This week Parliament in Britain has been debating and voting on whether to allow marriage amongst homosexuals. If you have been following the news, you could be forgiven for thinking that nothing else has been going on. However a few other things have been filtering through into the news. For the most part, these are showing that despite "modernisation" the wheels of government still turn in a way that would be recognised by fans of "Yes Minister". More specifically, new legislation that is being proposed and authorised as we speak appears to be generating a lot of work (and presumably budget) for Civil Servants but with little or no tangible public benefit.
The first story seems innocuous enough. It is a proposal to make microchipping dogs a legal requirement. Cue pictures of cute puppies in the press to emphasise the point. The stated purposes of this legislation is to make finding the homes of stray dogs easier and enable monitoring of dangerous dogs.
On the face of it, this seems like an excellent idea. It will provide ready access to information about a dog's owner thus allowing them to be contacted easily. However, the majority of dogs are already microchipped. It is something a lot of responsible dog owners do on a voluntary basis. I'm willing to bet the proportion would go up further in response to a publicity campaign and possibly the offer of part or full funding from animal charities (something they are offering to do in light of the legislation). So in that case do we really need common sense passed into legislation?
There is the other strand of keeping tabs on dangerous dogs but do you really think that owners of dangerous dogs are going to be motivated by the thought of a fine to get the dogs chipped? I very much doubt it. The legislation will be roundly ignored. If you need evidence, what about the existing provisions of the dangerous dogs act. It doesn't seem to have stamped out the ownership of dangerous dogs, if anything it has just made people who breed them more creative with their breeding programme to ensure the dogs aren't covered by the act. So what will make this legislation work? Is the government proposing a system of regular dog inspections where dogs are checked for chips? If so who will do it; police, councils or civilian dog wardens? Who will pay for the training and infrastructure necessary for delivering this screening? How much will it cost come to that? And won't it be edging on infringing the right to a private life? As far as I can see, it is going the way of fines for dog-fouling. Good idea but a struggle to enforce.
Never the less, this idea is going ahead and in doing so is generating huge amounts of work for the civil servants involved in drafting the legislation and devising strategies to implement it. If I was being paranoid I would suggest that it's another attempt by the state to keep tabs on us but I really don't think it is (we don't all own dogs after all). I think it is just a cynical attempt to generate bureaucratic process to keep Whitehall bods busy.
This isn't an isolated incident. Currently there is a shortage of council housing in Britain. This has resulted in a scheme whereby people in receipt of housing benefit will lose a proportion of it in direct proportion to spare bedrooms in their property. The logic goes that some people are rattling around in big houses with spare bedrooms while others are living in accommodation which can be classed as over crowded. This scheme is supposed to provide an incentive for people to move into smaller houses thus vacating bigger ones for larger families. All noble so far until you learn that this docking is implemented across the board and without exception. This means (and here I will borrow examples used on the radio) that a parent who is separated from the other parent of their children will not be entitled to a spare room to allow their children to stay. Similarly, disabled people who have had their properties adapted could face losing benefit for staying in them despite the fact that a) any future property would require adaptation at considerable expense and b) the extra space may be necessary for the storage of specialist equipment or as a bedroom for their spouse who was also their carer (spouses can only share rooms you see). The guidelines also insist that children under 10 must share a room. On the face of it, this seems fair enough but it is worth bearing in mind that government data shows children are reaching puberty progressively earlier now compared to 20 or so years ago. Now, it is not uncommon for children to show the first signs of puberty before they even turn 10. Is it really fair to insist that they share a bedroom with their sibling, especially if the sibling is the opposite sex. Also, what of step-siblings?
Of course things aren't that simple. An official on the radio this morning agreed that the above examples were issues and claimed these had been taken into account. This wasn't done by putting provisions in the original legislation but by giving local councils a budget in order to compensate those who would have their benefits docked. Let me go over that again. Government removes a portion of housing benefit from an individual then allocates money to local councils to reimburse them in extenuating circumstances. Logical right? Naturally this payment isn't automatic. Individuals have to apply in their own time to reclaim the money. So paper work is generated by the transfer of funds to the council and then in the application for funds by the individual (who has a disability in need of extensive care in the first place).
