Basic Principles

The difficult issue: deciding what a society and government should and shouldn't legislate and involve themselves with. I think there are a few basic principles that can be outlined, although as always the devil is in the detail.

1) The law should apply in the same way to everybody. There should be no special dispensations based on rank, class, gender, religion, ethnicity and so on and so forth.

2) At the legal level there should be no restrictions on the individual except where the individual's actions adversely affect the ability of others to live as they wish.

3) For adults, it is not the business of the state to get involved in any private, consensual activities. This covers anything from sexual fetishes to extreme sports provided that the state is not expected to be financially involved (such as by the provision of rescue or health services).

These are broad principles and leave a lot of room for setting the exact boundaries. For example do the above cover state provision of a health service such as the NHS? I would argue that it does, but maybe not to the full extent of the current NHS. But that's not a discussion for this post, which is just intended to provide a basic set of the principles to base the rest of the blog upon.