I read the same article literally an hour after arriving back in the UK from Copenhagen this morning, and agree with you completely! I'm dying to go back to Denmark (was only there 2 days on business) and enjoy the friendly atmosphere again.

i agree. I found Finland to be very civilized. In Helsinki they seemed to have to get drunk every night (during the SF conventions), but other than that, it was just healthy & reasonable.

Ellie, I don't know if you would have read my previous remarks about Copenhagen, but maybe you could do some apologising on our behalf next time you're there.

Have you ever read the moral philosopher J S Mill's classic book on the subject 'On Liberty'? This question is discussed in considerable depth there.

What did you think of it?

I dunno, would J S Mill have thought that intruding upon others by being a bit selfish was 'harm'? I wouldn't want to enforce respect for others, but I'm very appreciative of it when it arises all by itself.

Is speaking when others don't wish you to speak 'harm'? Yes, to the same extent that stopping someone speaking when they wish to speak is also harm. Given Mill's views on free speech, which I'm sure cause far greater annoyance than noisy chatter, I can't see him considering this an issue worthy of social coercion.

Mill's claim is that when each society draws the boundaries it always considers its own to be natural. Breach of them is 'selfish' and coercion where there is no breach 'oppression'. But the observation that different societies draw them in different places reveals that they are not natural, and that in each case there are selfish motives on both sides. The rule elevates one and discounts the other.

The purpose in granting each other freedom to the greatest extent tolerable is that in granting society power to enforce its rules, you don't then get to choose the rules. In this case, the author picked a rule we happen to like, so it is easy to agree to the restriction. But in granting this power, if society then develops rules that you don't like you will find yourself helpless to object. According to Mill, the less restrictions there are, and the higher you set the threshold before imposing them, the better.

I am not sure how applicable it is in this case, since the article does not mention any measure taken against the chatterers other than attempts at persuasion, which Mill explicitly allows. I doubt there is any real problem with liberty in Scandinavia.

But the conclusions drawn about the benefits of social control, and loss of liberty being a price worth paying for them are a different matter. I know people who would consider the public exposure of women's skin other than hands and face as being antisocial in much the same way as the noisy chatter in a public place. And you can of course argue that so long as you're not forced to cover up, it is polite to do so voluntarily where it is the custom.

But is it 'selfish' to want not to be hot and uncomfortable, and to have a choice about what you wear? In tolerating the restriction, what further restrictions might we end up tolerating?

I'm not going to try to tell you that you're wrong about this, but it isn't as obvious a conclusion as the quick answers might suggest.

It is true, but from what I understand, it's nothing on what it used to be in Norway, for example.

I've been told that 20 years ago, there was an approved list of paint colour for the exteriors of houses, and children who did *not* wear uniforms could choose between red or blue jumpers for school.

A family friend who had sent her child to school with a lunch made of dinner-party leftovers. That evening, her sullen eight-year-old handed over a note from the teacher that explained that 'brie and baguette is not nutritious' - only local brown goat's cheese and brown bread would do.

Well there seem to be plenty of people who agree with Rob judging by today's Guardian letters page (18/8/8). Perhaps we should just put it down to a crap article written by a poor journalist who clearly wasn't thinking about what she was writing.

M