From Colin Clarke.
A WISE old bird once said that a democratically elected government’s duty was to ‘leave people alone’.
It’s a shame that our august collection of the great and the good, both elected and in the case of certain civil servants, unelected, consider this to be a quaint and old-fashioned philosophical notion.
Our lives are being increasingly directed and interfered with by people who consider themselves to be of a superior intellect to the ordinary bloke in the street, although judging by the standard of the occasional States debate I listen to, and some of the ill-considered waffle that certain civil servants come out with, I would beg to differ.
A friend of mine recently had the dubious pleasure of an audience with one of the island’s leading cardiologists, who quite candidly told her that ‘smoking would be banned in Jersey within ten years’.
Not banned in public places, not banned in your front garden, but just ‘totally banned’, which I take to mean illegal.
Now, I do not recall reading this in any of the manifestos of our duly elected politicians, but I find it hard to believe that such a senior medical luminary would have just made this up and, therefore, it must have some credence.
If this is not true, perhaps Dr Rosemary Geller would find time in her undoubtedly busy day to drop me a line denying that such a notion is not on someone’s political agenda.
Just who is responsible for policy in Jersey, our duly elected representatives or a collection of unelected, unaccountable and seemingly unsackable civil servants who seem neither especially civil nor, indeed, that interested in being particularly servant-like either?
Article posted on 8th December, 2009 - 3.00pm
2 Article Comments
Why does Colin Clarke conflate the alleged private opinions of his friend’s cardiologist with what the Island’s Medical Officer of Health may or may not think?
Mr Clarke is undoubtedly a mischief-maker.
Having told us in his first sentence) what an anonymous cardiologist might or might not have said he gives the game away in his last sentence, where he tries to offload, and to ascribe, this unsourced opinion on Dr Geller.
Dr Geller, as far as we can see, has not made any public declaration on the future legality or otherwise of smoking in Jersey.
Please stop this mendacity right now, Mr Clarke! Or are you a publicist for the tobacco industry?
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It wouldn’t surprise me if smoking was banned in the future. It doesn’t sit well with a healthy life style, so the government says.
However more importantly it is now being realised that the costs are far outwaying any profits. Costs to business through illness and early death, and lost taxes to governments.
No we can’t afford this when we have an aging society. We will need every last worker to keep the money rolling in for big business and the taxman soon.
As far as I am concerned this is the real reason for wanting smoking stopped, health is just a side issue that can be used as a good enough reason to ban it.
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