consequences could, as is so often the case, exactly the opposite to that which these idiots want to impose.
Enough already – pass the cream buns Mabel
thefatman
Yes, we need to reject the false dichotomies.
Every time I go to the pub I wonder where is all this cheap booze the medico-fascists keep going on about? £4.50 for a couple of pints doesn’t strike me as cheap. I suppose when you are on £120k+ pa it would seem reasonable.
I seem to recall that a larger percentage of doctors than any other profession joined the Nazi Party. They do like bossing us around for our own good don’t they?
Personally, I’ll give up drinking when they close all the bars in the Palace of Westminster.
I’m with the Fatman on this, I have long felt that while I really don’t like the idea of dying, I truly dread the idea of spending 10 years or so sitting in a pool of my own piss with no idea of who I am. A relatively quick exit, be it cardiac or even cancer actually seems preferable to me
Why exactly would this so-called panel of “experts” need lawyers?? That alone is sufficient to raise my suspicion level into the ‘critical’ area!
That being said, God help you poor Brits!
P.S.- The same thing is happening on our side of the pond, albeit to a lesser degree for the moment.
Is this where the “justified intrusion” phrase I heard this morning came from?
Of course the experts say that! They all assume that they’re the ones who will get to decide which “public health measures” are decreed. The “experts” will always be in favor of rule-by-experts.
I think that advocating policies of this kind is injurious to the health (as these scumbags will find out if I ever catch up with them) and therefore should be banned.
It’s for you own good, dear Nuffield Council.
The whole thing sounds like something thought up by Mayor M.B. in New York.
What is it about modern billionaries? Whether it is M.B., or Marc Cuban (he of the 9/11 “truth” movement), Warren Buffet and Bill Gates (the death tax and just about every other bit of statism), or Progressive George Soros and Peter Lewis and…….
They are a like a bunch of baddies from James Bond stories – even down to the vast charitable projects (the ones that never seem to leave them poorer). All they need is the secret base in the mountain and the henchmen in jump suits.
Billionaries back in the 1980’s were not a bunch of leftists plotting against the West and/or supporting control of human activity by government.
Still at least our own Richard Branson here in Britain just seems to be a con man – rather than a serious plotter against civilization.
A Britain with no beer? Ugh, already the wheels are
spinning for the new underground market that will
spring up. Of course you may find yourselves
overwhelmed with sniffers along with the millions
of cameras used on you daily.
One way to combat these loons, start digging up
their personal skeletons, using them to shut them up.
Permanently.
The only way to fight them is to attack at the roots. A smoker’s general strike or something. Push back, don’t back up and draw yet another line.
All they need is the secret base in the mountain and the henchmen in jump suits.
It’s not in the mountains, and it’s not secret, but Bill Gate’s has henchmen in the form of uniformed campus security in SUVs with tinted windows and Prius’s with tinted windows.
His house, OTOH, does look like something out of a Bond movie.
Of all these I actually find Larry Elison to be a lot more scary.
“Billionaries back in the 1980’s”… that would be your problem. There weren’t that many billionaires back in the 80s, the numbers at this level have risen dramatically over the last couple of decades thanks to new tech booms and so forth. The old school billionaires were likely to have got their money the old fashioned way by, as in the words of Terry Pratchett in Making Money, having villans for ancestors or just having ripped enough people off.
The new crop are new money with new ideas and most of them are reasonably self made (with the help of stock market deregulation and an enormous stock boom in the 90s.)
It’s hard to get too worked up about them. It is _their_ money after all.
On other matters. Relatively speaking drink is quite cheap in the UK. On a recent trip back to London I found the wine and beer in the West End to be extremely well priced when compared to non-happy hour prices around Seattle which is, itself, one of the cheaper places to drink that I’ve been in the USA.
$6 for a 20oz pint compares very well to the average $4.75/$5+tip for a 16oz pint in most bars around here. The wine was much better priced. After the England win in the rugby semi-final we celebrated with a bottle of Piper Heidseck (the monopole) in a bar in the west end which set me back under $60 which is not far off what a drinkable domestic fizz would cost in a bar around here, it’s $30-$40 less than I’d have to pay for a real champagne in a comparable bar. Even eating out at a Gastropub we were able to drink a decent Malbec for under $40, which is at least $10 less than I paid for something similar a few nights ago.
So for Beer and Wine London and the UK is really reasonable even at $2.10, spirits are a rip off and food is just too scary to think about.
