And I thought the nanny state was out of control in this country:
Australian children are to be banned from blowing out candles together on birthday cakes – because they could be puffing germs onto one another.
And in what is seen as an attempt to ‘bubble wrap’ children, youngsters attending birthday parties will be told to take along individual cup cakes on which to place single candles.
The extraordinary new guidelines from the country’s National Health and Medical Research Council has provoked an angry response from parents who say that the ‘nanny state’ is trying to take all the fun out of birthday parties.
Sounds like they'd prefer to order children not to be children. The thing about "bubble wrap," as somebody notes further down in the story, is that you're going to get infections later in life that you can't handle.