The Nanny State now becomes the Bully State

http://www.thefreesociety.org/Voices-of-Freedom

The Free Society and the Manifesto Club present
HYPER-REGULATION AND THE BULLY STATE
Bad laws that threaten individual liberty
Thursday June 24, 2010 Chaired by James Panton (Manifesto Club), speakers include Josie Appleton (Manifesto Club), Isabella Sankey (policy director, Liberty), Simon Clark (director, The Free Society), Mark Wallace (campaign director, Taxpayers Alliance) and Philip Johnston (Daily Telegraph and author, Bad Laws: An Explosive Analysis of Britain’s Petty Rules, Health and Safety Lunacies and Madcap Laws)

Isabella Sankey went on about control orders and the rights of those suspected of terrorism.

Mark Wallace, brought up a Methodist, enumerated the number of words found in various pieces of legislation, showing a pattern of word increase in proportion to the erosion of our liberties.  He mentioned the false distinction between economic and civil liberty.

Josie Appleton spoke of state informants, state licensing of normal activities such as dancing, and schools having such things as lunchbox policies (to police our diet) and photography policies (to police Britain's ubiquitous paedophiles).  We are a nation obsessed about paedophilia, terrorism and binge drinking.  These days a priest could be defrocked for refusing a CRB check, she said.  

Philip Johnston pointed out that the people who say "It's a free country" are also the people who say "There ought to be a law against it."  "Our liberties depend on the silence of the law," he quoted Hobbes.  Now, because we are mostly in receipt of welfare in one form or another, we all have permanent client status, ie we are now all clients of the state.  He quoted A J P Taylor:

“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman.  He could live where he liked and as he liked.  He had no official number or identity card.  He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission.  He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit.  He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home.  For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police.  Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service.  An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials.  He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence.  Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service.  Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so.  The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale:  nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income.  The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases.  It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours.  The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13.  Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70.  Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment.  This tendency towards more state action was increasing.  Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905.  Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves.  It left the adult citizen alone.”

I did ask a question:

"Liberty is the freedom to go to heaven or to hell in our own way and, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  It has been said by Benjamin Franklin that those who prize security over liberty deserve neither.  Are the British, after so many years of the nanny state, people who deserve neither?"

Mark Wallace attempted an answer the gist of which was that comedians such as Frankie Boyle are now questioning the system and that this is in itself cause for optimism.  I remain a little sceptical, however.