Out of curiousity – since you Brits seem likely to find out first – at what stage in the evolution of the nanny state does the presumption of incompetence become so great that allowing the public to vote becomes unconscionable?
“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Hell no!
And it ain’t over now.”
Scariest phrase in the English language?
“We know what’s good for you”.
May I suggest a judo strategy, ie, reductio ad absurdum. Write your MP demanding that they vote for a ban on skiing, for governors on cars to prevent driving faster than 60 mph, the closing of all swimming pools, seatbelts on buses and trains and no standing, mandatory three wheels on bicycles, etc. If enough people start doing this it may be possible to get the papers to laugh the trend to a stop.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” —C.S. Lewis
Why are the -experts- never identified by name, funding source, location, age or any other details that thrill the media when reporting any opposition to them-?
Are these studied giants with massive brains and narrow girth? Or are they skinny Millenniums who have never had a proper job-? In either case, who pays for them to study and propose to the media-?
Why do the media fail to divulge these details when any scientist who has ever taken a coin from an oil company is forever slimed for their opinions… I don’t expect an answer. Just observing that we are being given limited information that supports a predetermined conclusion…
May I suggest a judo strategy, ie, reductio ad absurdum. Write your MP demanding that they vote for a ban on skiing, for governors on cars to prevent driving faster than 60 mph, the closing of all swimming pools, seatbelts on buses and trains and no standing, mandatory three wheels on bicycles, etc. If enough people start doing this it may be possible to get the papers to laugh the trend to a stop.
Except that I suspect you might end up dismayed to find that your MP doesn’t get the satire, and heartily agrees that these would indeed be excellent measures …
They can have my whiskey when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Houston’s Problem
There was a politician in Massachusetts who got a bill passed mandating that restaurants supply margarine to their patrons. MMe. Mandatory Margarine ended up getting cancer. Greasy petard?
I haven’t seen margarine at any restaurants in a very long time.
Then there’s the FDA’s occasional banning of healthful substances. So far, I hear, pretending to be an animal works. 😉
First they came for the smokers, and I said nothing, because I was not a smoker.
Then they came for the drunks, and I said nothing, because I was not a drunk.
Then they came for the fatties, and I said nothing, because I wasn not a fattie.
And then they came for me, and there was nobody left to speak for me.
Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?
Now this is just what an NHS will get you. Object lesson for the US – get the nannies before they get you. Nay to HillaryCare. You Brits – thanks for being the canary in the mine…
Especially the part above where some must give up their health so that others, more deserving, may enjoy health.
Soylent Green, anyone? mmmm tasty, wash it down with some margarine and tylenol.
Doctors surely do know what’s good for you – that’s why they keep it locked up and only prescribe it for themselves…
Well there is a slight silver lining in this scenario. Buy shares in Ferry Companies that run form the UK to Holland, Belgium or France 🙂 and take a Transit Van, according to the Graph of Duty in this BBC diatribe you should be able to get some cheap alcohol there.
And as you will not have used your Tescos’ Clubcard, or similar, the alcohol investigators will not be able to trace you 🙂 You can also stock up on fags, I tend to buy 3 or 4 cartons each time I fly through Schipol, and a couple of bottles of booze 🙂
Have fun, at least for as long as you are allowed. 🙂
Later
Gengee
If you get prostate cancer in the UK you have a less than 50% chance of surviving. In the US it’s well over 80%. The same ridiculous disparity exists for almost every medical affliction on the planet.
Confronted with this abysmal state affairs, the British state responds with demands for yet MORE control over people’s lives. And the people will likely agree.
I was born and raised in the UK but it’s getting harder to recognize the place with every passing year.
Noting the BBC diatribe mentioned above, I was watching the BBC coverage of this story last night, there was an expert, and a couple of “victims”. All of them got a very, very easy ride. there was not one note of dissent in the entire piece let alone anyone to make the opposing view. To be harsh it did not occur to the interviewers to ask questions along the lines of – “Did it not occur to you that downing the best part of bottle of spirits 5 nights a week was a pretty stupid thing to do?”
I am continually amazed at the stick that Branson gets, even from supposed pro-capitalists. Okay, he is not out of the Ayn Rand playbook, but he has shown more capitalist gumption than anyone who writes on this blog, I’d wager.
I second JP’s point about Branson. Anyone with the balls start a spaceline gets my vote.
