James Delingpole has a nice rant about how awful his home country now is.
Britain, on the other hand, is an embarrassing mess: a nation of snitches and cry-bullies, tinpot fascists and mask-compliant bedwetters, fattened and softened like the doomed rabbits in Cowslip’s warren on free handouts (courtesy of their future grandchildren), terrified not just of going back to work but even of venturing into shops and pubs, increasing the likelihood as each day of cowering inertia passes that Britain’s economic recovery will look less like a V and more like an L with a very, very long bottom.
As dreadful as the plight of the once great Britain is, it pales into complete insignificance when measured against the atrophied mess that is my own nation of Australia. Where Britain is threatening to topple over into the putrid pit, Australia is so far up to its eyeballs in muck and effluent that it wouldn’t even notice if Britain fell over and joined it.
By now most of you have probably heard of the scenes of Melbourne cops smashing in the car windows of terrified occupants, or accosting young women by the throat on the side of the road, all in the name of keeping people safe from themselves. Australia is completely out of control, gripped by an intense fear of what is at best a common cold. But the population is so numbed to the overwhelming intrusion of government do-gooders into their lives that not only do they not protest as what little remaining rights are thrown into the dustbin; they blindly celebrate and accept their enforced incarceration, convinced that they are in fact the lucky ones.
My home state of Western Australia has been cut off from the rest of the world for months now. Nobody is allowed in or out. My own family thinks that this is simply splendid as people are now choosing to take their holidays in forgotten wheatbelt towns that hold all of the rustic charm of a tetanus infected nail to the foot.
Methinks they are confused as to what the word choice actually means.
When I pointed out to them that if something drastic happened in our family, neither they nor myself would be able to travel in either direction due to their government mandated cellophane wrapped existence. This point elicited some uncomfortable ums and ahs in token acknowledgement of being prisoners in their own state with no visiting rights. But the conversation quickly shifted on to more important matters, such as how about that US election?
Australia is a nanny state. For the last 30 years, government has made a point of attempting to protect people from the consequences of their own actions. It all started with the introduction of the ludicrous bicycle helmet laws in the early 90s. Those laws were the test case, the dipping of the toe into the legal waters so as to ascertain if there would be any push back.
There was no push back. And now the government is responsible for your own health. Seen in such a light, the breaking of car windows to haul people out into the street for their own good makes perfect sense. If the government is responsible for your health then it must be seen to be doing everything that it can to lengthen the burden of your life as far as possible into your bleak future. As an individual, your only choice in this matter is to whether or not you intend to resist, and as we are seeing, resistance is not a good idea when the forces of government agents and social ostracism via the media are brought against you.
Australia has long attempted to crown itself the best in the world in many different endeavors. This has mostly been an embarrassing farce that has only been curtailed simply because the rest of the world does not care. But in one respect Australia can be unjustifiably proud in its status as being world leaders; that distinction lies in its pathetic and tragic record as being the best nanny state in the world.
So to James Delingpole I simply say that while Great Britain’s efforts on the nanny state front are indeed worthy of hand wringing and a good lie down, unfortunately for myself you lot ain’t got nothing on Australia. Dear old Australia; we finally found something at which we are good at.
Originally published at Pushing Rubber Downhill. You can purchase Adam’s books here.