The Politically Incorrect Show - 17/01/2001

[Music - Die Fledermaus]

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Wednesday January 17, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd., the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.

[Music up, music down!]

Bob Jones once fronted an ad for the Water Safety Council or some such in which, knee-high in river water & with rod cast, he looked at the camera & said something like: "X number of people drown in New Zealand waters every year - & frankly they're a damned nuisance. They scare the fish away." He went on to admonish everyone to learn to swim, be safe in the water, etc., as per the Water Safety Council's script.

That was years ago. Two things have happened since: thanks to busybodies & bureaucrats on gravy-trains, "safety" has become a national obsession (along with laws supposedly designed to guarantee it), & one wouldn't now be allowed to make light of it on national television the way Bob did back then.

Spare us the safety-nazis! It was difficult to believe that the caller to Paul on Monday who was demanding the compulsory wearing of crash helmets on skate-boards, scooters & uni-cycles wasn't pulling his leg; but whether he was or wasn't, the fact is that such silliness has been mooted in jest in the past, only to become a reality subsequently. The caller to MY programme who then suggested the compulsory wearing of crash helmets during sex lest one's head hit the head-board at an especially vigorous moment may well end up having a lot to answer for!

It all put me in mind of the fanatical campaign against the tinting of car windows that went on under the Neville Bolger government. I reproduced a letter to a protesting window-tinter from Mr Bolger & his Minister of Transport, Maurice Wimpiamson, in Issue 5 of The Free Radical, complete with the Prime Ministerial logo - only I altered all references to the tinting of car windows to the wearing of tinted eyewear by pedestrians instead. Thus changed, the letter read in part:

"Regulation 74 of the Traffic Regulations Act 1976 contains a clear requirement that spectacle surfaces must be kept 'clear & clean so that the pedestrian's forward view will not be impeded or instructed.' The Pavement Traffic Safety Authority takes the view that this regulation effectively prohibits the tinting of eye-glasses, & that there should be provision for the apprehending of pedestrians if there is readily discernible tinting of their eye-wear ... As to those for whom tinting is their profession & livelihood - naturally they have our strongest sympathies. We hope you would agree, however, that there can be no long term future for the products & services of any enterprise which are potentially hazardous to public safety. Governments sometimes have to make decisions to the detriment of some sections of society for the greater good of the society as a whole."

I then reproduced the signatures of Bolger & Wimpiamson.

To my consternation, most of my readers thought the letter was completely authentic; they were shocked & angered, BUT NOT SURPRISED - it was perfectly conceivable to them that the government WOULD forbid pedestrians to wear dark glasses.

As we endure Nanny's never-ending nagging about all the naughty things we mustn't do,  & all the good things we must do, we have to wonder - were they so wrong?

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