United Future NZ-Christchurch Supplement

Political correctness is that grey cloud of haunting fear that someone somewhere may be having fun!

The whole PC nonsense that has crept into our lives, lit by the current smoke free legislation before Parliament, has now extended to a call on controls over our eating habits, our television watching, video games and even so-called 'sedentary' sports.

It's bad enough that anti-choice zealots are telling hospitality business owners that they can't smoke in the privacy of their own investment, but now there are cries for an 'anti-fun' tax! Since when were taxes anything but anti-fun anyway?

It was reported that the Public Health Director Colin Tukuitonga believes that the details of a Diabetes New Zealand Report which advocates fat taxes and advertising bans are not out of step. Some of the silly measures include:

a.. Controls in the use of fat in takeaways and, in a self-indulgent frenzy of self-righteous folly, also proposes a minimum dimension for the humble french-fry!

b.. Minimum standards for television cooking programmes and restaurant meals (in accordance with 'prescribed' national nutritional guidelines) which will no doubt reduce our burgeoning culinary landscape to that of the colourless diet of post-Soviet canteen modernism.

c.. Regulations for portion sizes, so that tall, big-boned lugs like me end up looking like wilted shafts of boiled endive as we pay the penalty for being six-foot four and over-sized.

d.. Broadcasters to be charged for screening sedentary sports such as motor-racing and no doubt other 'exciting' (and I use the word advisedly) activities like blindfolded darts, line-dance watching and competitive stamp collecting!

e.. Point of sale tax on videos, notwithstanding the possibility of their educational value with titles such as 'How to avoid paying politically correct fun taxes'.

Well.I've got a few suggestions of my own. There should be a register for people who believe all this nonsense. The saner amongst us could then be warned in case those killjoys are anywhere near us and it would also help us decide which invitations to turn down. There is plenty of time to be dead and there's no reason to start practising for it on this side of the ground!

Those who proselytise the new ideological religion of political correctness envisage a world denuded of much richness and joy. In its stead they promote one of such incomprehensible dullness and misery that we might find our allotted threescore and ten to feel like an eternity!

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