The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Link: Telegraph | News | Wrong problem, wrong solution.

This is fascinating stuff. Read it while you still can. According to the author, “On Thursday, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, compared climate sceptics to advocates of Islamic terror. Neither, she said, should have access to the media.”

If that is true, someone should be researching the Mental Health Act to establish who is entitled to “section” the Foreign Secretary, based on Perry de Haviland’s theory (set out in a comment to this post) that “there may come a time when the desire of statists to control others is recognised as the mental disorder it is.”

I really do think that when an individual, usually with a life as screwed-up as anyone else’s, exhibits a consistent desire to control the behaviour of strangers, it is a form of mental illness. These people need help.