The gov't giveth and the gov't taketh away

Your freedoms that is. Today brings three disturbing stories from Oz, being pushed by environmental nuts and car-hating nanny statists.

One proposal is to ban free plastic bags within 12 months, courtesy of our new environment minister Peter Garrett. Somehow, plastic bags hurt marine wildlife, although the connection here between shoppers who get plastic bags at the checkout, and how they end up killing dolphins, is quite strange and ambiguous.

Its just like Phase 2 of the underpants gnomes' plot for profit !

The idea is to make shops charge customers for plastic bags .. so .. how exactly does this end up stopping plastic bags being thrown out ? All you end up doing is kicking consumers in the head for no reason.
Another meddlesome concept is towards installing GPS devices in cars, to limit the speed you can travel, based on satellite technology and computer software to identify what the road limit for each car is. Hopefully this monstrosity won't get past the trial phase in Victoria, and it will be thrown out the window before it gains momentum.

Whats the message here ? Well its pretty simple. That a free and cooperative society, full of individuals who engage in voluntary transactions, is unacceptable to our political superiors and media snobs. Because it results in things they don't like.

We are expected to no longer consider ourselves to be individual people with a set of rights and freedoms, but instead we have been told to consider ourselves part of the collective with a set of obligations and responsibilities, so whatever freedoms and rights we have are simply there because the collective society allows it. Even when no other individual is coerced or harmed or forced to enter into an exchange they do not want, somehow, there is an invisible party with no voice (often referred to as "society" or "community" or "the environment") that, according to the media, is really worse off from the exchange and we are supposed to believe it has its own set of rights.

The latest idea in Victoria is to "change work hours" in the CBD and manage people's lives so that peak hour traffic is alleviated.

The brainchild of Premier John Brumby, "Flex in the City" is based on a program run in Houston, Texas, in 2006.

The Government is expected to announce the program and launch a website in coming weeks.

The website will include programs encouraging walking and cycling, through the use of pedometers and cycle odometers. It is specifically aimed at CBD staff who live in the inner city.

Great, it has a flashy website and a sexy catchy name ! Nothing like a bit of spin to push new restrictions on to the sheeple and indoctrinate them for conformance and obedience. Chairman Mao, also a big fan of central planning, had his Great Leap Forward. Kim Jong Il has his glorious People's Revolution. I wonder how well those ideas turned out ??

Throw this crap out the window, and remember that nobody else has a right to meddle in your trade and commerce. When you and your employer form an agreement, nobody has a right to tell either of you the conditions of employment. When you purchase a car, and it is your property, no 3rd party has a right to force you to install GPS devices. When you purchase shopping or groceries, no 3rd party has a right to tell you OR the store owner how to operate, and if plastic bags are acceptable.


UPDATE : Clean Up Australia has suggested that charging customers for plastic bags won't work - they think its actually not tough enough ! For some meddling bastards, nothing short of banning plastic bags altogether is acceptable