Balls's drinking rules 

Jenny

This is hilarious. The Government have absolutely no faith in the nation at all. They should also make clear statements to the public to not drink arsenic and never to leave an iron on facing down on the ironing board. Without this Government's genious advice I honestly don't think I could leave the house!

Kevyn Bodman

I saw Mr. Balls on SKYNEWS this morning.
I've made the point on these pages a few times that we shouldn't be seduced by smooth talkers,there was no danger of that this morning.Mr. Balls was floundering,especially when the interviewer took him on to the subject of 42 detention.

I agree that Mr Balls has got it wrong on the drinking issue,having faith in the State and not individuals is deeply misguided.

John Miller

The major problem here, of course, is that I know exactly how Mr Balls should conduct his life, because I am much more intelligent than him and have a finer moral compass. But I have no means of telling him this. This is indeed a great pity, as I know this would be a life changing experience for him. On the instant, he would alter his life style to obey my rules and moral code, crying out;"Thank God! John Miller has come to my rescue and now I know how to live my life!"

Or do you think he would just tell me to get stuffed?

salieri

Fraser, v honest of you to admit to being in a small minority in your assessment of EB's intellectual powers. On 'Today' he sounded, yet again, like a blithering half-wit.

But to the point, which is not merely lack of faith in common sense (important though that is) but the government's instinctive recourse to exaggeration or outright mendacity in order to support a specious point: “Parents are saying they want more information about what is safe for alcohol."

I just don't believe this statement is true. I don't believe any parent has ever asked anybody for information about what is "safe for alcohol" [sic]. Yet how easily it slips out, this invocation of a non-existent cry for the very advice that the government is going to give us, whether we want it or not.

When EB and others like him come out with this sort of shameless porkie, could the interviewer please, just once, say: "Name one"?

dearieme

This is after it has been admitted that the government's figures for safe drinking by adults were sheer invention. Balls.

TGF UKIP

Just more of the instinctive "nannying" that has infected the whole political class and New Labour in particular. Do you think, Fraser, there is the remotest chance of the Cameron Tories promising to restore the stolen freedoms, starting with a visit to the absurdly draconian anti-smoking legislation (and no, I'm not a smoker.) Oh, and BTW, welcome back safe and sound Fraser, we look forward to more tales of derring do on the North West Frontier.

Perry, Desperately Seeking a State Advisor from Commissar Balls to offer me Parenting Help.

God help us all, - interfering, prescriptive, proscriptive, Nanny Balls joins Nanny Harperson, Nanny Jowell, and all the others in the Barmy Army.

And all I did was ask her for private advice about how much booze to allow my little ones!

[But of course, - I forget, - all this stuff will have been tried out on the families (is ‘family’ still a legal word?) of her Cabinet Buddies.]

Perry

Yes, welcome back Fraser. Glad all went OK.

Chuck Unsworth

About time this controlling, interfering, smug little git was told to sod off and let ordinary decent parents make their own decisions. As to the feckless ones, well take a look at Hogarth. Does he seriously believe a great deal has changed and does he seriously believe that this intervention will make the slight difference to the attitudes those poor unfortunates?

How many people does this idiot wish to antagonise? Does he not have the remotest understanding how grossly condescending this is to the vast majority of adults in the UK?

He's damaged the nation enough already, what with his track record at Treasury - far more than any binge-drinking child could hope to achieve. Stop the attempted micro-management of our behaviour and get on with sorting out the economics - or is this a tacit admittance of abject failure?

Yet another NuLab political stunt.

Andrew

I'd be interested to know which parents are asking him for this advice? Anyone with an education is perfectly well aware of the damage that alcohol can do (and the pleasure that it can give when used sensibly) and the remainder of parents evidently don't give a damn. I think he is making noise for the sake of it and to deflect attention from his useless boss and mentor. It won't help either of them.

TrevorH

Balls has not rung rings round the Tories. ALL his economic wheezes, er sorry, policies have turned out to be rubbish and were condemned by the Tories.

But no one listened. Everyone was seduced by easy money, global blue skys, re-mortgaging manna from heaven, bogus growth (all curried up with stealth immigration).

In terms of opposing the government I believe it was a Tory who coined the quite devastating phrase 'stealth taxes' - well at long last this is on everyone's lips.

Balls is now I believe quite exposed as a fraud, both intellectual and political.

Ray

Ah, but woe betide the concerned parent who tans the a**e of their wayward seed for knocking bag a bottle of Jack Daniels.

C Powell

Balls is a twit. But the more important point is that the Tories simply have to stop and reverse this nationalisation of our private life. 11 years of this bossyboots tax'n'spy behaviour is enough to drive all of us to drink!

Mike, Brighton

Balls is one of the Brownite Labour apparatchiks who finally asked to actually be accountable for something is found to be woefully and laughably inadequate. He is clearly flailing around for firm terrain and some levers to pull to effect "change" in child criminality and social breakdown. He's so incompetent and deluded that he thinks telling parents how much their offspring should be allowed to drink will work! Lord help us!
Time to get out of the chauffeur driven limo Ed and take a look at the society NuLab has built.

