What a horrible last vision to take to bed from TV One news – bug eyed Bob Harvey demanding new powers to make people obey his orders to stay away from the beach. "What the hell is going on when people are telling [officials] 'we're doing what we like?'".

What's going on Bob is adults exercising their rights as adults, to choose for themselves whether to take a risk that does not harm others. 'We're doing what we like' is exactly what people in free countries can tell pompous twits.  What justification is there for ordering them away? The only life they risk is their own. As adults they're entitled to eat themselves to death, to drink themselves to death, to ride motor bikes, to climb mountains, to refuse to take their medicine or to reject life-saving operations, to sell their houses and gamble away what they should save for their old age.

Why should Bob Harvey be entitled to stop them choosing to look at a rare freak of nature? If nanny does not want ordinary people to  ignore warnings she should stop crying wolf. From long experience most official warnings are likely to be tremulous twittering.

For months there's been a sign on a pathway near my house warning of closure because of 'serious danger' after part of it slumped. The sign was there so long that the feet tramping up the bank and around the sign made their own fresh track on their way to walk perfectly safely across the narrowed section of pathway above the slip.

As long as the tsunami rubberneckers and surfers accept that the rest of us are not obliged to risk our lives or assets rescuing them (as surfers do anyway), I respect their independence and their contempt for the nannyish bosses who now want to rule us all (in our own good of course).

Besides – there will be times when the warnings are justified. We must leave room for Darwinian selection.