MONITOR - January 2009
I’ve had enough of “giving things up” so I’m not making any resolutions this year. Indeed I don’t think I’ve made any firm commitment about changing my habits at the start of a new year for quite a long time, largely because new rules inflicted on me -- and everybody else -- by Whitehall seem to have introduced far more “don’ts” than any I could dream up, even remotely. Maybe the answer is to adopt the attitude of young lads who were about in my youth who simply ignored all the rules and regulations and did as they pleased. Even though the consequences invariably involved “a good hiding” it didn’t matter because breaking the rules seemed like good fun. Youngsters still break the rules, of course, but somehow, they don’t seem quite the same as they did when I was an unruly boy.
When regulations about smoking in public places were introduced last year (2008, just in case you are wondering when last year was) I thought Whitehall had just about reached rock bottom, not because I am a smoker myself (I gave up more than 30 years ago) but because of the effect it would have on good associated social behaviour. I recognise that all the advantages of a ban on smoking (improved health, less redecoration, less fag-end litter etc) probably outweigh the disadvantages, but when one realises that the ban is largely responsible for closing five pubs a day the ban cannot be dismissed with the wave of a non-fag-holding hand.
We have now almost reached saturation point when it comes to making New Year’s resolutions. Giving up cigarettes used to be the obligatory resolution and I have even known non-smokers use it to demonstrate how strong-willed they were by not lighting-up at the offer of a Woodbine (are they sold any more?) or a Tenner (a wartime palliative smoked only in desperation when nothing else was available).
Giving up drink (alcohol not lemonade) is high on the good-intentioned list of resolutions and is usually a little more successful than fags. But it is still one of those wrenches in life hard to achieve and probably leads to more dangerous in-the-corner behaviour than any other form of “things one should only do in moderation”. Whitehall is, of course, working hard on this business of drinking just as it is on smoking as it attempts to drive it under-the-counter or ban it from grocers’ shelves. Is Prohibition a la 1920 far away?
What next is on the Whitehall banning agenda? Chocolate; sweets and lollipops; potato crisps and peanuts; fish and chips (and while we’re at it, chip pans); biscuits; Christmas pudding... and more? All can lead to obesity (if you consume enough of them).
So there really isn’t much point in making a New Year’s resolution; leave such decisions to the chaps in Whitehall; they’ll press all the right buttons and make them “defaults” (as they say in computer jargon). It will be one less worry for us all.
Some history might have to be rewritten, however. How long will we have to wait before the revisionists insist that Sir Winston Churchill did not go on record as saying: “I must point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolute sacred rite (is) smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be, during all meals and in the intervals between them.”
Happy New Year.