Miranda Devine, screen culture, nanny staters, and end all regulation now!

(Above: hard to imagine but this train image is directly responsible for the nanny state swimming pool regulations of NSW).

Here we go:

Perhaps the mass decline of common sense is the inevitable result of what Susan Greenfield, a British neuroscientist, says is the altered brain architecture of a couple of generations of people reared on technology rather than real-life experience.

Or perhaps the mass decline of common sense is the inevitable result of too many people reading Mirandda the Devine, producing what some people say is an alteration of the brain architecture so profound that it's equivalent can only be found in the television show Ladette to Lady?

Yep, it's a Thursday, it's Nanny state helps to drown us in our own stupidity, and the IQ of Australia suffers yet another massive cerebral attack from the keyboard by the good Devine with inane asinine speculations that reduce science to the dribble of a columnist's scribbles.

If common sense is the accumulation of millions of real world experiences and the amalgamated sensory input from our environment, then no wonder people habituated to a two-dimensional virtual world without physical consequences seem increasingly to be so clueless.

Or put it another way. If common sense is the accumulation of millions of real world experiences and the amalgamated sensory input from our environment, then no wonder people habituated to random, knee-jerk, ill-considered, incoherent Miranda the Devine ramblings in the two-dimensional world of newspaper print and intertubes online editions - without any apparent physical consequences - suddenly wake up to discover that they've been reduced to mindless stupidity, and accordingly show increasing signs of cluelessness ...

But what scientific evidence can be offered for this observation? You mean apart from personal experience wherein I've been reduced to stumbling around the house wondering if I was going mad after reading a Devine column?

Well of course I've been to Oxford street:

There is some sort of increasing disconnect between action and real-life consequences so that, for instance, jaywalking is also on the rise. Oxford Street has become a jaywalker-killing alley in the wee hours as revellers wander across the road, seemingly oblivious to the fact the cars braking and swerving around them could cause them serious injury.

Now you might think drink and drugs has something to do with drunken trance-like jay walking but I can assure you it's a result of too much watching television, playing video games and spending time on the intertubes. It's a known fact.

Further evidence? Well it helps if you watch television, and in particular "odd spot" television, of the kind where a bus rams a car and almost nails a pedestrian, or where vision is available of a woman letting go a pram on a railway station. Then you can leap to massive conclusions from one off bits of observation:

An accompanying video had a sequence eerily like the real thing, with a women letting go of her child's pram, which heads towards the edge of the platform for several seconds before she manages to haul it back. Connex said at the time that it was compelled to issue a "red alert" over an "alarming number of potentially serious incidents involving children and babies in prams travelling on our trains. In recent weeks there had been several incidents including: unrestrained babies spilling from prams falling between the train and platform, runaway prams in high winds after being left with their brakes off, pram front swivel wheels getting caught in the gap between train and platform."

Hang on a second. You said watch television? (Yes victims of screen culture interrogate themselves in this way. They talk to 'they' and believe in 'they').

So Miranda the Devine got this idea from watching a video? Yep, and that in itself is as further example of the insidious impact of all forms of audio-visual media. Even now our scientists are working on conclusive evidence that watching television has driven the Devine barking mad, and inclined to howl at the moon on Thursdays.

Worse still, this eerie madness arises from nanny state activity by a private company - yes indeedy the private sector is rampantly in the grip of nanny statism:

The Melbourne pram incident, which made headlines around the world, is part of an increasingly familiar pattern of inexplicably careless behaviour. Only one day earlier, Connex, the company that runs Melbourne's trains, had begun a campaign to warn parents of the dangers of prams on platforms.

This sounds terrifying. A train company issuing a warning about safety on railway platforms. That's completely unnerving, and so unexpected. An interference in quiet enjoyment of the platform, if nothing else.

So what should we do?

Well I'm afraid the Devine is beyond helping us - may in fact be beyond helping herself - and we might reluctantly have to write her off as having accumulated so much negative energy and lack of common sense that she's like a black hole sucking life, light energy and meaning from the world. And sadly there's nothing the private sector or government can do either:

Lulling people into a false sense of security potentially endangers more lives as parents and carers lose the commonsense skills needed to monitor and identify potential dangers. The result is behaviour that can only be described as stupid, even from those who probably are not.

Here at Parker Laboratories, we're working on two key ways forward:

1. De-regulate the road system entirely, and abolish the rules of the road. The thinking behind this idea is enormously sensible.

If people can drive on either side of the road, not wear seat belts, ignore signs and otherwise drive without any rules, there will probably be in the short term an increase in crashes and accidents. But as people begin to realize that they're actually in a miniature version of Mad Max 11, and that it's a jungle out there, they'll begin to drive very defensively.

