As a teenager, living in a land quite disconnected from the west, I always found the whole idea of political correctness a little demented. It was almost as if the world was trying so hard to please different kinds of groups, that in the middle of all this, somewhere, the individual started losing all his liberties.
As I stepped into my twenties, and moved to England, seeing the multitude of cultures co-existing here without the express need for hardcore political correctness, I suddenly found myself in Utopia. England is a place obsessed with appeasing the minority groups, but all with a pinch of salt. See, the English have this 'Chin-up' spirit, and the most self-effacing sense of humour I have ever seen anywhere. They relish in laughing at themselves, and generally are a decent bunch of people who just want to get by.
The stiff-upper-lip in them can't be helped, its deeply ingrained in their psyche, but that doesn't mean they don't care! all it means is that they choose not to raise a hue and cry about things and just deal with what's dished out to them, maybe because its 'proper'... Who knows?
But its this attitude that the government has used to their full advantage over the last 12 years, in making sure that we're slowly, but surely evolving into a Big Brother nation. And I am not talking about the CCTV cameras. That's another issue altogether, I mean in today's modern climate, I think it is necessary to have cameras, if only to give the government a fighting chance to stop all the evils of the world. I am talking about how the government comes out with a new policy almost daily which tells us what we should and shouldn't do, or how we should or shouldn't look, what we should and shouldn't buy, or eat, or drink! and again, I am not talking about drugs, I am talking about general things like a bar of chocolate, which they now want to tax.
For example, there is this strong movement, and lots of liberal thinkers and influential people have been talking about how Overweight people should be charged extra for their Airline tickets, because at the end of the day, It is extra weight that the airplane has to lug around! How about giving me a cheaper ticket because I am over six feet four inches tall, and even though they promise comfort, My legs can never fit in an aircraft! Doesn't work that way does it? The latest is that you cannot buy cough syrup for your child anymore because its bad for them!
So what does a parent do if their child hasn't been able to sleep all night and has been coughing violently? Call the doctor? Nope, because the doctors close shop at five! Moreover, the doctor will never see you unless you make an appointment, even if he is practising his putt in the office! Do you perhaps go to the hospital? subject your child to a four-five hour wait in an emergency waiting room, over a common cough? Imagine the stress that would cause the system, if every parent with a child under six went and stood in line there because the Honey-glycerin-warm water combination home remedy really doesn't work well enough!
I'm sure, you who are reading must have had your fair share of coughs and colds when you were little, and like my mother did with me, yours must have woken up, given you a spoonful of medicine and tucked you back in bed. Are we walking around with some dreadful poison in our system that is eating away at our insides? What is wrong with cough syrups that were designed for children in the first place?
I'll tell you what is wrong, some naturalist group decided that we shouldn't put medicines in our children's tummies, and let nature take its course, rght now its a common cold, tomorrow it might be measles... why vaccinate them? I mean come on, aren't those bacteria and/or combinations of chemicals going into our child's body?
The sad thing is that these fringe groups, and new age hippie wannabes have a listening ear, while the common man, who works all day, comes home, makes dinner while his wife had been at work herself, and is now doing the cleaning, changing, washing up, he doesn't have a listening ear. Who does he go to and talk to, and explain his views about how he thinks his life should be run? Or his child's or his wife's? He doesn't have the liberty, time, energy, or money to sip a few cocktails with the policy makers and tell them, that when almost 50% of his earnings go to the government in different forms of taxes, all he wants is some peace.
Maybe someone like me can write to my local MP... but that falls on deaf ears! The MP is so busy trying to secure funds for his or her constituency, that everything else just goes on the backburner. Imagine if our local MP sat and read through all the letters the people send him or her! they wouldn't be able to get anything else done!
The government is trying to standardize everything, what you should eat, what you should wear, how good or bad you should be at a particular subject, how much alcohol you should consume... the list is endless. And I am not talking about the unreasonable things!
I think this government is living in a bubble, has lived in it for the better part of the last decade. What started off as an exercise in making Britain a better place has now turned into a power trip. bureaucrats sit in their offices, meet with people who have infinitely more freedoms than the average joe and come up with new laws and edicts to protect us from ourselves, without realizing that even though we might not voice ourselves as often as we'd like to, we are living our lives, taking care of our families and the last thing we need protection from is ourselves! If we do need protection from anything, its this government and its obsession with one day running a zombie nation!
