Whatever happened to government governing — collecting trash, policing streets reasonably, educating kids sensibly, keeping a military to protect the citizenry — while mostly otherwise staying the heck out of our personal choices when it comes to living our lives? An era long gone. As we know, the day when the phrase “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” engendered true relief has long since vanished into history.

Today, the State has to justify the employment of huge numbers of civil servants and the handing out of billions in research funding. So nothing is off limits or considered out of bounds for the State’s “opinion” and “direction”. As a consequence, the citizenry gets lectured, badgered, and micro-legislated over nearly everything. In fact, anyone could be a criminal. Indeed, you probably are. (Naturally, they’ve done that study, too.)

In short, most in government now appear (often even with the best of intentions) to believe that their job has gone from being tasked with ensuring what we eat won’t kill us accidently an hour afterwards, to believing they have a right to dictate to us what to eat. The accumulated daily results for most people? Consider this fictional example of parts of a day in the life in outer London for an “average” couple, living under Labour’s “Vision for Britain”. Does it sound weirdly familiar in places?

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“Mike” is 35 and his wife, “Emma,” who is a little younger, both work, and have got three small children.

But Emma is going to be off work today, because her Mum is going into hospital. Waking up first, Mike makes his way downstairs alone in the dark, and switches on a light. It flickers and then finally slightly illuminates the hallway. [Reason: energy saver he just installed because his children were on at him, because they were taught at school about the proven dangers of climate change.] He proceeds to trip over a toy, but fortunately recovers without major injury.

In the kitchen, he brews himself a cup of tea, and finishes it off with a drop of fresh milk. [Shouldn't use fresh milk! Stated reason: Danger of climate change.] Emma will take the kids to their school, as always, before heading to her mother’s to take her to the hospital. Emma comes downstairs a few moments behind him, as Mike puts out a couple of breakfast bowls.

“Remember,” Emma says, “they’ve closed the General. [Stated Reason: Needed savings.] So Mum is going to be all the way over at the West County.”

“Yeh, okay, fine.”

Mike finishes his corn flakes in a hurry and heads off to wash and dress, while Today on Radio 4 subliminally echos ominously in the household background ["...if you really think so, Archbishop. Finally, in our radio car, you get the last word, Minister." "Thanks, John. It's clear that while they are doing an excellent job educating their own students, fee paying, faith school high performers like Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt are not doing enough in terms of community cohesion. The Government is in favour of their setting aside 25 percent of all places for Muslims." "Well, we'll see how the Catholics like that. Thanks again, Minister..."].

“Lucy! Did you finish your maths homework? Ms O’Donnell is not going to be happy if you didn’t again,” Emma screams up the stairs. “And your kitten needs to be seen to before we go! Let’s go! Don’t think those things about your Mum. Perpetual Guilt is your school, not what your Mum is all about!” [The kitchen radio is still going: "...Next on Today, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has issued a new report following on from U.S. research. It labels domestic cats as 'unwittingly genocidal', in killing sea otters. Sarah Montague reports..."]

As Mike heads out, he remembers that the weekly rubbish collection has just been scrapped [Stated reason: "encourage recycling", owing to danger of climate change.], and so finds the two black bags full of food waste he’d left out late last night strewn around the front garden and on the pavement [Reason: foxes must not be harmed.]

Cleaning up as best he can, he then rushes off to the station, and notices the body of a fox laying across the street, dead, off to the side of the road. The usual train is delayed as usual. [Reason: "driver shortage" is the announcement; SUSPECTED reason: lots of driver sick calls this morning.] It turns up eventually, packed (also as usual), and Mike and others on the platform jam on. Squeezed in between a woman with a screaming baby and a group of men speaking a language unfamiliar to him [Reason: Only a "skeptic" doesn't believe EU enlargement only betters Britain], Mike enjoys the integrated transport service his increasingly expensive “season ticket” buys. [The cost of next year's will be even higher. Reason: "necessary investment" for the future.]

Half an hour later, he arrives at the tube connection. Walking slowly down the stopped escalator [Reason: the escalator is broken again] amongst hordes of others, he gets to the platform. Overhead sign reports helpfully: “Next train to ______ in 12 minutes.” When it finally arrives, he pushes aboard (again). As it lurches into motion, the driver announces that there’s a “bro%£* do-n tr$%n ahe^d,” so they have to wait in the tunnel for a period. “Apo&ogies f$% a-y in%^&venience.” Typical. The PA never works either. 15 minutes later, Mike’s train reaches the next tube station. Mike’s station.

Late for work, he rushes up to the street and sprints for the office. “I’m not doing that one more day”, he mutters to himself, heading into the staff meeting. “Tomorrow, I’m driving in.” The department head then tells everyone that unfortunately a directive has just come down from the main office: “Car parking is to be frozen at existing numbers and eventually reduced greatly”. [Stated reason: government directive, to reduce congestion.]

