Resonance in Dick Francis' Trial Run

Dick Francis, British mystery author of whom all my readers have heard, even if they haven't read his books, wrote some interesting paragraphs in Trial Run, publishing in 1978.

The lead character, Randall Drew, used to race horses until the "nanny state" forbade him from doing so because he wore glasses. And, he's got a girlfriend who comes from a wealthy family, but prefers to work as a shop girl.

Here's what he wrote:

Lady Emma Louders-Allen-Croft, daughter, sister and aunt of dukes, was "into" as she would say, "the working girl ethos." She was emplooyed full time, no favors, in a bustling London departmernt store, where, despite her search for social abasement, she had recently been promoted to bed linen buyer on the second floor. Emma, blessed with organizational skills above the average, was troubled about her rise, a screw-up one could trace back directly to her own schooling, where she, in an expensive boarding school for highborn young ladies, had been taught in fierily left-wing sociology lessons that brains were elitist and that manual work was the noble oath to heaven.
[...]
I believed, and she knew I did, that someone with her abilities and restless drive should have taken a proper training, or at least gone to university, and contributed more than a pair of hands, but I had learned not to talk about it...

(Sounds like how our own college students have been taught for decades, by such individuals as Bill Ayers...)

and

"I suppose I'll sell the horses."

"There's still hunting."

"It's not the same. And they're not hunters. They're race horses. They should be on a track."

"You've trained them all these years..Why don't you just get someone else to ride them?"

"I only trained them because I was riding them. I don't want to do it for anyone else."

She frowned. "I can't imagine you without horses."

"Well," I sais, "Nor can I."

"It's a bloody shame."

"I thought you subscribed to the "we know what's best for you and you'll damn well put up with it" school of thought."

"People have to be protected from themselves," she said.

"Why?"

She stared. "Of course they do."

"Safety precautions are a growth industry," I said with some bitterness. "Masses of restrictive legislation to stop people taking everyday risks...and accidents go right on happening, and we have terrorists besides."

...

I was still, at 32, as muscularly strong as I would ever be. But someone, somewhere, had recently dreamed up the nannying concept that people should no longer be allowed to ride in jump races wearing glasses.

Of course, a lot of people thought it daft for anyone to race in glasses anyway, and I daresay they were right, but although I'd broken a few frames and suffered a few superficial cuts from them, I'd never damaged my actual eyes. And they were my eyes, goddamnit.

...So goodbye to twelve years' fun. Goodbye to endeavour, to speed, to mind-blowing exhiliaration. Too bad, too bad about your misery - it's all for your own good.