HEADLINES

Monday, November 29, 2010

British Schoolchildren Paid to Walk to School

from Moonbattery


British Schoolchildren Paid to Walk to School: "

The moonbat compulsion to run up bills that we have to pay while meddling intrusively in each aspect of our lives reaches a new extreme of absurdity with every passing day in once great Britain, where schoolchildren now receive payment for walking to school:



Every school in the country will be offered access to technology which would allow children to use swipe cards to track their journeys, so that points can be swapped for consumer rewards.


Under a pilot scheme under way in Wimbledon, south London, teenage girls receive a £5 Topshop voucher if they walk to school eight times, and an Odeon cinema ticket for five journeys, in a certain period.


The controversial initiative is one of several schemes endorsed in a strategy which will urge councils and businesses to find more 'creative' ways to improve the nation's health.


Ministers say their approach is a departure from Labour's 'nanny state' tactics which attempted to lecture people into changing their ways.


Actually, a departure from nanny statism would be for bureauweenies to limit themselves to the legitimate role of government, rather than coercively dictating how citizens go about their daily lives. But no doubt statists consider it noncoercive to bribe people with other people's money — as if the funds for this idiocy were offered up voluntarily.



Bribes are inspired by the 'nudge' theory of behavior modification popular among the allegedly conservative liberals now running Britain.



While in opposition David Cameron was so impressed with the 2008 bestseller Nudge, by Chigago Business School economist Richard Thaler and Chicago Law School professor Cass Sunstein — which suggests how to influence human behaviour — that he required all shadow cabinet members to read it during their summer holidays.


Yes, it's that Cass Sunstein — Comrade Obama's insane and authoritarian Regulatory Czar.



Since the Coalition was formed, the Cabinet Office has set up a "behavioural insight team" — dubbed "the Nudge team".


When 'nudging' doesn't work, the iron fist emerges from the Nanny State's fuzzy mitten:



The Government has said it wants to work with food and alcohol retailers to improve the nation's habits, rather than introduce laws to regulate their produce and marketing.


However … if businesses fail to meet deadlines to make voluntary changes it will consider introducing regulations.


Government exists to protect us from others. Once we grant it authority to protect us from ourselves, the slide into totalitarianism on display in Britain is inevitable.



On a tip from Steve T.

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