The first rule to Elf on the Shelf is that you do not talk about Elf on the Shelf, or something along those lines.

For those of you not familiar with this festive sensation, Elf on the Shelf is basically a very creepy looking puppet doll that parents have started to use in the build up to Christmas, primarily as a discipline tool to make sure their children don’t misbehave, but also to have some cheap laughs with relatives at how gullible their young minds are, and like all pop up parents – use the doll to find new ways at mentally scaring their children for life.

The official website explains; Elf on the Shelf is a special scout elf sent from the North Pole to help Santa Claus manage his naughty and nice lists. When a family adopts a scout elf and gives it a name, the scout elf receives its Christmas magic and can fly to the North Pole each night to tell Santa Claus about all of the day's adventures. Each morning, the scout elf returns to its family and perches in a different place to watch the fun. Children love to wake up and race around the house looking for their scout elf each morning. There are two simple rules that every child knows when it comes to having a scout elf. First, a scout elf cannot be touched; Christmas magic is very fragile and if a scout elf is touched it may lose that magic and be unable to fly back to the North Pole. Second, a scout elf cannot speak or move while anyone in the house is awake! A scout elf's job is to watch and listen.

Now I have one simple rule on how children should be raised, and that’s to treat them with the same respect you would treat an adult, to allow them to develop their own unique personality whilst building strong communication and interpersonal skills.

After all what would you think if your wife came home after work one day and put a voodoo doll on the table, turned to you and said;

‘from now on if you don’t get the bins out on time this dolls gonna f*ck you up’

That would be a pretty messed up situation, first of all you would think, have you just gone mental, why is there a witch doll on the table, and secondly you would think ‘honey we need to have a little talk’.

Now I’m not saying cancel Christmas, if you want to deceive your children that’s fine, I’m sure there’s no harm in filling your child with blatant lies which will eventually unravel resulting in latent feelings of mistrust as they develop into young adults.

The truth is the imagination of children brings Christmas to life; there is a well known secret that if there were no children there would be no Santa. I do believe that children need to be afforded every opportunity that makes them happy and it may be healthy to encourage the possibilities their developing minds are capable of, but I also believe we have a responsibility as adults to manage their expectations and to ensure we are not introducing wild misconceptions that may stunt their understanding of how the world works. As much as introducing the possibility of magic to your children might seem like a wonderful thing I believe placing your child under house arrest at the hands of some creepy elf results in your child living in the shadow of fear, constantly concerned about what the elf knows, maybe it can read their thoughts as well, constantly watched, constantly in fear of doing something bad, basically introducing your child to some dark Orwellian nightmare that no human being should be subject to.

If this kind of treatment was used in Guantanamo there would be outrage. Maybe do your child a favour and keep that creepy elf off of the shelf, or at least think a little bit about how they think and feel before you decide to abuse their open minds for your own amusement. 

Drink Responsibly is a tagline drink companies use to distance themselves from the carnage of alcohol abuse, they're basically saying 'if you were responsible this wouldn't have happened, it's hardly our fault'.

These companies sponsor horrific ‘don’t drink & drive’ advertising campaigns to further distance themselves from their responsibilities. After all it’s against the law to drink and drive, if you were responsible this wouldn’t happen. These campaigns also act as a benchmark of the meaning of responsibility. If we consider actually murdering someone by driving whilst intoxicated as our meaning of being irresponsible then everything else between brushing your teeth in the morning to getting blitz out of your mind on a Friday night, prior to murdering a pedestrian by means of operating a moving vehicle, falls within the bracket of responsibility.

The fact is if we want to be responsible about how we drink we need to change our perception of what drink is and what it does to us. To do this we need to take more control over how drink companies advertise. They are very clever at clouding the negative effects of alcohol and extremely savvy at promoting the momentary bliss that comes with complete intoxication.

We need to learn that despite what the adverts tell us, drinking alcohol does not mean everyone is suddenly having fun, it doesn’t mean we are at a party, it isn’t the only source of meeting new people, it doesn’t mean we can now dance or sing better than before, it doesn’t increase your chances of finding the things you’re looking for in life or whatever it is the drink companies are telling us these days.

We need to be more aware that the consequence of too much alcohol isn’t just outright murder. We need to take a mental note that alcohol is a drug and just slightly too much can leave you feeling depressed and/or stressed. If we want to drink responsibly we need to know what the results will look like, otherwise it’s rather an empty message.

Ultimately I think if society is to be responsible over preventing the truth from being diluted we need to ensure that the cash rich drink industry doesn’t control the perception of alcohol. Tobacco companies aren’t allowed target us with tv advertising, billboards or radio ads and I don’t believe drink companies should be allowed to either.  France, Norway, Russia, Ukraine, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Kenya have all banned advertising on television and billboards so this is not a new concept. I think it’s just about time we answer the drink companies call to take responsibility and look to make changes in the way we perceive alcohol, and that begins with putting an end to their propaganda.