Why not have compulsory physical training every morning?

If the population being managed is not, as is claimed, fit enough for our Glorious National Health Service, then why not insist upon compulsory physical training every morning? That way we could make sure that everyone did the approved stretches, steps and sweats to make us supportive of the efforts made by those Angels in Blue.

Think of the jobs that would be created! Trainers, obviously, but the block captains to keep an eye on all doing their bit. Punishments for those who do not turn out at 6 am. Think of the employment opportunities of proper, wholesome, management of the population.

Of course, we’d also need to severely limit the food intake anyone were allowed - fortunately, Henry Dimbleby already has that in hand.

We wish we merely jested here. Freddie Hayek pointed out that this would happen, we’d be dragged down that road to health serfdom by the government direct provision of health care - we’d all be managed so as to benefit the government health service rather than what should happen, the other way around, it servicing us and our desires.

It’s also true that while we enjoy having a crack at Dimbleby - as all right thinking people do - we really are not joking about this:

Policies to help people walk and cycle such as low-traffic neighbourhoods can create public health benefits as much as 100 times greater than the cost of the schemes, a long-term study of active travel measures has concluded.

The research, based on six years of surveys among thousands of people living in three outer London boroughs that introduced LTNs or similar schemes, found they tended to prompt people to switch some trips from cars to active travel, although the effects were varied.

The cumulative public health benefit of people being more active was estimated at as much as £4,800 per local adult over a 20-year period, the authors found, as against a cost per person to build LTNs of about £28-£35, or £112, depending on the type of scheme built.

That is the justification being used for those low traffic zones. That the population does more exercise, this is good for the NHS. Therefore, because it is good for the NHS therefore people must be forced to do more exercise by low traffic zones.

It is not that we are joking, or satirising, by suggesting mandatory physical jerks each morning, it is that we are already ruled by those imposing them upon us.

Perhaps we should let them know that the point of this democracy thing is not that they manage us, but they manage for us. They run the difficult bits in our name, not that they run us.