How did I survive without nanny's advice? | Hugo Rifkind - Times Online.

Hugo Rifkind is on amusing form. But why do our satirists like "Nanny" so much as a metaphor for an overbearing ruler? Most of us didn't have a nanny or know anyone who did. And doesn't "nanny" summon images of being expensively and lovingly nurtured with professional care? Would not most of us like to have grown up in a family rich enough to have professional childcare, with glamorous parents who never smelled of baby sick? Not that I am suggesting it's a carefully-contrived way subliminally to reconcile us to infantilisation,  but "Nanny State" just doesn't cut it as a way of dramatising our danger to the masses.

Any better metaphors chaps?

h/t The Englishman (does he never sleep?)