Later, Emma rings him at his desk. “I got Mum admitted. I don’t know what we’re going to do, though. It costs £2.50 an hour to park at West County! [Stated reason: local NHS trust directive, to dissuade driving to the hospital and parking by non-patients and their families. Suspected real reason: we want more money.] But I have to see her at least a couple of times a day, because the staff hardly look like they have any time to pay much attention to her. I should still be able to get home in time to get the kids from school, so don’t worry. See you later.”

A couple of hours on, Emma phones again, half-frantic: “Can you get the kids? [Reason family has an SUV: Government directive that all children under age 12 must have individual car seats; can't fit them all simultaneously into Mike's Mazda.] I’m stuck in traffic. The radio said an Estonian lorry crashed into a lamp post. [Reason: EU enlargement, already referred to.] I’ll also have to stop and fill up.” [At about £1 a liter -- roughly $7 U.S. a gallon -- stated reasons: much of it tax in order to reduce congestion, pay for public transport, climate change and schoolsandhospitals. Suspected REAL reason: we want as much money as we can get.]

Mike sneaks away from his desk early, to try to get home on an earlier train. The tube manages not to be too bad and when he gets to the overground station, there’s a train waiting! Mike’s luck is in! He settles into a seat, and others pile in behind him. Someone else is standing for a change. Then an announcement: “Due to need to reposition equipment, the next service to ___________ will be leaving instead from Platform 3.”

Realizing his train isn’t going anywhere, he and all the others rush off. He ends up standing again, jammed again between half a dozen people. Arriving at his home station, he runs out and sprints home. He can still get to the school on time if he hurries. He sees police tape strung across the street a few houses down. Probably some traffic mishap. Mike jumps into his car and pulls away.

Arriving at the school, there’s nowhere to park. He drives around the block several times, in a new 20 MPH zone. “Where did that come from? [Stated reason: road safety.] It was 30? Oh no, a speed camera! S–t!” He thinks it flashed; but he’s not sure. Disgusted, half a mile away, finally he finds a “pay and display” parking space, 1 hour minimum payment. Cost? 90p. [Stated reasons: climate change and reducing congestion. Suspected real reason: trying to discourage parents parking on nearby streets due to overflow from that nearby school, because parents ridiculously insist on driving their children to school rather than direct their 10 year olds to take the necessary 3 connecting buses.]

Mike gets home with the kids to find Emma is home also. “What was with the police tape outside, in the road down aways”?

“During the day,” she tells him, “down near the dentist’s, where all the cars normally park tight in up to the corner, Susan next door told me that there’d been an assault around midday. Some man had just come out of the surgery and walked to his car with his son when a group of men accosted him and beat him with bats. A neighbour called police, but by the time they turned up, the attackers were gone and the beaten man was laying on the pavement bleeding, with his son still sitting in his car.” [Editor's NOTE: This writer actually witnessed much that sort of event personally.]

“That’s appalling!”

“But the delay makes sense, dear. One PC explained to Susan that they were held up because another serious investigation was going on at the same time. It seems someone complained about one of Father John’s homilies of last year, in which he spoke of the meek inheriting the earth. Some listener thought there might be a question as to whether the Father was really being anti-meekish. So while detectives were interviewing him, the PC and several others were on guard outside the presbytery, just in case he tried to make a run for it…”

Mike, having walked into the kitchen, blurts out, “We really need a holiday.”

Emma switches on the TV to BBC “News 24″, as she says, “I was thinking the same thing. Whaddya think of the Canaries, with the kids?…”

She pauses for a moment before continuing her thought, as it happens to be exactly the top of the hour. The BBC presenter opens: “…This is BBC ‘News 24′. The main headlines. An influential, cross-party group of MPs have released a report, scathingly critical of holiday air travel. Entitled ‘You Might As Well Shoot Your Kids Dead Now’, it states that air travel is not just a major contributor to climate change, but might well also be considered a form of child abuse…”

“Uh, Mike?”

“Yeh?”

Emma closes her eyes and rubs her forehead repeatedly, “Do we have a bottle of wine open?”

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Indeed, there are geniuses out there actually funded to study WHY millions of “Mikes” and “Emmas” split a bottle of wine or two after the kids are finally in bed? That despite the answer being easy enough to spot: they need to numb themselves to prepare for the next day in the land of “vision”. In fact, as the BBC also tells us:

…Public health minister Dawn Primarolo said the government was working hard to change attitudes…

That’s it in a nutshell. Heaven forbid that after days including so much of the likes of the above (and then some), days much created by intrusive, pestering so-called government, that adults be allowed by those same legions of state-subsidized pesterers even that much private “escape”. “Attitudes”, we are lectured, must be changed.

Not government’s, mind you, of course. But yours and mine.