This is a great column at Times Online about the tendency of nannies to overreact to any unfortunate incident. It’s about Britain, but a very similar piece could be written using examples from the United States:
Comments…We now think it’s normal behaviour to take off our clothes at an airport. But it isn’t. Nor is it normal to stand outside in the rain to have a cigarette or to do 30mph on a dual carriageway when it’s the middle of the night and everyone else is in bed. It’s stupid.
And last week the stupidity made yet another lunge into the fabric of society with the news that government ministers were considering new laws that would force everyone to take a test before they were allowed to keep a dog.
No, really. Because one dog once ate one child, some hopeless little twerp from the department of dogs had to think of something sincere to say on the steps of the coroner’s court. Inevitably, they will have argued that the current law is “not fit for purpose”, whatever that means, and that “steps must be taken to ensure this never happens again”.
The steps being considered mean that every dog owner in the land will have to fit their pet with a microchip so that its whereabouts can be determined from dog-spotting spy-in-the-sky drones, and that before being allowed to take delivery of a puppy, people will have to sit an exam similar to the driving theory test. The cost could reach £60, and on top of this you will need compulsory third-party insurance in case your spaniel eats the milkman.
…
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Britain’s nationalized health care system is so wonderful we’re trying to emulate it. Only it’s not wonderful. It’s atrocious. Even by Britain’s standards, though, this story is amazing:
The 22-year-old was not given vital medication after an operation at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London, according to his mother.
A coroner has such grave concerns about the case that it has been referred to police who are investigating Mr Gorny’s care.
…His mother, Rita Cronin, says he needed drugs three times a day to regulate his hormones, but he was not given them by hospital staff.
She said he became very dehydrated but his requests for water were refused and nurses called in security guards to restrain him when he became angry.
He became so frustrated that he rang the police from his bed to demand their help but officers were assured Mr Gorny was fine.
She said nurses assumed he was just badly behaved.
Mr Gorny’s cause of death was determined to be dehydration.
But don’t you Britons worry, because “new procedures [have been] introduced to ensure that such a case cannot happen in future.”
The only procedure capable of ensuring government competence is…woops, sorry, there is no such procedure.
The manner in which that patient was treated is only possible in a system where the patient is not the customer. Keep that in mind as the left argues that we need even more regulators and insurance agents in between you and your doctor, rather than fewer.
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We have two more stories, via Dan Mitchell, in our ongoing coverage of the British slide into an abyss of moonbattery.
In the first story, a man is arrested for an email (which it turns out he didn’t even write) that was supposedly insensitive to gypsies:
A wealthy businessman was arrested at home in front of his wife and young son over an email which council officials deemed ‘offensive’ to gipsies – but which he had not even written.
The email, concerning a planning appeal by a gipsy, included the phrase: ‘It’s the ‘do as you likey’ attitude that I am against.’
Council staff believed the email was offensive because ‘likey’ rhymes with the derogatory term ‘pikey’.
Rhyming with bad words is a crime against humanity.
In the second story, a woman is chastised for holding a knife in her own home to scare off possible intruders:
The TV presenter and Marks & Spencer model Myleene Klass has been warned by police for waving a knife at teenagers who were peering into a window of her house late at night.
Klass was in the kitchen with her daughter upstairs when she spotted the youths in her garden just after midnight on Friday. She grabbed a knife and banged the windows before they ran away.
Hertfordshire police warned her she should not have used a knife to scare off the youths because carrying an “offensive weapon”, even in her own home, was illegal.
Klass’s spokesman, Jonathan Shalit, said the former Hear’Say singer was “utterly terrified” by the intruders and “aghast” at the police warning. “All she did was scream loudly and wave the knife to try and frighten them off,” he told the Sunday Telegraph. “She is not looking to be a vigilante, and has the utmost respect for the law, but when the police explained to her that even if you’re at home alone and you have an intruder, you are not allowed to protect yourself, she was bemused.”
When moonbattery is allowed to reign supreme, even self-defense is outlawed.
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The never ending parade of ridiculous stories out of the UK featuring heartless bureaucracy and runaway moonbattery continues:
CommentsA SHOPKEEPER has been fined £180 by Southend Council for NOT producing commercial rubbish.
