Another day, another ban

On the morning after the General Election result I posted this tweet, which I really should frame, as I fear it will become only too prophetic.

The previous government did not have a good record on issues of lifestyle restriction, but it seems as though, as I expected, their replacements are greatly quickening the pace. It seems that hardly a day goes by without some further ban or curb being proposed. First we had the plan to outlaw smoking in pub gardens, and last week we saw both a proposal to ban “junk food” advertising on TV before 9 pm – and entirely on social media – and to prevent pubs using glasses bearing the logos of beer brands.

These are both issues on which I have commented before, and I don’t really propose to waste my breath going over the same ground again and again. The “junk food” advertising ban will inevitably encompass many foods generally regarded as “healthy”, while the alcohol logo ban is part of a much wider plan to restrict alcohol marketing and publicity.

Some of the thinking behind this plans is exposed in this extract from a report recently quoted in this tweet by Christopher Snowdon:

Rather than being welcomed as valued partners in the national enterprise, the alcohol industry and much of the food industry will be branded as “Unhealthy Commodity Industries” which are seen as a pernicious influence on public life. They will be at best grudgingly tolerated and excluded from any voice in policy-making. Huge swathes of the economy, also extending to sectors such as tobacco, gambling, car manufacture, oil and much of travel, will be condemned as essentially undesirable. The Scotch whisky industry, who are often celebrated as Scotland’s biggest export earner, cannot be remotely happy with this framing. And pubs, as retailers of alcohol, will inevitably be lumped in as well.

You have to wonder what motivates people to take this joyless and restrictive approach. Are they completely unable to appreciate the pleasures that can be gained from consuming alcoholic drinks or food, let alone enjoying these activities in convivial company? As H. L. Mencken famously said, “A Puritan is someone who lives in mortal fear that somewhere, sometime, someone is enjoying himself.” It is worth reproducing in full this well-known quote from C. S. Lewis, which is usually only seen in abbreviated form:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would 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. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

The final sentence is particularly important, as it underlines how this approach is essentially infantilising people rather than treating them as responsible adults who can be trusted to take charge of their own lives.