Daveon’s point about “ripping people off” is false about most people who made what would now be billions (by manufacturing or other means) – but then Daveon is Daveon.
However, I think he has a point if one means Richard Branson. If anyone doubts this ask yourself this question:
“Would I invest my money in an enterprise run by this man?”
“Stock market” deregulation.
Actually in Britain the “big bang” led to more regulations than there had ever been before.
And the United States has seen a vast increase in regulations.
A credit money bubble produced by Central Banks (and other such) is not the same thing as “deregulation”.
“get worked up about them” (the leftist mega rich).
Not really – whilst they do spend vast amounts of money backing various leftist political causes they also provide a nice way to discredit those causes. “Look who is funding ……”
Oddly enough I have never heard of Larry Elison funding any of these causes (although I stand ready to be corrected). Mr Elison also does not come from a good family (as the various other American billionaries I mentioned seem to do).
Hey Paul, if you really want to believe that people made that kind of money through fair and honest business practises I have no problem with that. I do also have a nice bridge to sell you…
The issue for the big bang wasn’t the deregulation as such, but the huge expansion in the trades possible and the opening of an essential closed shop. More regulation emerged as a side effect of that. Sadly it often does as clever and ingenious people find new ways to rip each other off. John Bird and John Fortune have an excellent sketch doing the rounds on YouTube about this at the moment.
Con man is a relatively harsh way to describe Branson, I’d say that he’s the architype of a sucessful new businessman. But if you want a shady character of that ilk, I’d recommend looking at John Cauldwell of Cauldwell Communications. I had the misfortune to be in a meeting in a room he wanted to use once and he doesn’t come with the charm module installed that Branson obviously had.
What the super rich spend their money on is entirely up to them, it is, after all their money, and they are free to do with entirely as they like. If it didn’t annoy some people then they’d be doing it wrong.
That’s the whole point of having lots of money.
It’s one of the reasons I stopped doing a “proper” job and moved into the commercial side of things. I couldn’t earn enough being an engineer, I could never earn enough no matter how long I worked at it and I’d always be worrying about tax and interest rates and so forth. I still do, of course, I just earn lots more than I used to. That is what I like about capitalism.
Daveon’s point about “ripping people off” is false about most people who made what would now be billions (by manufacturing or other means)
By the way, who exactly were you thinking of in that lot?
I was thinking of Tiny Rowland, Robert Maxwell and a few other high profile super rich of 25 years ago. Got some better examples for me?
Immediately post-9/11, Ellison was one of the loudest voices demanding national ID cards. Mysteriously, he was also in one hell of a position to sell the software to the government.
Surely a coincidence, I think. I mean, I wouldn’t want to suggest that a millionaire would use government to force people to use his product(Link).
Well I am in two minds about Mr Branson.
On the one hand he (or his organisation) sent me a crate of Champaine when I got married, for writing a favourable review of a Virgin star he couldn’t give tickets away to his concerts post punk.
On the other hand his initial record operation was actually successfully prosecuted for avoiding tax by driving the records in and out of ports and avoiding VAT or somesuch.
The thing that first got me was that he was running a business (music) he had no real interest or taste in.
It carries through to the airline and the finance divisions.
What he is interested in, is making money!
Nout wrong wi that! but my dear old dad always said that someone who got rich very very fast is probably doing something illegal or the Govt wouldn’t let you.
Dad was probably right.
Old, but mildly amusing, found at Numberwatch. Can they do that?
It is bizarre beyond compare that it is perfectly okay to butcher a fetus in a pregnant woman but not okay for her to eat a cheeseburger.
Joshua,
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10….
Oh well, can’t stop myself… But a fetus in a pregnant woman has until it has a sufficiently developed nervous system to develop anything like a proper capacity to even feel pain is a lump of meat with no more rights than the main filling of the cheeseburger…
The cross-over is around 20-24 weeks gestation. The exact figure is a scientific question, though presumably it will vary from foetus to foetus and therefore I believe that a scientifically defensible abortion limit ought to be rigourously inforced at the loweest end of that scale and before that it should be anything goes.
They are only a potential human before that which is not the same thing as being a human. D’oh! It’s really obvious isn’t it? The fact that something may have the right to life at some point in the future is no reason to grant it that beforehand. Regardless of whether or not a ball of cells or early foetus has the capacity to develop into a functional human being doesn’t give it the protection that ought to be granted to a human being in much the same way that the thing in the Honda factory isn’t a car till they fit the wheels and get the engine to turn over.
