NEWS RELEASE | Tuesday 26th February 2008
Public health: musician attacks "nannies, prigs and bullies"
On the eve of a world tour to promote his new album Rain, musician Joe Jackson today renewed his attack on the smoking ban and claimed that public health has "abdicated its true purpose, healing the sick, in favour of social engineering".
Writing exclusively for The Free Society blog, Jackson says: "I don't want to be ruled by the kind of nannies, prigs and bullies who abound in the antismoking movement. Even with the best of intentions, the health and safety brigade are often wrong. They only look at life from one angle, an angle which is increasingly mean-spirited, promoting paranoia, intolerance, and illusory concepts like zero risk."
Commenting on the song 'Citizen Sane' which appears on the new album, Jackson says: "This song says, more or less, that we're all yearning for some kind of authority to tell us how to be sane citizens in a confusing world; but the authorities all turn out to be corrupt or dishonest or incompetent.
"What puzzles some people is that I target not just politicians but doctors, who currently enjoy the kind of unquestioning faith which in other times was commanded by kings, popes or the KGB.
"Public health," adds Jackson, "seems to have abdicated its true purpose, healing the sick, in favour of social engineering. I don't want to live under a 'medicocracy' - a dictatorship of doctors - any more than a dictatorship of mechanics or plumbers. I want them to give me advice if I ask for it, and help me out if I get into trouble, not force me to live in a prescribed way.
"It's not even certain that life in a medicocracy will be healthier. But it's certain to be less free and less fun."
Notes:
1. Full article here: www.thefreesociety.org. Comments welcome.
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