I Wrote This About A Month Ago, But Then I Went On Holiday. What? Get Off My Back. Leave Me Alone.

I think one of the things that annoys me most, when it comes to the way that Irish people like to talk about their own society, is the way that soundbites become ideas in themselves. If George Orwell was around today, he's probably be writing articles in which he'd keep shouting "See, I told you," while delicately avoiding the fact that the Ministry of Love doesn't exist and no-one's invented Room 101 (but I’m working on it). "PC", there's one. "PC" comes from "Politically Correct", but by omitting the wording, it strips the phrase of any meaning it ever had. Politically Correct was, from the start, invented as an all-purpose bullying term; it sounds like something that only smarmy Blairite researchers would ever believe in, which thereby associates it with spin and market research; it implies the wonderful delusion of right-wing commentators, that there's a leftie mafia out there who stop people from telling the unvarnished truth, and the only reason that people don't say 'nigger' any more is that they aren't allowed to.

(One of the great things about that belief is that it's usually espoused by people like John Waters, apparently oblivious of the fact that he's a talentless and stupid hack who's got his own column in which he can say whatever the hell he wants about anything. John doesn't really do irony.)

So after some grim linguistic mechanics you end up with the term "PC", which becomes an automatically discrediting remark you can attach to anything. Whenever someone says something boorish, obnoxious and plain stupid, there's a good chance that they'll precede it with "Well it might not be very PC, but..." after which they'll tell you that everything's the Jews' fault: somehow, we're expected to believe that a dull or fucked-up statement is more daring and important because it goes against the views of the Liberal Gestapo, which doesn't exist anyway. Grr.

Nannyism. That's another one.

Nannyism is cropping up a bit lately, since everyone noticed that the government had gone and changed all the licensing laws. And I could go off on a rant about this, but it's so obviously a completely stupid measure that I can't summon up the energy. The new law is stupid, pointless, retrogade, and won't make a blind bit of difference to either alcohol consumption or public order, for all the reasons that everyone knows (and if you can't work them out for yourself, you're too stupid to be reading this website. Piss off). The easy, obvious thing to do is to ascribe this to Nannyism, or the Nanny State Gone Mad. Except that's just plain wrong.

Here's the thing; there's no such thing as the Nanny State. It doesn't exist. There. Think about it.

Depends how you define "Nannyism," obviously. There are a few laws that are there to protect people from themselves, which is generally what anti-Nanny-Staters will use as their definition (because, like PC, Nanny State is a term designed to discredit. No-one actually says they're in favour of the Nanny State). The argument given for this is that it's no-one's bloody business what you decide to do to yourself or put in your body, provide you don't harm or bother anyone else. Bill Hicks liked saying it, and he was a funny bloke.

It's a right-wing, individualistic argument though; it's bollocks, but it’s convincing because it's so simple. The same thing applies to most right-wing arguments; once you accept that no-one has to give a fuck about anyone else, then all the arguments are easy.

Unfortunately, we actually live in a society. It might be a scary, anti-consumerist word that marketing types don't like to use, but we still demonstrably live in one. You know how you can tell? Because our society has put support structures in place, in case we fuck ourselves up; we've got a health service (theoretically), and unemployment benefit, and free education, and little things like that. It’s all very well to say “it’s no-one’s business what I do to myself”, but in fact it is – because, if you get totally fucked out of your head on LSD, and then crack your skull open when you run head-first into a concrete wall just to see if it really is there, then an ambulance will come and take you to hospital (assuming the Miserable Citizens of Ireland bother phoning one for you, which is a big assumption now I come to think about it). At that point you wouldn't be too happy if they turfed you out of the door saying "well, it's not our business what you put into your body."

(This, incidentally, is why all those "drunk people in A&E" adverts / soundbites got on my tits so much. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I sort of think that's what an A&E is there for, you arseholes.)

However, I don't want to go down the road of "it's a two-way street" or blabbing on about the individual's responsibility to society being intertwined with their responsibility to themselves, partially because it makes me sound like a tosser, but mostly because it's not really relevant. There aren't any laws, really, which are there to protect us from ourselves. The clearest example of what seems, on the surface, to work that way is the laws against drugs; actually, though, that's not the reason they're there.

Obviously, this is a difficult one to defend, because it's blindingly obvious that drugs should be legalised and the laws are completely stupid anyway (and if you don't agree with that, well you can get the hell off my website as well). But... let's imagine, for a minute, that the drug laws were effective in some way. Let's imagine that repealing them would cause everyone to go and get smacked-up every lunchtime, and that most drug users eventually become chronic addicts. We're going firmly into the realm of the hypothetical, but run with it, because these are the assumptions that underpin our drug laws in the first place. They’re there, quite simply, because a society of heroin addicts is harder to manage than a society of sober industrious types. You'd have to set up all sorts of treatment centres, and buy loads of methadone, and we'd become less industrious, and less interested in buying shit. Like every law, it's there to make society more controllable (and don't get all hippyish and self-righteous about being "controlled". Controlling society is what governments are for. That's why anarchy is generally considered to be a bad thing). Our murder laws operate on similar principles – it's not there because of the sanctity of human life, it's there because it's impossible to manage a society in which people are allowed to go around killing each other.

The problem with the drug laws isn't that they're Nannyism, it's that they're fucking stupid. They're unenforceable, they make no distinction between hugely different substances, and they're based on the false premise that intoxicants are by definition A Bad Thing. Bill Hicks' "What business of it is yours what I put into my body, so long as I never harm another human being?" tagline is engaging, but it's wrong. His "Actually, I had a great time on drugs" is the better argument, all told. Fuck it, everyone should get coked-up once in their lives, if only to see what it's like. Even if cokeheads are a pain in the hole.

As for our new licensing laws – linking them to the nonexistent Nanny State isn't just wrong, it's less nasty than the truth. People go out on Saturday, get hammered, and kick the shit out of each other because they grow up in a culture which makes them think it's OK. Ergo, the only way to stop that happening is to change that culture – and preferably we should change the “kicking the shit out of each other” part (I’ve met many people who are violent arseholes when drunk, and they’ve all been violent arseholes when they’re sober too). Licensing laws aren't going to do anything. But they aren't supposed to – changing things, really changing things, is difficult and it's risky, and it's not what our Government does. Their talents are devoted to making it look like they're changing things, while doing their best to keep everything exactly the same. If you live in a society which keeps voting you into office, why the hell would you want to change it?

Scarier than a Nanny State any day of the week, if you ask me. So I reckon we should all start a public march to the Dáil, in which everyone goes knacker-drinking on Kildare Street at two in the morning. It's appropriate, and being drunk might make even a demonstration seem interesting.