We foresee three major benefits: a reduction in cars on the roads, an increase in production in the car manufacturing sector as more cars are needed to replace mangled wrecks (the motor repair sector will also get a boost from dingles), and a huge improvement in driving techniques.

A more controversial complementary solution - to make sure that car drivers are armed, and not just with a .22 toy but a decent 9 mm pistol - is likely to help calm motorists who might be inclined to road rage.

2. Enact government legislation banning all watching of television, playing of video games and surfing on the intertubes. This must include satellite navigation devices on cars.

But, you might argue, in your enfeebled brain dead state, isn't the supply of satellite navigation devices a matter of private sector activity and consumer choice, and surely the real problem is simply nanny state activity by the government, which Parker Lab demands for legislation - as per strategy 2 - would compound?

Well obviously you understand nothing of the conflationary pressure arising from dills and dullards:

Eventually, nanny statism removes the imperative of common sense, just as satellite navigation devices in cars give you a partial lobotomy, since you never bother registering where, in a navigational sense, you are going any more, as the machine does all the work.

And it's not just the impact of visual systems like sat nav devices generating partial labotomies. Prams - these days often equipped with wireless connectivity and a satellite link - are responsible for compounding infinite human stupidity:

The worst thing about nanny statism is that even in the most resourceful person it induces a state of learned helplessness and complacency, in which, for instance, a mother no longer keeps alert to dangers in her child's environment because she thinks ''they'' will do it for her. The problem is that human stupidity is infinite and ''they'' aren't on the railway platform with you at the moment you turn the pram around so its wheels point towards the tracks and then you take your hands off the pram handles to hitch up your trousers.

Ah I can see you're reeling from the subtlety and nuance of a thinking so advanced that you simply fail to understand it.

Perhaps that's because you spend your life wandering around railway stations looking for 'they' to look after you, or perhaps you're expecting to find your favorite Martian or your favorite witch next to the locked toilet, and the next thing you know, delusional paranoid that you are, you discover 'they' aren't there to help you, or open the toilet. So you push your pram under the train, pretending that hitching your trousers had something to do with it. While wondering why 'they' didn't help.

At least I think that's the hidden message. Hold on a second, I'll go get 'they' to see if I can decipher it further.

No, 'they' tell me that's it. Stupid absent-minded professors.

So let's get back to it:

The phrase nanny state is a cliche but that is because government intrusion in our lives is so pervasive we barely protest. From the ugly, low-carbon, high-mercury light bulbs we have to use, to the time at which we are allowed to water our gardens, we are like frogs in boiling water, unaware of our predicament.

Ah the cliche of the boiling frog. Well as many climate change refuseniks keep reminding us, the boiling frog is a myth arising from nineteenth century experiments. A sensible frog will jump out of gradually heating water if given the chance (yes it's even attracted a whole wiki on its own, here, the boiling frog). But you silly goose that's the whole point. Once you watch too much television, you accept the truth, the reality of the boiled frog. Why you might even believe Bugs Bunny was real, and a good guide to railway platform behavior.

Never mind, we take the tendency for Miranda the Devine to use cliche and the boiling frog metaphor as more evidence of what might once have been a mind reduced to flailing foaming frothing about. All we can say to that idea is plasticity!

Finally were you aware that in the state of NSW in the last year, drownings in pools has increased and the tabloid media - yes old media like the Daily Telegraph, still available in a way that puts printers' ink on your hands - has been in a frenzy for government to do something about it:

It comes as an investigation by The Daily Telegraph found thousands of backyard pools across the state had failed to meet basic safety requirements, with lax councils having failed to carry out safety inspections ...

... Only a fraction of the state's 300,000 backyard pools were ever inspected and of those checked most failed basic safety.

According to a NSW Department of Local Government report, only a handful of councils conducted inspections and "research illustrated that generally compliance levels were low (below 50 per cent)". (here).

Now you might think there's some cause and effect going on here - drownings up, private sector tabloid storm, alarmed citizenry, government must take action. So little you understand. (Why do you keep burbling on this way with obvious examples of the way screen culture has warped your plastic brain? Are 'they' leading you astray?)

Here's another triumph of the NSW Government: tough new legislation against pool owners. Under proposed changes to the Swimming Pools Act of 1992, council officers will have the right to invade private property and slap the state's 300,000 pool owners with fines of $5500 apiece if they do not lock up their pools more tightly.

This latest attack by the nanny state on the humble property owner is a kneejerk reaction to a spate of child drownings last summer. No matter that almost all child drownings in backyard pools are the result of inadequate adult supervision, it's the fences that are the focus of government energies. It's just too hard to tell parents the bleeding obvious, which is that if their children are near a large body of water, fence or no fence, then there is no alternative but to watch them like a hawk; and it's not a task that can be outsourced or shared. Children will always find ways of getting around fences and no barrier is a substitute for human vigilance.

