Alas Poor Nanny...

...how all too often do we hear, when Guvment imposes yet more strictures on our lives (all of course in our 'best interest'), the cry go up "More Nanny State!"?

The essential point is true, we are hemmed in on every side with exhortations to do this or imprecations not to do that. That the this and the that are blindingly obvious to any sentient being and also matters that should be for individual determination alone, is the added element that so grates as it should.

Were I, for example, to say to you "Here is a cliff edge, please do not fall off it" you might do no more than urge me to change my medication, as clearly I must be nuts if I feel it either necessary or useful to offer such advice to my fellow man and woman.

If, though, to that I were to add (in persona Guvment): "To achieve the objective of fewer cliff-top accidents here is half a truckload of cash. Go away and come back with publicity campaigns on the dangers of cliff-falling, bring me shocking tales of people who never ever considered falling off a cliff and are clearly shaken by the notion that some people might, give me scare stories about people who nearly fell off a cliff but didn't because they were in Norfolk at the time, run round the whole country urging folk even to stay safe at home avoiding sight of anywhere with a cliff in it, provide me with costings for erecting fencing around the entire coastline...and so on and so on; if indeed that were to pass, then your objections would rightly be profound and prolonged.

Succinctly put, you would say: "Shut up. We know about cliffs", adding "That's half a truckload of our cash you've just spent on this nonsense!" I - still in propria persona Guvment - would condescendingly riposte "We have statistics that show cliff-falling is the seventeen-thousandth most common cause of death in this country. It is, therefore, an important public health 'issue', and since we introduced our campaign the number of deaths from cliff falling has fallen by half. So there!" (From two to one in fact.)

To which bossy inanity, we might only grind our teeth in impotent rage. Though of course we wouldn't, having taken to heart the anti-teeth grinding campaign of last year. ("Save the NHS. Stop grinding your teeth and spare the dentist!")

This rant comes courtesy of an enforced detention, last week, in the waiting room of an otherwise laudable dermatology clinic. There we all patiently were waiting - indeed and long - to have our respective bits billed and cooed over by the attendant physicians, in a tiny room filled with folk and utterly also crammed to the very rafters with posters on all sides lecturing us on aspects of our health utterly unrelated to our being there and - for most if not all - completely alien to our blameless lives.

Terribly sharp posters they were, replete with high-production value images and nifty straplines, giving us all the gen we never needed about the perils of unprotected sex, the woes of the demon drink and the terrible consequences of non-prescription Class 'A' drugs. All very rock and roll of course, but if this tiny and frail Granny by my side were prompted by what was not so much before her eyes as in her face to have, as it were, a pop - well then, good luck to her I say!

My favourite among the offerings might be the very, very large and over-glossed photographs of certain favoured fruits and vegetables that we were to eat at pain else of imminent decay unto death itself. We here in The Wolds may not be the most literary of folk, but we are literate on the whole and certainly, as we are most of us skilled and fervent growers of our own produce, need no reminding of what precisely an apple looks like or its lawful proper purpose.

But no, the Gold Star award for most toe-curlingly crass poster on display that day showed three young and clearly awkward chaps of the male persuasion, sitting together in some sports changing room with all the relaxed ease of one of those early fashion shoots for men, circa 1963. (You know the sort of thing: jaws firmly set, staring - with both serious and concerned mien - into some invisible middle-distance, as if intent on eradicating world poverty through their choice of casual knitwear.)

All in all, three of the least gay men you might ever encounter believe you me. And the wretched strapline that told the story - though most certainly not theirs? "Play safe. Whatever your game!"

'Nanny State' is once more your cry. But hold, no. The sentiments are indeed absolutely sound, 'tis the Guvment wasting yet more of our precious and deeply limited health funding on totally unnecessary and ineffective nonsense. Quite so. Point taken and agreed entirely. It is, though, the slanderous slur on the figure of the nanny qua nanny to which I shall and do take exception.

Granted there have been nannies of the species so taken in drink themselves that you'd scarce escape safe in your perambulator as they tottered by the very brink of the cliff. Granted too that there have been some terrible martinets who had rules for every occasion, each with elaborate sub-clauses and condign punishments attached to every uncrossed 't' or undotted 'i'. (The latter - with some exceptions of course - is more the style of this or any Guvment. But do note the difference: when Guvments speak no bugger takes a blind bit of notice; but when Nanny commanded she also controlled. "Do this or else", with the 'else' no option at all.)

Setting aside such aberrations - there are always some in every trade - the average and wonderful Nanny is perfectly adept at adopting a measured laissez faire approach to the teaching of and the learning about risk and consequences. If young Charlie falls out of a tree and bangs his nut, then young Charlie will take the more care the next time he sets about a similar venture. If equally young Matilda doesn't mind her manners on this occasion but hogs the limelight at playtime, young Matilda experiences the sorrow of life sans friends and mends her ways accordingly.

Nannies the world over do give instruction in good manners by demonstrating the virtue in their own presence and behaviour. Some of the more sparky ones will even shimmy up trees to show how it should be done, but failing that will gently opine on the need not to rely on dead-wood for a tree-top perch. That far and no more. The rest is up, as it should be, to the childish learner.

'Nanny State' is, at bottom, a plain contradiction in terms. Guvments simply do not do proper, lawful, sensible nannying. Never have, never could. They don't - cannot - as the modern idiom has it 'get it'.

More Nanny less State, say I tonight.