Farage against plain cigarette packaging...

The proper role of government is surely subjective? I do agree with you regarding gambling though, we should drop the tax and licensing requirements and be encouraging them to come here (plenty of oligarchs in London) and generate jobs.

Yeah, it is subjective. However too many people are supportive of patriarchal policy and big government which is something I'm worried about.

The two are not always mutual if you view social and economic policy in isolation. I for example am relatively small state economically and somewhat domestically but when it comes to morality (health, military intervention) i could be said to support a more paternal view of conservatism in that i don't think it's right for the state to endorse suicide (euthanasia), i don't think it's right for the state to endorse being drugged up to your eyeballs (heroin), i don't think people do what is best for their health (obesity, alcohol, tobacco) and i don't think it's right that what could be one of the worlds most powerful militaries limits our expenditure and reach then sits back for nearly 2 years watching Assad slaughter his people long enough for Islamists to band together and take over.

That being said, morals are also subjective (a pacifist is not less moral even if i find the notion disgusting) and moral conservatism (that is to say, policy being based on what somebody considers moral) has declined. Arguably not seen since Blair's first term (Kosovo, Sierra Lione - Iraq depending on how cynical you are about oil).

A small state with liberal rights which isn't patriarchal would be a smaller state than an economically small state which is patriarchal.

It involves hiring more and more public sector workers and I'm sure you'll understand the issue of vested interests and public sector workers.

As much i have sympathy with libertarian thought, it's abundantly clear that the human race is not rational enough to do what is best for them when it comes to their own body. With this in mind, the decision of who to side with in the matter of Farage vs Coalition is a simple one. I will back the government who are rightfully attempting to reduce the number of smokers.

If only they'd take more stringent measures to tackle obesity. It's somewhat unfortunate that blatant social engineering is out fashion.

How do you justify such intervention in the lives of others?

I'm not being hostile here, just wondering.

For me it's morality.

It is immoral for somebody to sit back and watch somebody suffer when they can do something about it. Now you can say that the heart attack or lung cancer stems from personal responsibility and to let them deal with the consequence of their own actions (i'd normally agree with this) but health is too important to sit back on, the state cannot and should not sit back and watch it's population die.

So we should also ban alcohol, be even harsher when it comes to illegal drugs, somehow force everybody to exercise more, control everybody's diet, increase everybody's taxes and/or significantly increase retirement age and try to stimulate job growth accordingly?

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Unfortunately practicality won't allow that. I'm more for fining people for using them. Yes, if we can. Not sure. Why would we do that?

Increase retirement age because it's already way too low (bar the potential issue of not enough jobs) and being a health freak will only make retirement longer. The other idea, which will be waaaaaaaay less popular than the already unpopular idea of increasing retirement age (hence why it's stupidly low), would be to euthanise pensioners to keep the pension bill down. Retirement age should be tied to the life expectancy at birth, so you're in essence setting the retirement age getting on for 3/4 of a century before retirement.

Letting people grow old is expensive enough as it is without making people grow even older and thus more expensive, without increasing their useful life. Fact of the matter is this: if you want people to live longer while balancing the books you have to do one of three things:
1) increase retirement age
2) increase taxes
3) make cuts.

As much i have sympathy with libertarian thought, it's abundantly clear that the human race is not rational enough to do what is best for them when it comes to their own body.

It's become a joke in all honesty. Fat, sugar, fags, alcohol, recreational drugs, gambling, etc. The list goes on and on of the things they want to discourage us from doing. It's frankly embarrassing that people who like to call themselves liberals are keen on this.

No one has any appreciation for the proper role of government anymore.

Naa. I'm more for private pension requirements and widening the tax base via immigration and if it were possible, a higher birth rate. Cuts too.

That doesn't change that if you have a growing pensioner population, as we do because the retirement age is going up too slow, the pensions bill goes up. To stop that problem you need to do one of the three things given, although I shall amend the third point to "cut the state pension rate", although general cuts to redirect money into pensions also works.

All my ideas are applicable. If one encourages larger private pensions then your under less pressure to raise the state pension above inflation or better still you can means test so that you don't pay people at all and just cover the poor. If one raises the birth rate or gets immigrants who provide net gains to the tax take then you have the money to cover what state pension you need to pay. Then yeah, redirecting money avoids taxation.

Britain will muddle through, we always have.

Well, haven't pensions already been triple locked and I doubt removing that would go down too well
And boosting birth rates/increasing inflation just defers the problem and potentially introduces its own issues.
Either way, you cannot argue that retirement age is too low; what are students looking at? Less than half their life in work?

All my ideas are applicable. If one encourages larger private pensions then your under less pressure to raise the state pension above inflation or better still you can means test so that you don't pay people at all and just cover the poor. If one raises the birth rate or gets immigrants who provide net gains to the tax take then you have the money to cover what state pension you need to pay. Then yeah, redirecting money avoids taxation.

Britain will muddle through, we always have.

That's true. You'd need a huge majority to survive the hit from pissed pensioners at the next election.

Ah, only if the birth rate and immigration levels fall.. the beauty of having 1bn people in the west and another billion people in Asia (excluding India) is that you'll never run out of an immigrant pool largely free of religious/cultural problems. Immigration is like coal.. it's only finite on paper, the reality is pensions will stop existing long before you need solve that issue.

Yes (50 years for most) but it would be best to avoid extending working.

Immigration is like coal.. it's only finite on paper, the reality is pensions will stop existing long before you need solve that issue.

What the **** are you talking about?