Legislation overload

[polly1]

am i the only one who is worried about the amount of legislation going on these days - almost everyday the government seem to introduce something else that we're not allowed to do or have to do to stay on the right side of the law...

[jake-the-peg]

What sort of thing are you thinking about

Violent porn?

[polly1]

nope - things like booster seats, smoking ban, id cards, etc.

[jake-the-peg]

We'll I'd have to agree about ID cards but booster seats?

500 children a year die in car accidents - that's a primary school full!

How many would you be prepared to see die before we need to legislate?

Wonder what Roy Castle's family think about passive smoking legislation?

Isn't the real point here that we all have slightly different agendas on what we think is important and one person's Nanny state is another's vital legislation?

[JudgeJ]

I read an article recently where the writer described a recent trip to the Houses of Parliament. She noticed two large books on display. One summarised the laws introduced in the 734 years between 1235 and 1969. Another of almost equal size summarised the laws introduced in the 34 years between 1970 and 2004.

The present government has presided over the introduction of more than 3,000 criminal laws � almost one a day for their period in office.

Many of these are poorly thought out, badly drafted, do not achieve their stated aim and simply inconvenience people going about their daily business. Many more have unintended consequences which sometimes have the exactly opposite effect to that intended. Initiative, business, volunteering - indeed all aspects of our lives - are all being stifled by nit-picking bureaucracy.

Much of the legislation stems from Brussels, but this government is prone to �gold-plate� many directives which makes them seem even more inane. Much of this makes no tangible difference to the quality of life enjoyed by ordinary people.

Currently the State seems unable (or, more exactly, unwilling) to distinguish between legislation that is necessary to enable its citizens to live a peaceful life untroubled by criminals, and that which simply impedes their progress and enables the State to extract even greater sums of money via fines and regulatory charges.

Andrew Phillips is a 67-year-old solicitor with a life-long experience in law. Since 1998 he has served in the House of Lords as Lord Phillips of Sudbury. But a few weeks ago he announced his wish to resign. He explained his withdrawal from the Upper House by pointing to the vast quantity and poor quality of new legislation: 13,000 pages are added to the law books each year, too much for Parliament to scrutinise properly, according to Lord Phillips.

I am inclined to believe him.

[PhilBy]

Roy Castle <p>claimed<p/> he contacted lung cancer from breathing in passive smoke, hardly a sound basis for stating anti passive smoke laws are <p>vital<p/> j-t-p. If you do a search for 'proof of passive smoking' you may find the results rather disturbing (especially the results from the largest ever Scientific study funded by the World Health Organisation .... Who by the way chose not to publish the findings)!

[PhilBy]

oops .................. claimed<b/>

[jake-the-peg]

I'm not arguing the pros and cons of passive smoking legislation Philby - rather pointing oout that there are so many special interest groups that what may look to one group of people as pointless legislation may well be what another group has been campaigning for years for.

As For JudgeJ's somewhat predictably partisan point about poor legislation we should remember that the prime example of poorly thought out bad legislation is the Tory "Dangerous dogs act"

[polly1]

Jake-the-peg, I think you are missing the point - the question was not political, merely a question of democracy and our right to make decisions for ourselves.

[Grunty]

I wish I had written JudgeJ's answer.

Another consequence is that some of the new laws are being used for the wrong purposes..
For example, John Catt, 80 years, was arrested under the Terrorism Act for wearing a T-shirt that disagreed with Bush and Blair. He was not allowed to pull up his shorts when they fell down, and was marched, handcuffed, past a crowd of hundreds.
Walter Woofgang, 82 years, was ejected from the Labour Party conference for shouting 'rubbish' at Jack Straw. When he tried to get back in, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act.
Charity Sweet was questioned by police, who gave their reasons in writing as 'reading today's Independent'.
Steven Jago was arrested for carrying copies of Vanity Fair magazine.
Sam Browne was given an �80 ticket for alleging that a police horse was homosexual.
Another man, whose name escapes me, was arrested under the Terrorism Act for photographing a motorway bridge in connection with his studies.
And, yes these incidents are substantiated.

[noxlumos]

I agree that we are legislated to death and my main concern has been and always will be the rights and freedoms of people in this country to determine for themselves how to conduct their life on a daily basis. As left wing as I am, some remarks by Tony Blair recently about dealing with anti-social children "before they are born" ( before they've done anything wrong then eh Tony?) is enough to ensure that I will never vote Labour until it once again becomes a party that represents the interests and freedoms of everyone within this country. For once I find myself in agreement with judge J and grunty illustrated perfectly what's wrong with the types of legislation which are being introduced.We really cannot sit back and allow this to happen, we have to make our feelings known by the only way possible and not vote labour, at least if there is a Blairite leader, sorrowful as I am about that.