Looking After Nanny: a rant.

 People get terribly worried in Britain about the Nanny State. 

Nanny, in this instance, is nothing to do with grandmothers (or, indeed, goats), it's to do with the sort of nanny who is hired to look after other people's children. 

The Nanny State is the idea that State Departments might look after people so carefully and comprehensively that individuals won't have the space to be, well, individual.

As with more or less everything, this argument comes down to a matter of circumstance and degree; but it led to two beautifully juxtaposed headlines in the Telegraph online:

We must kill off the top-down Nanny State

said one. And, right underneath it:

We mustn't write-off our elders as the collateral damage of Covid

said another.

It made me smile. 

What intemperance, though. 

It led me to wonder if perhaps we could all do with a nanny to teach us consideration for others. And some basic manners.

Word To Use Today: nanny. This word appeared in the 1800s as a child's name for a nursemaid.