Another example of generating massive amounts of work for civil servants and this is without questioning what will happen to the resources allocated if they are not collected. It was not clear if these funds were to be ring-fenced for the exclusive purpose of compensating those who had unjustly lost out on benefits or if excess would revert to the council funds. I don't want to appear cynical but either way it appears that it's in the interest of civil servants to ensure as little of this money is collected as possible.
Before I sound too jaded and cynical I will tell you of something good that came out of Paliament recently. MPs have voted against the fish quota system imposed by the EU. The system was originally implemented to try and preserve fish stocks by preventing over-fishing. It has turned out to be an utter failure. Instead of preventing over-fishing, quotas have forced professional fishermen to throw large amounts of fish back into the sea because they had either exceeded their quota or were specifically forbidden from catching a certain species of fish. Obviously, once the fish had been caught it ended up fairly dead fairly quickly and so did little more than feed the seagulls when thrown back. This policy is a prime example of some of the ill conceived planning endemic within the EU and shows it in it's true light; namely putting higher emphasis on compromise and appeasement rather than actual, useful objectives. Hopefully now our MPs have voted this stupid, wasteful and frankly disgusting waste of resources will come to and end while simultaneously giving our fishing industry a boost.
The last example aside, this worries me. I used to watch "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister" and feel vaguely comforted that people like Sir Humphrey were in charge: sound chaps with their heads screwed on who were very able to resist the latest vote-winning flight of fancy of their political masters. Now I'm not so sure. Resistance to change was all well and good when things were prosperous. Now though, things aren't. Everybody is having to make substantial savings. The most noticeable of these are in the public sector where front-line public services such as the police and ambulance service are subject to major cuts. In the military as well, people who have willingly risked their lives for our safety are losing their jobs and it's being done in a way that will deprive them of their pension entitlements too. This is wrong. It could be argued that creating a nebulous bureaucracy creates jobs by creating a need for more civil servants. This, to a point, is true but in this climate it seems like a total waste. My impression, backed up by the above examples, is that vital public services are being pared back to the bone in order to generate the capital for more frivolous spending. Perhaps it's because those that are losing out don't have the right to strike (or will incur massive public derision if they do) or perhaps it's because the bureaucratic stuff generates a lot of easily measurable outcomes which can then be twisted to show how well whatever procedure is being conducted that these changes are occurring. Either way it seems like a crying shame that this is happening and it seems to be doing so without much opposition.
Or perhaps I'm just being paranoid!
JR
The first story seems innocuous enough. It is a proposal to make microchipping dogs a legal requirement. Cue pictures of cute puppies in the press to emphasise the point. The stated purposes of this legislation is to make finding the homes of stray dogs easier and enable monitoring of dangerous dogs.
On the face of it, this seems like an excellent idea. It will provide ready access to information about a dog's owner thus allowing them to be contacted easily. However, the majority of dogs are already microchipped. It is something a lot of responsible dog owners do on a voluntary basis. I'm willing to bet the proportion would go up further in response to a publicity campaign and possibly the offer of part or full funding from animal charities (something they are offering to do in light of the legislation). So in that case do we really need common sense passed into legislation?
There is the other strand of keeping tabs on dangerous dogs but do you really think that owners of dangerous dogs are going to be motivated by the thought of a fine to get the dogs chipped? I very much doubt it. The legislation will be roundly ignored. If you need evidence, what about the existing provisions of the dangerous dogs act. It doesn't seem to have stamped out the ownership of dangerous dogs, if anything it has just made people who breed them more creative with their breeding programme to ensure the dogs aren't covered by the act. So what will make this legislation work? Is the government proposing a system of regular dog inspections where dogs are checked for chips? If so who will do it; police, councils or civilian dog wardens? Who will pay for the training and infrastructure necessary for delivering this screening? How much will it cost come to that? And won't it be edging on infringing the right to a private life? As far as I can see, it is going the way of fines for dog-fouling. Good idea but a struggle to enforce.
Never the less, this idea is going ahead and in doing so is generating huge amounts of work for the civil servants involved in drafting the legislation and devising strategies to implement it. If I was being paranoid I would suggest that it's another attempt by the state to keep tabs on us but I really don't think it is (we don't all own dogs after all). I think it is just a cynical attempt to generate bureaucratic process to keep Whitehall bods busy.