Mark Howard, 50, owner of Sutton Cycles in Sutton Road, Southend, has recycled all the cardboard boxes his new bikes arrive in by using them when he sells second-hand bikes.
…Mr Howard was astonished when a council official visited to check his waste disposal credentials. The officer refused to believe he did not produce any waste and he was issued with a £180 fixed penalty notice, which if he doesn’t pay within ten days, will be increased to £300. If he fails to pay that he will face court proceedings.
…Steven Crowther, group manager for waste at Southend Council, said Mr Howard was required to produce evidence of how he disposes of commercial waste.
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Britain’s nanny-state nincompoops are at it again:
When is a Christmas tree not a Christmas tree? When it is a giant cone covered in what appears to be green doormats.
Shoppers stared in bemusement at the mysterious object that landed in a shopping precinct in Poole, Dorset, this week. Some compared it to a giant traffic cone, a witch’s hat or a cheap special effect from an early episode of Doctor Who.
The 33ft structure turned out to be their Christmas tree, designed according to the principles of health and safety, circa 2009.
Thus it has no trunk so it won’t blow over, no branches to break off and land on someone’s head, no pine needles to poke a passer-by in the eye, no decorations for drunken teenagers to steal and no angel, presumably because it would need a dangerously long ladder to place it at the top.
Not to worry. The craddle-to-grave entitlement society ensures that the British citizens have no soul left with which to appreciate their loss.
Hat-tip: Overlawyered
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I’m now officially giving that label to (not so) Great Britain. No country can match the sheer volume of jaw-droppingly stupid items that it produces on a near daily basis. It has become a cesspool of excessive multiculturalism, nanny-state paternalism and runaway liberalism. Witness:
A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”. Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year. The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon. In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.”
… Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that possession of a firearm was a “strict liability” charge – therefore Mr Clarke’s allegedly honest intent was irrelevant. Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.
… Judge Christopher Critchlow said: “This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge. “The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.”
Let this stand as a warning to any who consider following down their path.
Hat-tip: Cato@Liberty
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This story from Britain is almost identical to the one I highlighted yesterday:
The Thames Valley Police detectives – who gave birth within a few months of each other – share a job at Aylesbury Police Station in Buckinghamshire.
But the mothers, both 32, have now been told by Ofsted that surveillance teams will spy on their homes to make sure they are not continuing to care for each other’s daughter.
For the past two-and-a-half years, one looked after both of the girls while the other worked a ten-hour shift. Both worked two days a week.
But in July, after a complaint believed to be from a neighbour, DC Shepherd received a surprise visit from an Ofsted inspector, who accused her of running an ‘illegal childminding business’.
Rules state that friends cannot gain a ‘reward’ by looking after a child for more than two hours outside the child’s home unless they register with Ofsted and follow the same regulations as normal childminders.
That America is mimicking Britain in moonbattery is truly frightening given the frequency of outrageous stories I see from across the pond. Britain is literally collapsing under the weight of its own bureaucracy and excessive, multicultural induced masochism.
America seems determined to follow Britain down the path of big government self-destruction.
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If you think encumbering health care with a massive bureaucracy is a good idea, the British experience warns you to think again.
Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.
Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy - almost four months early.
They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatment.
There are few things more inhumane than collectivization, in any form. The reason left-wing totalitarian states in the 20th century were able to slaughter so many of their own people, while counting on the rest to turn a blind eye or even help, is because they had successfully collectivized morality. When the primary moral unit is the collective, all manner of immoral action can be permitted and justified against the individual.
Remember this when you hear arguments for government health care based on collectivist arguments.
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Oh, once Great Britain, what have the moonbats done to thee?
Anton Cataldo, who specialises in painting pet portraits, decided to put up reward posters on six trees after two of his favourite dog paintings went missing.
But the only person who responded to his plea was a council official who fined him £75 for causing harm to “living trees.”
The email said: “Some of these posters have been stapled to trees. You appear to have little understanding that trees are living things.
“Wounding the bark of any tree in any way can lead to attack by airborne fungal spores, which in the worst-case scenario, could lead to the loss of the tree.”
For the trees!
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We need to bring this man to the U.S.
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
