h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

An advisor to Govt has come up with the following, according to the Independent:

"Among his suggestions are a proposal for a smoking permit, which smokers would have to produce when buying cigarettes, an "exercise hour" to be provided by all large companies for their employees and a ban on salt in processed food. On smoking, he said permits could be issued annually and the signature of a doctor might even be needed. "Sellers of tobacco from supermarkets to tobacconists would have to see the permit before any sale. To get a permit would involve filling out a form and supplying a photograph as well as paying the required fee. Permits would only be issued to those over 18 and evidence of age would have to be provided. The money raised for the permits would go to the NHS."


It was John Stuart Mill who said "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient."

That any academic could even think these thoughts in private, far less call for them publicly is evidence of just how far down the road to an authoritarian state we have travelled.

Wait until they start taxing according to your body mass index !

As you know I am totally in favour of things like the government banning smoking in public places, or banning junk food in schools. But I can't see the point of a smoking permit. Did they say what the point was?

Sorry, forgot the link - http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article3087276.ece

"The idea, dubbed "libertarian paternalism", reverses the traditional government approach that requires individuals to opt in to healthy schemes. Instead, they would have to opt out to make the unhealthy choice, by buying a smoking permit, choosing not to participate in the exercise hour or adding salt at the table."

Well, I think it's a load of dingo's kidneys... what next? Permits required to buy alcohol? To buy fatty foods?

Sounds like a pile of shite to me, but (without reading the link) don't some advisors have the job of thinking of every possible scheme, no matter how odd?

Errr. waht? I think it really is time I learnt a forign language and do waht I don't want to do and leave this sinking ship.

You need a permit to drive a car. Nobody complains.

You need a permit to buy a gun. Nobody complains.

You need a permit to catch a fish. Nobody complains.

You need a prescription to buy most drugs. Nobody complains.

Personally, I like the idea.

SoRB

Oh, and on the Mill quote: it is for the prevention of harm to others.

The harm, in this case, is the use of scarce NHS resources I or my family paid for and might need, going instead to treat someone who is suffering from a disease they practically chose to get. Let's not bother with passive smoking, because I've pretty much given up passive smoking since July - hurrah!

SoRB

And on that logic I'll only be happy to see it come in if at the same time they bring in permits for people to be required to have in order to have children.

My guess is that Hoo will agree with you there 2legs

Hmm. My knee jerk reaction is "I certainly doo."

Except... I'm fundamentally in favour of people. Even people I don't like, which is most of them. So I wouldn't restrict their ability to reproduce, no. I'd ADVISE them to restrict their reproduction, encourage them, even offer inducements for sterilisation, especially inducements that would appeal to the weak-minded. Free copy of the Bible/Koran/Torah, say. But I'd never advocate making any restrictions compulsory. That way lies stagnation and extinction.

SoRB

A licence for driveing a car is not really comparable to a licence to be able to purchase soemthing, and if we did have the licence for purchasing cigarettes/tobacco I can't imagine what it would help to achieve pressumbably you'd have to drive to the supermarket, in your car, with your driving licence, go into the shop, produce your ID card and undergo biometric test to prove it is who you claim to be, then produce the licence for purchasing alcohol, the licence for purchasing 'convenience' food, the licence for purchasing caffine/coffee/tea and then the licence for purchasing tobacco, the electronic device they have in teh store woudl then fail and be unable to link up to the database in order to cross reference your Coffee/alochol/fatty food/tobacco licences with the national ID card, and you'd have to wait about for ages whilst the shop assistant called over to her manager, finally thats all sorted and you try to pay in cash. Cash? your not using plastic? surely this must be a subtle method of Identification fraud, the in-store security guards are called... Maybe they could introduce a licence in order for people to buy hash and cocaine that'd probably help cut the number of people taking those drugs Oh, hang on, woudln't it just be better to ban tobacco entirely?

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Why stop there? It would be best to just ban everything that poses some sort of health risk. Nanny state uber alles!

What a complete and utter waste of time and money!

What use is it? It proves you're over eighteen... Ok, just make it law that all those persons buying cigarettes have to be able to prove they're over eighteen and leave it up to them to figure out how to do it.

You've got to visit a doctor before you can get it? Isn't the NHS stretched enough without insisting that every single smoker visits their GP once a year for a lecture on stopping smoking _before_ getting their piece of plastic (and thinking about it... would a doctor's oath to 'do no harm' actually mean that they could and should refuse to give you a card which has one sole use, for you to buy something that is bad for your health?)

The card would be useless in a couple of years anyway when everyone's carrying a national ID card.

Banning is definately the way to go. Look how well it works for hash crack and coke (all of which I can buy within a mile or less of where I live), and of course we could always use the sucessful American prohibition model as a basis for it, heck, we could do booze at the same time. With your annual renewal of your 'permision to harm oneself' card, your BMI could be taken, and if your overweight/BMI over 30 your driving licence and permit to travel on public transport could be removed. After five sucessive rewnewals of the liecence to harm oneself' card/licence, would be compulsory rehab, followed by removal of that persons genes from the gene pool, as clearly, after that much time the person must carry genes which predispose to addiction in such a strong way as to be harmful to society as a whole. Actually I'm kinda liking the idea now. Why not just an anual cull of anyone who smokes or has a BMI say over 35? Whislt we're at it, I think its about time we banned kitchen knifes completely, and paracetamol its just too dangerous to trust the plebs of the UK populus to have such things as they might abuse them and misuse them one day.

Would we need a permit to be on hootoo?

only if you slouch at your computer, or you sit too close to the screen, or are on it more than 15 minutes at a time, or post something deemed offensive. Until later...
BCNU - Crescent

No worries about the ID card - they've just published the short-list of companies to develop the software and introduce it.

Names like EDS and IBM feature,.....

The smoking thing just sounds like another way of introducing identity documents. Functionally speaking, it's just a tax on smoking combined with an identity check and an identity document. Since there's already a tax on smoking (and very likely, the cost of this permit to smoke is going to be vanishingly small in comparison to an average smoker's tax paid), this reduces to just an identity check.

The exercise hour is not quite so bad, but it's not clear what is exactly meant by it. If 'opting out' of the hour means working instead then you might well find that those individuals who chose not to opt out would find themselves less likely to get pay raises and promotions, and so people would choose to opt out. If 'opting out' meant doing anything else you liked in that hour, I think most people would just treat it as an extra hour off work. It's not clear that there'd be any benefit, but probably no harm would come of it either.

The salt thing is very pernicious. I like salty food, why shouldn't I be allowed to raise my chances of heart attack?

Restricting alcohol sales - is there any evidence that this works in the countries that have tried it? Anyway, this is marginally more justifiable in that problem drinking is a social problem and not just a health one.

Free fruit - yeah, why not?

Finally, 'libertarian paternalism' is surely almost the definition of doublethink? I quote from Orwell on doublethink:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."