Take twenty of these and come back in a week

The news that a loan shark who exploited customers by charging annual percentage rates of up to 149,000% is back behind bars should come as no surprise. Legislation now protects those who can't work out just how iniquitous these interest rates really are or who lack absolutely basic maths skills. But it does beg the question as to exactly how far any government should go in protecting people against themselves. In the UK, we live in a country where the government has gone a long way down the road of the 'nanny state', and we wonder if that's necessarily doing anyone a favour.

There was a time when you could buy 200 paracetamol at a time, ideal for those really bad Monday mornings, but now we're all limited to about 20, packaged so creatively you'd need a suitcase for enough to do yourself in with. Buy glue in a DIY store, now, and the sales assistants regard you with the same disdain normally reserved for the recognised Crystal Meth addict, and subject you to a minor inquisition before you can pay for it. Try to purchase anything containing anything remotely effective against headaches in a pharmacy and the boots staff, lacking only gas grenades and tasers, subject you to little short of an interrogation, limit what you can buy and generally make you feel as though you're a hardened criminal.

Of course, a lot of this is down to those who firmly belief in 'rights' but have trouble with the concept of 'responsibilities'. Many years ago, the Liverpool council - in the heyday of the high-rise flat - built an estate called 'Netherley'. Netherley was a disaster for many reasons, and has long been demolished, but in the early days, when the Labour council was desperately trying to help what it saw as 'the disadvantaged', it built a play area in a nice, green field, just across the ring road of the estate. That had to be closed, when the mothers on the estate held countless demonstration because the council hadn't built a bridge across the road. They singularly failed to grasp that parents have some responsibilities for seeing their kids are safe.

We see it every summer season here, too; angry visitors write letters of complaint because the Ormes have steep sides and no fencing, or because the sea gulls swipe people's ice creams. The anti-smacking brigade wants all forms of even minor taps outlawed and the law will ensure you get a criminal record if you defend yourself against a burglar who breaks into your house late at night.

These are not political issues; they are examples of how far governments of any colour will go in response to campaigns run in the moronic tabloids. When Dunblane happened, subsequent and hastily enacted legislation ensured that now the only people who can easily get hold of a pistol are criminals. Depressingly, the signs are that it will only get worse. As intelligent, career-oriented high-flying women defer having children until much later in life and the correspondingly uneducated, hapless, truanting and troublesome teenage girls plunge headlong into pregnancy at the earliest opportunity so they can have someone that depends on them to make their shallow, unfulfilled existence seem almost meaningful, a dreadful capability gap is opening, a chasm of missed opportunity, dismally depressing existence and - above all - a life of total dependence on the 'council', where only 'rights' exist and absolutely no responsibility.

Perhaps it's time to take drastic action and allow people to regain control over their own lives. But that's probably hoping for too much...