When all you've got is a hammer everything looks like a nail

I sometimes think that our masters look upon the people of this country not as citizens but in a manner analogous to how a dairy farmer looks upon his herd.

Some "welfare working committee" in Wellington has come up with the brainwave that beneficiaries should be "required" to immunize their children as a condition of their benefit.

Beneficiaries of course being disadvantaged are the easiest group for bossy britches politicians and bureacrats to push around.

It is axiomatic, of course, that immunization is a good thing. Paula Bennett in the Herald story  uses the term "social obligation".

Me I have my doubts, instinctively I recoil at people being forced to do anything to meet a "social obligation" as defined by someone else.  "Social obligations" such as not walking down the street naked should  defined by common consent and custom - not by ivory tower bureacrats and politicians - who have taken it upon themselves to impose their visions of utopia upon us, whether we like it or not.

But back to immunization - there are cases for it, smallpox and polio, perhaps being examples. 

But we vaccinate for anything and everything these days, it is a cash cow for the drug companies. The money to pay for it coming from "stretched public health budgets". 

And in most cases the risks from doing this outway the benefits (which in some cases are perhaps non existant I'd posit).