Banned wagon
A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit
WHILE morality is an area where the government is best advised to tread lightly, one might expect it to make a better effort at justifying its own laws. There are plenty of reasons why motorists should be banned from the road if caught driving while under the influence of alcohol, but the impact on their love life is not one of them. Yet that is the message of the latest antidrink-driving campaign. Radio adverts put out by the transport minister, and employing pricy sitcom stars, warn grimly of the consequences of running into a police patrol after a beer too many: you will lose your girlfriend to another man who has a flashier car but who refrains from drinking.
The fact that you might kill a few other motorists or pedestrians while driving drunk doesn't seem to come into it, the message is reduced to the pop-Freudian equation of motor car and penis. Besides the obvious objections — if Brits really do see things this way, why are the best-selling cars all dumpy-looking hatchbacks? — the approach is morally corrupt. It is also highly revealing in what it says about the government's attitude towards human relationships and its motives for passing legislation.
Are British women really all such bitches that they are bound to leave you as soon as they find someone with a better grade of motor car, or might it just be possible that one or two of them are human enough to take pity on a partner who has suffered a misfortune? That the government believes the former perhaps explains why it has such a low opinion of marriage vows. More worryingly, the ad suggests that what provokes the government to pass its laws is not the desire to protect the public, but the wish to influence the individual's way of life.
Ross Clark
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