On Saturday I read that the Schools Minister has conceded that some young people will not face formal enforcement action if they fail to comply with the coming law on staying in education until the age of 18. It is not clear who will decide on these exemptions, or if there will be any formal method of appeal
Today we hear that the government also intends to make it compulsory for all new houses to be suitable for older people, by for example the provision of ground floor loos & shower rooms & turning space for wheel chairs. Again, it is not clear how these provisions are to be enforced & who will decide on exemptions, if any. Any protest from say, me, that this will have perverse effects will be shrugged off, or lead to accusations that I am not in favour of making it easier for the elderly to stay in their own homes.
Round this part of the world it will mean living in a 3-storey terrace house on a cramped brown field site because we cannot afford to build on any of the tiny green bits left in our overcrowded island. And half the ground floor will already be taken up with a garage so that at least one of our family cars does not have to be parked on the street. A ground floor lavatory will not be much use when I am marooned on an upper floor
Matthew Parris wrote a very good column about this sort of thing, which he calls declaratory law making, which Ministers & politicians themselves then work to subvert. An example was the Act to reform party funding which was then undermined by Labour through the use of loans
Matthew Parris fears that this leads ultimately to a general cynicism about the potency of politics itself
I think it is worse than that. It is a kind of corruption even worse than financial shenanigans
It is as if those elected think that power is just a toy. They get to play dressing up games with their Wouldn’t it be nice if everybody…. fantasies & the full panoply of the law. They believe everything the salesman tells them about the miracles of modern technological databases, just like little boys use to believe the Scalextric ads on tv
Whether they intend simply not to enforce, or actively to subvert them, their Acts of Parliament exist as laws of the land. These may well be enforced, by existing functionaries who fail to use their common sense, or by future governments
They will in either case be observed by the law abiding (assuming they know about them, that the marketing message has got through) at what may be considerable inconvenience, nuisance or cost or even misery to themselves
More forms, more tick boxes, more targets
Politicians are not there to play games with our lives
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Pomp & cavalcades