You kneejerk bleeding obvious screen culture dummies, get an 'anti-nanny state' life. And watch like a hawk. 'They' aren't the answer. Eternal vigilance or the communists will take over. Oops, sorry that's another movie, maybe Red Dawn. Head for the hills Montanans.

And this of course leads us to Parker Laboratories third proposal:

3. Remove all swimming pool fences. Sure there'll be a few more drownings, but really parents will be kept on their toes, and those who unfortunately drown are likely to have been infected by screen culture, and their deaths will thus - however tragically - only increase the quality of the gene pool. In no time at all we'll have tough minded Miranda the Devines populating the world. Who can imagine a better outcome than that?

But every time there is a terrible accident involving a child, there are calls for fences around dams, wharves and rivers, safety barriers at train stations or draconian new laws, no matter how impractical or futile. Whether it is a toddler falling to his death out of an open third-floor window, as happened this week in Kogarah, or a pram rolling off a train platform into the path of a train, as happened in Melbourne last week, with the six-month-old baby escaping injury, or two babies drowning in Adelaide in two separate incidents after their prams rolled down riverbanks, there are calls on authorities to "do something".

Yes, remove all the fences, remove all the safety barriers, remove everything that might assist public safety. Reduce the number of police, along with the number of thought police. Cull the columnists, for god's sake, just "do something".

We hear you, disbelievers in 'they'.

Today on this site, we announce a clarion call for the authorities to "do nothing". And to do nothing often, hard and well. Because it's a jungle out there, and people need to learn it's a jungle out there - get up at 4 am, go down coal mine and be crushed to death by falling rocks, and never mind a canary or a safety light, just do it.

It is part of a cultural paradigm in which any tragedy that befalls us is not just the result of bad luck or carelessness or simple human error but is the fault of inadequate regulation. There is this fantasy that with enough government intervention we can create a safety utopia.

Yes, it's just bad luck or simple human error, and what's it matter if a plane or two falls out of the skies. There's no such thing as a utopia, planes fall out of the skies all the time. Get used to it. Get rid of it all, all this useless regulation and hyper-ventilating safety nonsense, induced as it is by nanny statism and screen culture.

Oops, what's that you say?

Of course, many lives have been saved and injuries prevented by good laws - the original Swimming Pool Act requiring pools be fenced was one and compulsory seatbelts and random breath tests were two more. It may have been safety standards for prams that saved a life on that Melbourne train platform last week.

Hah! There you go, nanny statism and regulation has got into the Devine's brain and warped her mind.

Oh damn you screen culture, damn you intertubes for the malignant way you brain parasites reduce even the best minds to supporting more and more interference in our private lives, thereby reducing community IQ levels to an episode of I Dream of Jeanie. Remember: 'They' lurk out there, waiting to get you, just like those poltergeists in that flickering TV screen.

The solution? Why not some healthy sport? But remember no shin guards or mouth guards helmets or any of that other useless protective paraphernalia. Nanny staters don't play sport, they absorb screen culture and go mad. But if they did they'd cheat and wear safety gear. The fools!

But wait, I sense a flickering of hope, a gasp of despair from the Devine. The nanny staters have gone too far:

... flushed with success, the nanny staters went too far, and governments became hooked on the idea that they could fix the world with the stroke of a pen and win plaudits into the bargain.

Yes nanny staters, you've gone way too far. Over the hill and faraway. Unlike the Devine, rooted in her own reality. Now stop watching the telly, or you'll go blind.

A final thought. Back when Auguste and Louis Lumière screened L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat in 1895 in Paris, it's alleged that the sight of a life-sized train coming directly at the audience created consternation in the audience, causing them to scream and run to the back of the room.

Now some scholars have deemed this an urban myth (you can wiki on the question here) but as usual dumb academics are removed from the reality of life.

Of course the train image created consternation, and thus began the relentless march of screen culture as it reduced entire cultures to nanny state gibberish, and now we end up with more punishing pool regulations in NSW.

Whenever you're inclined to worry about nanny statism, just remember the Lumière brothers and reach for your gun. If you see a film buff, shoot them on sight. How else to improve the world and save us from nanny statism?

And please join our campaign to end all regulations and end them now. Why not go out and drive on the wrong side of the road, or hurl a pram under a train today? Convincing proof of both the power of screen culture and the damning interference in your rights by do-gooder nanny staters ...

Sigh. Yes indeedy, it's just another day making the world safe with Miranda the Devine.

(Below: eek, a naked man from the early days of insidious screen culture. Please join with the Devine in banning such images. Remember the only good nanny statism is the one involving censorship).