Just a day after Christopher Snowdon’s reflections on a decade of the smoking ban, Spiked Editor Brendan O’Neill has had his say on it, also in the Spectator. O’Neill has a reputation for forthright argument, and here he does not... Continue Reading →
If voters get the governments they deserve, then we worry for America’s northern neighbours. They seem such a nice, polite nation. What did they do to merit the bunch of busybodies that now want to meddle with their groceries? In... Continue Reading →
Who do you vote for, if you're a Brexiteer? A libertarian? A free thinker? It's a tough question. The Liberal Democrats are anything but liberal. Labour have never been more big-state than they are today. The Greens and UKIP, supposedly... Continue Reading →
While corner shops around the UK endured the chaos caused by new plain-pack rules for tobacco, the Independent newspaper took its time about commenting. But a fortnight after the draconian regime’s introduction, the old bird has flapped down from her... Continue Reading →
Cast your mind back to feverish June, when for a few days it seemed possible our next Prime Minister might be that bounder Boris. For all his brio, it wasn’t exactly a comforting prospect. But while storm clouds gathered,... Continue Reading →
It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. The former because today marks the publication of Chris Snowdon’s second annual European Nanny State Index – demonstrating once again why our cause is just and must be... Continue Reading →
You’ve got to hand it to Public Health England (PHE), the propaganda arm of the NHS and creature of the World Health Organisation. Surrounded by killer facts and research, like the 7th Cavalry at Little Big Horn, they fight on,... Continue Reading →
Unelected, unaccountable, unchallengeable, redundant. Things aren’t looking so good for top-down institutions these days. The EU faces an existential threat. The UN is discredited and toothless. Even the World Health Organisation (WHO), the source of so much policy in so... Continue Reading →
Ah, plain and uniform packaging. That most banal of all the nanny-state’s myriad of legislation, and yet somehow, also its most perfidious. A sledgehammer taken to the smoking industry, but an unrelenting sledgehammer that brutalises all in its way and... Continue Reading →