Remember that obesity crisis? It turned out that ganging up on fat folk was the thin end of the wedge.

Now they are coming for you. Oh dear. Didn’t see that happening. And it is too late to wind the clock back now, of course. Too late to start quoting live and let live and why can’t we just get along and let he who is without sin, and all the various little mantras and sermons of tolerance that stop the human race from tearing itself apart like weasels in a sack. Now that we have evolved into a nation of mutant McKeiths, mean-spirited bullies, judging and reckoning, as if it was any of our business how next door chooses to lead his life, they have got us just where they want us.

The Liberal Democrats want to charge drunks for treatment in accident and emergency. So, there you go, we are now at Phase 2. Phase 1 was targeting fat people and smokers. And when nobody raised a peep in their defence, the new puritans could isolate the other runts from the herd.

After all, who is going to stand up for drunks when they can hardly stand up themselves? Then, it will be open season on the remainder.

Phase 3: the privatisation of the National Health Service by stealth. Everybody pays. You get stitched up just to get stitched up, because there is no way this scheme reaches its endgame by playing fair. In a few years, you won’t be greeted by a triage nurse in A&E anymore but a loss adjuster, whose very livelihood and Christmas bonus will depend on establishing that you were in some way responsible for your misfortune (as, indeed, we all are) and bill you for it accordingly.

Naturally, this will not be portrayed as a callous, hard-nosed financial measure, playing on our most petty and small-minded prejudices (the definition of a big drinker being a man who drinks more than you), it will be heralded as a new dawn for personal responsibility. And, pretty soon, all illnesses – well, let’s face it, you must have done something to give you cancer, sunshine – and all accidents bar acts of God will be offset by a middle manager in a cheap suit. Welcome to your brave new world. Hope you can afford it.

A few years back a chap down my road, a nice man, who did a lot to help the old lady next door, was up a ladder using a chainsaw to cut back an overgrown fruit tree that had become a nuisance. A large severed branch fell in his direction, causing him to jerk away, chainsaw in hand and, as I appreciate some of you may be having breakfast, let us just say that the phrase “I’ll make you smile on the other side of your face” took on a whole new meaning. Not wishing to alarm his elderly neighbour, he quietly went around to the front of the house and drove to the nearest A&E, where many hours later the two halves of his fizzog were reunited. I thought he was a stoic hero actually. Give it a few years and he will be more like the accused.

“Chainsaw, eh, sir. I see. What are you then, some kind of lumberjack? No? A television repair man? Really. And do you use chainsaws a lot in that type of work? No, I wouldn’t think so, either. So what exactly – oh, a favour was it? For a friend, yes I understand. Didn’t you think it was a bit dangerous? I mean, a man in your position, no previous chainsaw experience, on a ladder, up a tree, drunk – oh, I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to insinuate, but it was after Sunday lunch you say. And did you have . . . well, exactly, I know what you mean, what difference is the odd glass or two going to make? I agree. I’m a white wine man myself.

“But the problem is, well, your problem is, that we really do have these strict guidelines on self-inflicted accidents and others on alcohol and I’m afraid we can’t just treat any old piss artist who comes in here wielding a chainsaw. Not without cash anyway . . .”

I know what you’re thinking. Slow down, mate, it’s only some kook from the Lib Dems that has proposed this (Norman Lamb, the right honorable kook for Norfolk North, actually); it is not as if it is government policy. Except a few years ago it was only the Lib Dems that were in a snit about 4x4s and green issues, and now they can barely get a word in edgeways for all the main political parties elbowing each other off stage in the frenzy to propose a new environmental tax.

Dear old Ming as good as had to flush his credibility down the toilet at a photo opportunity this week just to get a mention. Repackaged Lib Dem policies – airport taxes, recycling drives, getting the hell out of Iraq and pretending we’ve won – are all the rage right now; particularly those that fit so snugly with centrist ideas of citizenship.

The clue to accident and emergency is the name. It was an accident. It is an emergency. We all do stupid things because that is how we are made. A species that would never put a fork in the toaster to stop the bread burning would also be unable to come up with something as randomly wonderful as the motor car and would therefore never plough one into a tree at 70mph. A species that didn’t look at a mountain and wonder what was at the top of it would never need rescuing while climbing in flip-flops, but would also not have explored the sea beyond its own hunk of land.

It is our appetite for life, not for food or cigarettes or alcohol or chainsaws, that causes us to endanger it – and to start hiving off sections of society as needing help, and others an invoice, is to misunderstand our existence. The reason we don’t leave spur-of-the-moment mountaineers stranded in the Lake District or abandon overambitious sailors in the middle of the Atlantic is the same reason we do not charge people for staggering, blood-soaked, into A&E: because all of us are a little bit ill, a little bit fat, a little bit drunk, a little bit human.

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