I was thinking only last month and I'm sure I am not the only one to notice that the Government is taking over our lives.
There are laws for this, laws for that, laws for everything; to the point that our very existence seems to be controlled by the state.
It is at times like this I get frustrated to the point of tears that my mastery of nomenclature is so inadequate I am simply unable to create some sort of pithy phrase or snappy aphorism that would encapsulate the matter.
The best I can do to is to liken the Government to one's grandmother, and suggest we have a "grandmother state".
No; "grandmother" is not the right word.
I have it "nanny".
I don't think the phrase will catch on, but it appears we are living in what I would call a "nanny state".
And that's not all.
Sometimes it seems as if the language one uses, the ideas one has, and the behaviour one indulges in is constrained by a set of perceived orthodoxies foisted on society by a confusing mass of pressure groups.
It has got to the point we are bending over backwards not to offend these groups.
It is at times like this I get frustrated to the point of tears that my mastery of nomenclature is so inadequate I am simply unable to create some sort of pithy phrase or snappy aphorism that would encapsulate the matter.
The best I can do is to say that politically speaking, there appears to be a ... a ... properness required in one's language and behaviour.
No; "properness" is not the right word.
I have it "correctness".
I don't think the phrase will catch on, but "political correctness", or PC for short, has just gone nutty of late.
Actually, it's much worse than nutty, it seems to have gone quite mad.
But stone the crows, paint me head to toe with bright green paint and tell my mother I've become an acrobat, this "nanny state" and "political correctness" carry-on is not new.
Victorian Pharmacy (8.30pm, from November 6, the Living Channel) explains how state intervention and politically correct sticky-beaks ruined the pharmaceutical industry.
In the good old days, chemists fed opiates to babies: sold arsenic as a clothing dye; sulphuric acid as a stain remover; they made fireworks out the back; didn't have to be qualified and nobody needed a prescription.
Apart from a few deaths, everyone was happy.
Then came the Pharmaceutical Society, the 1868 Pharmacy Act, the 1875 Fireworks Act, the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act and qualification exams, and all the fun went out of the industry.
It just goes to show.
We live in a nanny state.
It's PC gone mad.
