The
British State’s petty bureaucracy is turning England to a European-style
regulatory State
As Tom Welsh commented in a recent article,
every year in the park near his parents’ house, the Residents’ Association puts
on a concert and hundreds of people turn up with picnics to hear the band
play. At the end money is
collected. But it doesn’t go to charity,
or even towards the events running costs (those are covered by local
businesses). It goes to the
Council. A free event organised by
people who only want the best for their area, and with volunteers who pick up
any litter and steward the crowds, has to pay the Local Authority a sizeable
fee for the privilege of merely of using the park, as well as following a host
of obscure licensing rules!
Such petty foggy misery is everywhere in
England. Last week, a group of amateur
cooks in Dorchester, Dorset said they were told to stop providing free food for
the homeless by a council officer because they had not completed a food hygiene
course and they were “safe-guarding” concerns.
In Somerset, a charity fundraiser, held every
year by the residents of the street to mark the switching on of their
extravagant Christmas lights, was cancelled after the council upgraded the
occasion to the status of an “Event” and advised locals that there were
liability issues surrounding their use of traffic cones to corral visitors
around the houses.
Astonishment would be a reasonable reaction,
but this is a logical consequence of a system that prizes rules on petty
box-ticking over common sense and which raises the bureaucrat over the member
of the public.
The (traditional) English way of doing things
– in which everything is permitted unless it is explicitly banned – is being
dismantled in favour of a European-style Regulatory State in which, in effect,
everything is banned unless you have a licence (from officials) to do it.
It is a three pronged attack on freedom:
Officials expansively interpret rules in order to close down any responsibility
they might face if things go wrong; official bodies have been infected by a
statism that prompts them to look on anything volunteers do with suspicion; and
a “rights” culture marches relentlessly onwards, opening up everything to
potential legal action. And all this on
top of a tendency for local authorities to raise money in fees and charges that
they dare not raise transparently through council tax.
Left-wing politicians and increasingly
“Conservative” politicians now, talk endlessly of Regulation as a protector and
enabler, essentially to a happy healthy life.
They never mention how it can quash initiative, kindness and public
spiritedness. The people who enforce
these rules are not encouraged by the British State to be even-handed and wise
or to be mindful of context. Especially
at the local level, officialdom is encouraged to hold a “computer says no”
mentality that is the opposite of empowering our People.
I understand that these officials may feel
that they are doing their duty to protect the public from an irresponsible
minority who will do whatever they please, with no mind to the
consequences. They do not of course do
anything whatsoever useful to control such people instead the result is too
often that good people doing good things find themselves caught in the trap
that they are not capable of escaping, not being experts in the intricacies of
the British State’s regime or its systems of control.
While despair might be a natural consequence I
say that we shouldn’t despair, what we should do is ignore them where possible,
complain about them through any system of complaint available, in the case of
local authorities that is the Local Government Ombudsman, whose main role in
the process will be to cause those officials, that are trying to cause you
trouble, a great deal of trouble in answering all the points that arise!
But most officials have some regulatory body
that you can complain to and full use should be made of that to harass all and
any official harassers!
Never let them get away with it easily – make
them work for it! You will usually find
that they quickly decide to go and pick on somebody more docile and biddable!