This isn’t even a moral issue, this is a technical philosophical one which happens to have a very easy answer.
They are only a potential human before that which is not the same thing as being a human. D’oh! It’s really obvious isn’t it?
It’s obvious that you don’t know what you’re talking about. DNA makes it abundantly clear that human life begins at conception. A human doesn’t suddenly come into existence when a “lump of meat” gains a nervous system. That “lump of meat” has been a human since sperm met egg. That is iron-clad biological fact.
Nick M
They are only a potential human before that which is not the same thing as being a human. D’oh! It’s really obvious isn’t it?
Well, as an unreconstructed Aristotelian, I actually do believe in things like essence and accidents, and that while a thing’s accidents may change through time its essence doesn’t.
So yes, it is a philosophical issue, and it is quite simple. Redefining a foetus as only a potential human being doesn’t remove its essence.
My opposition to abortion is not religious, it’s philosophical. Apart from the relatively rare cases where a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life, an abortion means putting the quality of life of person ahead of the existence of another person.
The insidiousness of this stuff is that having started with smoking, something that is unquestionably attrociously unhealthy and irritating to non-smokers, many people seem to just accept what the ‘experts’ say about other stuff as if it is equally valid.
Nothing else except getting old is going to affect your chances of cancer like smoking. And what about people following the government’s food pyramid thing for 11 servings of cereals and 5 servings of dairy a day. No one will stay slim on that kind of calorie surfeit.
DNA & Aristotle?
I knew I should never have brought this up. No good ever comes of the debate.
Sorry for putting the thread inevitably off topic.
Interesting point jb, the 5-a day thing is pretty impossible to do without consuming a lot.
PA,
Doubt they can practically do that. I seem to recall the smoking ban has a specific exemption for offshore oil-rigs. (Along with prisons and Royal Palaces). The Queen apparently told the Gov to “piss orf” and nobody fancied depriving Dave “Chopper” Smith of his snout.
Nick M writes:
Regrettably, I must report that I’m both saddened and irritated, on this occasion, by my fellow physicist (and human being). A man’s got to know his limitations.
Best regards
Well said and exactly right. There is no trade off between liberty and welfare. They go hand in hand.
This is possibly the single most important lesson of libertarianism.
Julius
Daveon
I can think of a great number of manufacturers who earned their money (mega money in modern terms) by serving their customers. Giving them better products at lower prices than had ever been available before.
However, why would should I give you examples? The history of these people is not hard to find.
Look into the history of many of the companies that still exist in the world.
Although, I fully accept, the men who founded these companies would not be wildly pleased with the condition of them now.
Quite right Paul, you probably haven’t researched this data all that well.
Go ahead.
After all for every Joseph Liveph who brought fresh drinking water and public libararies to Preston their are his competitors who ordered the local military to kill strikers.
I recommend a visit to Preston, the musket holes are still visible in the front of the Corn Exchange.
It is not “data” Daveon.
A manufacturer prospers by producing better quality (or new) products at lower prices (unless he can get a subsidy). That was as true for the Abraham Darby’s as it is for Mr Dell – otherwise they do not prosper (as Mr Dell found when he started to rest on past success).
By the way wages went UP over time (for the vast majority of people) – and long before unions were important
As for Preston – I have been there (there is an interesting church – and a more interesting hall between Preston and Blackburn).
It was a one of the towns that had almost univeral manhood suffrage – in fact the Reform Act of 1832 meant that the sons of some of the voters in Preston LOST the vote.
What do you mean by “strike”?
If you mean “do not turn up for work” that is fine – an employer either hires other people, or if no one wants the job he goes back to the people who have not turned up.
Or do you mean “use the threat of violence to prevent anyone else turning up for work”.
If people decide to play that game then they are indeed laying themsleves open for a backlash (although General Harry Smith always argued it was better to let riots have their fun rather than waste bullets shooting them – but that is Whittlesey common sense for you, fenland people are killers, but they only kill when they feel there is no other way).
I think you mean the latter (if you are talking about the Preston example) – i.e. I think you mean “strike” as in trying to prevent other people going to work. But you have not thought the matter through.
The trouble with you Daveon is you do not think about things (I am NOT saying you do not think about your work, I am sure you do, you do not think about the subjects you write about in your spare time) – you just repeat the “progressive” stuff you were taught.
It is like dealing with a tape recorder on “play back” rather than a human being.