Nanny Is Mother, Nanny Is Father

The key to any "successful" authoritarian dictatorship is to ensure that the state is involved in every aspect of people's lives.

Sometimes the state will legislate, by force, its involvement; eg banning smoking, health and safety reviews and ethnic quotas etc.

In other areas the state will try to "ingratiate" itself, by first of all undermining people's self confidence and dignity. Once the fundamental bedrock of people's independence has been undermined, Nanny can push her way in and start to lecture us about how we should be living our lives. This makes us reliant on her, and as such gives her the whip hand over us.

One of Nanny's experts in the Machiavellian art of confidence erosion is Nanny's best chum Caroline Flint, so called Minister for Fitness. Ms Flint has issued an edict saying that overweight people should be given lessons in how to eat fruit and vegetables.

Call me old fashioned...

"Ken you're old fashioned!"

...but I thought the principle of eating fruit and veg was easy; you open your mouth, put the fruit/vegetable in your mouth and start to chew.

You know how to chew, don't you?

Anyhoo, in Ms Flint's world, too many Britons are refusing to eat fresh produce because they see it as "scary food."

The reason that some people find it "scary" is that when they were children, they were not forced to eat what was put in front of them; ie they were spoiled and indulged by lazy parents.

Ms Flint wants supermarkets to provide instore demonstrations on how "healthier" food, eg apples and bananas, should be prepared and eaten.

Ms Flint, referred to a seminar where a parent apparently referred to some food as being scary:

"What she was talking about was vegetables she had never seen in her life before.

Here's a fruit you have never seen before.

What do you do with it?

Do you peel it?

Do you boil it?

Do you chop it?".

Ms Flint said the solution was to provide cookery lessons in major stores.

She added:

"If people are calling some of the healthier foods 'scary food'

because they are not sure how to prepare or cook them

it doesn't matter how many times I bang out a leaflet

saying eat this - it is not going to happen."

Three points to the above:

1 It's not the state's role to tell people what to eat.

2 People resent being told by the state what to eat, and will rebel.

3 It is the role of parents to educate their children as to what to eat.

Let the responsibility and consequences of lazy parenting rest with the parents, not with the state. The more that state interferes, the more lazy parents will become and as a result the more reliant society becomes on the state.

Ms Flint also admitted that another problem that Nanny faces is that some people simply don't consider themselves to be obese...well that's their right isn't it?

That observation is as facile as if she were to say that some people don't consider themselves to be ugly, when in fact they are (to some others)...totally subjective.

Quote:

"We have to do it in a way not to stigmatise people.

One of the things you have to think about is sometimes

overweight parents do not recognise their children as being overweight.

If they compare themselves with people who are considerably larger than themselves

they think, 'That's not me I don't have a problem'."

In other words, Nanny will now be upping the volume on her "you are a fat bastard" campaign.

Once everyone feels inadequate, and has had their self confidence undermined, Nanny will "come to the rescue" and make us all dependent on her.