Fraser, he did not run rings around the Tories, Blair's shmoozing and obsfucation and Brown's "prudence" (LOL) did. Now that is ALL gone, we can see Balls n Brown and the rest of the grim crew for what they are. A bunch of over-promoted second raters lacking a good front man to hide behind.

William Norton

Things are far worse than even Mr Balls suspects. The Govmt, as far as I'm aware, has never given "clear guidance to parents" on the vexed issue of whether or not to use a flymo hover mower to cut children's hair. There must be carnage going on out there.

Go on, Balls, do it for the kids....

The Laughing Cavalier

It is indeed honest of you to admit that you are in a small minority in your admiration of Mr Balls’ intellectual powers. You are also profoundly wrong. His judgement is appalling and his record worse. For ten years he and McBroon ran a Potemkin economy, all the while blinding the media with smoke and mirrors. It may have fooled you but many of us have been dreading the moment when the present dire situation would arrive. Now it has and it is worse than anticipated. The damage those two have done is incalculable.

Now this monumentally arrogant man is proposing to interfere even more in the lives of ordinary folk. This is as bad as his prescription for Nursery Schools, condescending and controlling to the point of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Stewart

They should just get hell out of our lives! What in God's name does a twat like Ed Balls know? There is something very creepy out Nu-labour, they don't seem to want to understand that common sense will always prevail and that Govnmt so stay the hell away from trying to tell us what is good and what is not!

Fergus Pickering

I never did anything at all to prevent my children smoking or drinking. And they smoked and drank but then so do I (well I don't smoke any more but I had twenty happy years puffing away). As to WHEN they started on these lives of excess - mind your own business.

Cogito Ergosum

The all-purpose advice to children from adults is, "Do as I say, not as I do".

Colin

I love it! Every time they open their dumb gobs they drop themselves in it deeper.
They just cannot grasp how unpopular all this Nanny stuff is .
Its political suicide.
NANNY ! NANNY! NANNY!

JimBob

him and Broon really want putting away. This is what 10 years isolation in the Treasury does to you.

Max Kaye

I'm with Salieri. I heard Balls on Radio 4 this morning: he rambled like a twit.

Richard Lowe

It’s funny how these people get talked up; and how, if something’s said often enough it becomes “true”. For years I’ve somehow been absorbing this notion that Ed Balls has a “brilliant mind” and is a “rising star”. Well since his emergence into the public eye a couple of years ago I’ve never heard him say anything particularly bright and his communication style is belligerent and irritating, which hardly counts as “star quality” in a politician.
It‘s the same with Cherie Blair. For years we were told how she’s a “brilliant” lawyer. Yet she seems a bit dim to me: stupid and annoying.
How do people get these thoroughly undeserved reputations?

ACN

A workmate once summed up certain types, such as Balls, as a 'clever idiots'.

Hysteria

I care not as to the brilliance, or otherwise, of Mr Balls, or indeed any other politician of whatever hue.

I love (no - really) to pay taxes for the things I cannot provide for myself - like national defence, decent infrastructure, and maybe even some sectors of the arts (!).

But please will politicians stop pretending they have any control over events! Reduce taxation, eliminate Quangos, get out of our way and the British will make this place great again!

Sorry - Rant Over - these bloody people who feel the need to pass laws and/or give me advice are getting right on my ..........

TGF UKIP

Perhaps, all you Tories should keep quiet about our Ed's shortcomings. The more he and his equally obnoxious wife appear on radio, or worse/better still, TV the more likely you are to see your dearly beloved Dave elected.

Diablo

Good point TGF UKIP - but the opposite applies to Nigel Farage. Tell him to keep quiet and don't field any candidates in seats where the Conservatives can win and our dearly beloved Dave will indeed be elected.

I thank you.....

Trumpeter Lanfried

"Parents are saying they want more information about what is safe for alcohol."

I don't beleeeeeeve it.

TGF UKIP

Sorry Diablo, as I keep pointing out I am neither a UKIP member nor activist just a firmly intending voter for UKIP as the only conservative party. I don', therefore, have a direct line to Mr Farage. As for your dearly beloved Dave, well I fear his election just as much, if not more than Labour's.

R Morris

All of this goes to show does it not that these people we vote into office are just ordinary stupid people like the rest of us. Except they get put temporarlily into a position where they can mess about with ordinary peoples lives.I've never ridden to hounds and it's a stupid sport but ban it ...never!
I used to smoke and it's a stupid habit but ban it ..no
Leave it to the owner of the establishment, on and on it goes.
I would like to vote in a political party that would reverse this stuff but sadly it won't happen.
Why introduce laws that can't be enforced (how many people do you see using their mobils whilst driving).
But the one that really does it for me is watching TV without a licence the sad part for me is Maggie never got to finish her revolution(she'd got the BBC in her sights)