Thursday
Apr212011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Red tape
Apr 21, 2011 Bureaucrats The government has set up a website to allow people to comment on a series of rules and regulations that are being considered for removal. Reading the responses so far, every vested interest in the country is using it as an opportunity to strengthen their vested interest.
Reader Comments (10)
I have a vested interest in low utility prices - just to run my 4-bed detached house you see.
I posted my feelings though.
I did mention that I am - as a pensioner - also required to pay my next door neighbour 41 pence / KWh for his FiT on his PV array. Not fair. Not sensible.
This strikes me as a pointless exercise (as I always suspected it would be).
One could ask, as an example, why the "Trading with the Enemy Regulations" weren't repealed in 1946 (or come to that why they didn't have a sunset clause in them when they were enacted) and what is the point in repealing them now except so that the government can say "look at these 83 bits of red tape we got rid of", knowing full well that (I can't be sure of this without examining each one and I do have a life, believe ot or not!) there is nothing in them which can be construed as the sort of "red tape" that business and consumer are complaining about.
In the retail trade once again the red tape that is of concern both to business and consumer is the pettifogging best before (or in the case of decent Camembert, 'best after'!) stuff and the "health advice" labelling and an assortment of other nonsense, most of which this government can do nothing about because they are the result of EU Regulations.
In fact most of the current red tape that the average man in the street inveighs against is the result of one of the following:
Civil servants not prepared to argue Britain's case at Brussels;
the same civil servants "gold-plating" as many EU rules, regulations, and advice as they can get away with — which is most of them;
supine Ministers who don't bother to study their brief and as a result allow both of the above to happen.
In this context a major shake-up at the FO and DEFRA would make more difference than this spurious "consultation".
MPs shld be paid by the amount of regulation they REMOVE from the law codex
they shld be penalised in their income for laws they ADD
Calling all rent-seekers!
That's all very well, phinnie, but as Richard North and Chris Booker point out endlessly, they can't get rid of 75%+ of the red tape because it emanates from Brussels and is a direct result of our EU membership.
If there is ever an elephant in the room which politicians and most of the media persistently refuse to acknowledge, that is it. They blather on about cutting red tape or about being "in Europe but not ruled by Europe" and nobody (with very few exceptions) is prepared to call their bluff.
They are lying through their teeth; they are impotent; they have sold the UK's independence down the Swanee; the Mother of Parliaments has turned into a rubber stamp for regulations made by the EU and no-one in Westminster or Whitehall has the guts to admit it.
OK Sam. But just to be sure, leaving all that aside, can they still count on your vote?
Sorry, Peter. It's too late. I chickened out last year and now live in a country which implements these rules in the interest if its citizens (insofar as any political system does) and doesn't try to pretend that it can (or even wants to) make major changes to the EU.
And for why? Because from the beginning, and of course France was in from the beginning it made sure that its voice was heard loud and clear and where proposals ran counter to its wishes they tended not to happen.
Whereas the UK has always gone through the procedure of:
It won't happen;
it might happen but it wouldn't affect us;
we'll make sure it doesn't happen;
whoops.
Like Keith Vaz and the Fundamental Rights that "have no more legal effect than the Beano". Aye, right!
I might add that so far I have found the French bureaucracy infinitely more sane, reasonable, and easy to deal with than the British equivalent in spite of all the horror stories. In particular the local mairie goes out of its way to be helpful which is more than my local authority in the UK ever did!
Respect Sam. Good for you for voting with your feet.
I`ve concluded that the internet seems to be filter, it filters normalcy out , the unconcerned are massively underepresented.Whilst the concentrations from distant ends of the curve spit and swear at each other.
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