"Big Brother", the TV show is bad. Big Brother for real is worse.

Big Brother is a truly awful programme combining some of the worst bleach blonde slatterns with some equally horrible surfie/stoner types, or worse- brickie's labourers who think they're cool because they've got frosted tips. I despise everything it stands for.

So I don't watch it.

I decide that I don't like, it, so I avoid it. The same can't be said for a group of Liberal politicians who want it off the air. Among them is my Local member, Trish Draper- who was recently caught grafting taxpayer funds to take her "Partner" for a dirty weekend in Paris. She is in no position to step to anybody as far as morals are concerned. The people in the Big Brother house may be common, but at least they're not common thieves.

What these MPs have managed to do is quite amazing. They have managed to view the show and isolate specific parts of it that they don't like- rather than exhibiting a healthy disgust for the entire concept. The parts that they don't like are: Coarse language, full frontal nudity and sexual references.

They say this is inappropriate for children-as it might well be, but where does the responsibility of the parents come into this? Take, "I don't like it, I therefore don't watch it" and substitute "I don't want my children watching it, therefore I don't let them" I like to think that children of mine would be raised better than to find such drivel appealing in the first place.

My mother's a teacher, and she concurs that parents are less and less able to make decisions that are unpopular with their children, less likely to lay down the law. They want the things that aren't taught at school to be legislated into (Or out of) existence. They want the government to raise their children for them.

The social contract used to involve giving up a small amount of freedom in return for peace, safety and order. The government collected taxes for things people couldn't do themselves, like run traffic lights.

It has mutated in character to an arrangement where the citizen allows the government to interfere with absolutely every corner of his life, and in return the citizen gets to blame every little problem of his on the government.

Liberalism shouldn't be like this. It should be about the individual's right to do whatever he pleases and have nobody step to him unless he does real and provable harm.

Liberals in Australia are socially conservative prudes. Liberals in the US would like to tell you what you can and can't drive and where you can and can't drive it. They wear sandals and have halitosis.

People who really believe in individual liberty in either country have had to reinvent themselves as Libertarians.

Libertarians, if they are true to their name shouldn't oppose stuff like gay marriage. After all, it's nobody's business except Bob's and Fred's. (And maybe Bob's wife, who doesn't know yet.)

Libertarians match individual liberty with individual responsibility. An unemployed, single woman may have as many different babies with as many different men as she pleases, as long as she doesn't expect the taxpayer to foot the bill. You fathers had better step up and present your monthly cheques though- you concieved it, you bought it.

Liberals want a society where all the sharp edges have been ground down, and anything that could possibly hurt anybody is banned. They want us all in straight jackets, and in padded cells. They want a world as boring as they are, so they don't get anxiety attacks about standing out.

Libertarians like a world that's interesting, with noise and colour, and the occasional sharp edge.

Tobacco, hard liquor and red meat. There are still a few of us left.

Gilganixon and myself may be forming a political party.