October 2012 - MyChoice Australia

Do bans on texting while driving actually increase accidents? | ksl.com

31 Oct, 2012 admin_ata

As Australian states join the bandwagon of outlawing sending SMS messages whilst driving, it’s interesting to note what the evidence says: It’s perplexing for both police and lawmakers throughout the U.S.: They want to do something about the danger oftexting while driving, a major road hazard, but banning the practice seems to make it even more dangerous. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that 3 of every 4 states that have enacted a ban on texting while driving have seen crashes actually go up rather than down. It’s hard…

The idiots have won

27 Oct, 2012 admin_ata

Christopher Snowdon has just written a must-read piece saying it might just be time to “Build a spaceship folks. The idiots have won“. He makes a compelling case: In New Zealand, anti-nanny state campaigners are being investigated for “illegally advertising cigarettes under the guise of a “public awareness campaign”. Here’s an example of the potentially-illegal advertisement: Another example: the WHO is urging countries to crack down on the use of electronic smoking cessation devices because they look like cigarettes and “could therefore undermine the denormalization of tobacco use upheld by the WHO FCTC”. And one…

Demonising drinking is wowserism at its worst

25 Oct, 2012 admin_ata

Miranda Devine has a must-read article in Tuesday’s Telegraph on our government’s wowserish madness when it comes to demonising alcohol. She sensibly notes: Contrary to popular myth, and compared to baby boomer legislators, Generation Y is relatively abstemious and sensible. That is how most parents see their teenagers as they help them to make their way in the world. But what is increasingly noticeable to parents is how disrespectful and unforgiving the world is to these emerging adults. Punishing young people for learning to drink alcohol is just mindless control-freakery. Make…

The Latest Lifestyle Tax Proposal: Taxing Us For Not Going To The Gym

22 Oct, 2012 admin_ata

Siobhan Harris writes on recent proposals to tax people who don’t go to the gym: If schadenfreude is more your thing, you’ll be pleased to know that we’re not the only ones battling the Nanny State. In the supposed land of the free, the New England Medical Journal has offered some creative new measures that I shall call lifestyle taxes. Not just one idea, but enough lifestyle taxes that would make even Nicola Roxon blush. Excuse the excessive quotations but no commentator could possibly convey the seriousness of these hilarious suggestions. Let the quotes speak for themselves. Beginning any…

There’s a new species of prohibitionism on the rise

18 Oct, 2012 admin_ata

A good piece in the The Independent on the rise of neo-prohibitionism: Are we entering a new prohibitionist era? Drinking, smoking and ‘junk food’ are perfectly legal, but there is a palpable sense that they are becoming unacceptable. Burgers, chips and pizza are considered inappropriate in schools, we obsess about the salt and sugar content of such foods and what in the past may have been explained as puppy-fat is now an obesity epidemic. The discussions about introducing plain packaging for cigarettes and a minimum price for each unit of…

Media Release: Taxpayers Oppose Wine SuperTax & Tobacco Excise Hike

17 Oct, 2012 admin_ata

The Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, Australia’s leading non-partisan taxpayer advocacy organisation, & MyChoice Australia, its anti-nanny state affiliate, today condemned proposals to ban affordable alcohol through imposing a wine supertax, and to increase the tobacco excise by another 25%. “Slugging lower income earners with both a wine supertax that will quadruple the price of cleanskins and boxed wine and also another 25% tobacco tax hike to make up a budget black hole caused by gross overspending is immoral and poor public policy” said Tim Andrews, Executive Director of the Australian Taxpayers’…

Stop The Wine SuperTax!

17 Oct, 201226 Oct, 2012 admin_ata

They’re at it again! The tax-grabbing nanny-statists at the heart of our Federal Government now want to abolish clean-skins & cask wine – or at least tax it through the roof. Yesterday, the busybodies at the Australian National Preventative Health Agency, a radical anti-choice activist organisation masquerading as a government agency announced that anyone who purchases affordable wine is a drunk, and must be punished with taxes so high that they’ll increase the wine price four-fold. To make matters worse, these activists are funded by our taxes to the tune of a staggering $40 million a year! Enough…

Get the state off our dinner plates!

15 Oct, 2012 admin_ata

Rob Lyons, writing in Spiked Online, takes on growing nanny state mentality by governments wanting to take over our food choices. An extract: One thing that is certainly more unhealthy than anything we might eat is the corrosive effect that food fearmongering has on our personal freedom. It is surely a terrible indictment of contemporary attitudes to liberty that even our right to decide what to eat is now being called into question. Underneath all the dubious scientific claims about food and ill health, there is an instinct among lobby groups,…

Unqualified Academic Calls For Government Ban on Children Watching TV

12 Oct, 2012 admin_ata

Dick Puddlecote reports: No slippery slope here, obviously. Ban under-threes from watching television, says study. Doctors and government health officials should set limits, as they do for alcohol, on the amount of time children spend watching screens – and under-threes should be kept away from the television altogether, according to a paper in an influential medical journal published on Tuesday. Apparently, the author of this “study” has quite a history of shoddy “research” to justify bans…

City of Glen Eira demands $120 permit for throwing a frisbee

12 Oct, 2012 admin_ata

In further news of the over-regulatory nanny state gone absolutely stark raving made, news.com.au reports that the City of Glen Eira has demanded that teenagers pay $120 for throwing a frisbee around – or $300 to have a 6 month permit. Not all is lost however: Yoav, who is completing his VCE, said the group would show up at the park today in defiance of the ban. “We will definitely be playing,” he said Good on him!