I had the privilege the other day of talking to a seventh-form media studies class at Rotorua Lakes High School. And the feedback I received from the teacher was that the class loved my talk because "he's so down to earth".

As one who is comfortable in his own skin and, more importantly, in his own mind, I am in the habit of speaking plainly, as readers of this column will have observed.

But this was obviously a novelty to the teenagers in the class, as it would be to pretty much anyone under 30, who has been brought up in the era of political correctness in which dissembling and circumlocution, if not outright falsehood, are expected of all.

No longer is it seen to be acceptable, particularly in academia, primary and secondary education, politics and "public service" bureaucracies, to call a spade a spade, and sometimes, for emphasis, a bloody shovel.

And that means, in effect, that in the so-called democracy in which we live we have lost our freedom of speech.

Yet it is interesting that this group of teens were able to recognise forthright and honest speaking when they heard it, and to appreciate it. That gives me great hope that political correctness has affected much of the populace only superficially and that beneath its fragile veneer there still beats a true, no-nonsense Kiwi heart.

Freedom of speech is not the only freedom we've lost along the way. As the state interferes more and more in our personal lives, we are inexorably losing our freedom of choice.

Nowadays the state tries to dictate to us what we should eat, what size cars we should drive, what we ought or ought not do with our privately owned land, how much money we should have and how we should spend or save it, how we should or should not discipline our children, and lately, where we can buy our booze just to name a few.

Often these shoulds and oughts are imposed on us by legislation, sometimes passed in the face of widespread public opposition. And this attitude has not been confined just to Labour-led Governments; National-led Governments have pulled the same stunts.

Mind you, the Clark Administration, which has ruled rather than governed us for the past nine years, has elevated the discredited "we [the Government] know best" socialist ideology to undreamed of levels.

Once upon a time democracy was a system that gave the citizenry the right to choose its government, based on party policies, on the understanding that the Government so elected would deliver to the electors that which they promised, not that which politicians decided they should have.