Bring on the Nanny State

It looks like the anti-smoking pendulum has swung to it's highest extremity (short of a total ban) so the government do-gooders are turning their attention to the next batch of nasties: alcohol, gambling and fast food.

Why stop there I ask you. Do you have any idea how many potentially dangerous activities there are which have no government warnings whatsoever? A myriad of potentially lethal and/or cancer and/or heart disease inducing tasks any one of us could innocently engage in at any time without realising the possible consequences.

So I've come up with some warnings which in my opinion are long overdue:

1) DO NOT have a nap in the middle of this road, you may get run over by a truck or Bob Brown on a bicycle.

2) DO NOT tell your friends about how well your new diet is working for you. Quite possibly this diet will soon be found to be potentially harmful to your health. More than likely your friends will want to stick a fork in your eye which could also be bad for your health. [Guilty on all counts, officer.]

3) DO NOT have a job which requires you to sit at a desk for many hours at a time in front of a PC. You will develop an insatiable desire for milky coffee sucked through a Tim Tam "straw" and the need to check Facebook every 10 minutes; the former is bad for your waistline, the later bad for your employment status.

4) DO NOT have a job which requiers you to do any standing, bending, lifting, moving, using any sort of electrical or non-electrical equipment and/or interacting with other humans; all these things have been found to be dangerous to your health.

5) DO NOT have children and/or spend time anywhere near children; it hasn't YET been proven that they directly cause cancer but they really fuck up your mental health and self esteem.

6) DO NOT watch MasterChef; the corny and completely over the top production style and pathetically stomach churning use of celebrity chefs will cause you to scream obscenities at the tv and fight an overwhelming urge to throw a heavy object at the screen (the former could result in a brain anurism, the later in putting your back out - you have been warned).

7) DO NOT eat or drink ANYTHING. At all. Ever. All food and drink can cause you any number of health problems. It is impossible to tell what is the right amount of any type of food or drink. Apart from making your body sick eating and drinking will also drive you mad as every day a different report appears claiming eating pasta is good, tomorrow it's bad; today salt is good, tomorrow it will be bad; red wine will stop you getting heart disease but it will increase your chances of cancer. So best to avoid it altogether, much easier that way.

8) DO NOT breathe (just to be on the safe side). Air contains lots of bad stuff, pollution, particles of possibly cancer causing materials which haven't been identified yet, farts which will melt the hairs in your nostrils.

I'm no fan of smoking (had a few puffs around the age of 13 but haven't touched the stinky stuff since). I don't drink apart from an occasional glass (or three) of Bella or a cocktail with an umbrella in it while on holidays. I don't gamble apart from a few sweeps tickets for the Melbourne Cup and the odd MultiPick card for the big Lotto draws. But I overwhelmingly resent the creeping Nanny State we are living in. Laws and regulations are aimed at the lowest common denomenator and it is quite simply an insult to our intelligence.

I especially hate the two faced governmental approach; we are happy to take your taxes you smokers, drinkers and gamblers, but we're going to treat you ALL as pathological, rather than accept the reality that only a small number of people have a problem with these habits that seriously effect their lives or health.

Stay out of our lives beaurocrats and "researchers". Life is dangerous, it's risky, it's there to be lived and enjoyed and suffered through; it's not a risk assesment task to be "managed" and controlled.

As you were.