This isn't an isolated incident. Currently there is a shortage of council housing in Britain. This has resulted in a scheme whereby people in receipt of housing benefit will lose a proportion of it in direct proportion to spare bedrooms in their property. The logic goes that some people are rattling around in big houses with spare bedrooms while others are living in accommodation which can be classed as over crowded. This scheme is supposed to provide an incentive for people to move into smaller houses thus vacating bigger ones for larger families. All noble so far until you learn that this docking is implemented across the board and without exception. This means (and here I will borrow examples used on the radio) that a parent who is separated from the other parent of their children will not be entitled to a spare room to allow their children to stay. Similarly, disabled people who have had their properties adapted could face losing benefit for staying in them despite the fact that a) any future property would require adaptation at considerable expense and b) the extra space may be necessary for the storage of specialist equipment or as a bedroom for their spouse who was also their carer (spouses can only share rooms you see). The guidelines also insist that children under 10 must share a room. On the face of it, this seems fair enough but it is worth bearing in mind that government data shows children are reaching puberty progressively earlier now compared to 20 or so years ago. Now, it is not uncommon for children to show the first signs of puberty before they even turn 10. Is it really fair to insist that they share a bedroom with their sibling, especially if the sibling is the opposite sex. Also, what of step-siblings?
Of course things aren't that simple. An official on the radio this morning agreed that the above examples were issues and claimed these had been taken into account. This wasn't done by putting provisions in the original legislation but by giving local councils a budget in order to compensate those who would have their benefits docked. Let me go over that again. Government removes a portion of housing benefit from an individual then allocates money to local councils to reimburse them in extenuating circumstances. Logical right? Naturally this payment isn't automatic. Individuals have to apply in their own time to reclaim the money. So paper work is generated by the transfer of funds to the council and then in the application for funds by the individual (who has a disability in need of extensive care in the first place).
Another example of generating massive amounts of work for civil servants and this is without questioning what will happen to the resources allocated if they are not collected. It was not clear if these funds were to be ring-fenced for the exclusive purpose of compensating those who had unjustly lost out on benefits or if excess would revert to the council funds. I don't want to appear cynical but either way it appears that it's in the interest of civil servants to ensure as little of this money is collected as possible.
Before I sound too jaded and cynical I will tell you of something good that came out of Paliament recently. MPs have voted against the fish quota system imposed by the EU. The system was originally implemented to try and preserve fish stocks by preventing over-fishing. It has turned out to be an utter failure. Instead of preventing over-fishing, quotas have forced professional fishermen to throw large amounts of fish back into the sea because they had either exceeded their quota or were specifically forbidden from catching a certain species of fish. Obviously, once the fish had been caught it ended up fairly dead fairly quickly and so did little more than feed the seagulls when thrown back. This policy is a prime example of some of the ill conceived planning endemic within the EU and shows it in it's true light; namely putting higher emphasis on compromise and appeasement rather than actual, useful objectives. Hopefully now our MPs have voted this stupid, wasteful and frankly disgusting waste of resources will come to and end while simultaneously giving our fishing industry a boost.
The last example aside, this worries me. I used to watch "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister" and feel vaguely comforted that people like Sir Humphrey were in charge: sound chaps with their heads screwed on who were very able to resist the latest vote-winning flight of fancy of their political masters. Now I'm not so sure. Resistance to change was all well and good when things were prosperous. Now though, things aren't. Everybody is having to make substantial savings. The most noticeable of these are in the public sector where front-line public services such as the police and ambulance service are subject to major cuts. In the military as well, people who have willingly risked their lives for our safety are losing their jobs and it's being done in a way that will deprive them of their pension entitlements too. This is wrong. It could be argued that creating a nebulous bureaucracy creates jobs by creating a need for more civil servants. This, to a point, is true but in this climate it seems like a total waste. My impression, backed up by the above examples, is that vital public services are being pared back to the bone in order to generate the capital for more frivolous spending. Perhaps it's because those that are losing out don't have the right to strike (or will incur massive public derision if they do) or perhaps it's because the bureaucratic stuff generates a lot of easily measurable outcomes which can then be twisted to show how well whatever procedure is being conducted that these changes are occurring. Either way it seems like a crying shame that this is happening and it seems to be doing so without much opposition.
Or perhaps I'm just being paranoid!
JR
