New York City’s “Department of Moral Guidance”

New Yorker covers are usually very good, but this week's is especially so. The drawing, by Bruce McCall, is called "Moral Guidance".  It depicts three New Yorkers in stocks - for offences of smoking, salt and carbs. Across the bottom, it says "NYC Department of Moral Guidance - No Feeding Backsliders".

By coincidence, Brendan O'Neill writes on a similar theme in The Spectator, based on his recent trip to the Big Apple. Brendan writes about how New York City has "turned into the world capital of health-obsessed control-freakery":

New York is currently governed by a gaggle of health-obsessed bigwigs who believe they have a duty to grab New Yorkers by the scruffs of their outsized necks and drag them towards lives of bicycle-riding, non-smoking, booze-avoiding, fruit-snacking conformity. City Hall, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is awash with that new breed of psycho-politician known as the "nudger", who believes that he has the right to use psychological techniques and brute censorship to manipulate and "improve" human behaviour.

He's right.