As you may have guessed, I’m fully on board with the Conservative and LibDem ideas of cutting back on some of Labour’s big scary stupid IT fuckups. And I can see why they’re being careful and considered about their approach. If either of them wins an election, they’ll have to deal with the mess of cancelling some (inevitably badly written) contracts with lots of wiggle room given where it doesn’t matter, and no wiggle room where it does matter.
Similarly, they’ll have to take on the massive job of sorting out the legislative nonsense behind those contracts. Which, given the unbelievably speed at which Labour vomited out badly written laws, is going to take time and effort. If you do it the conventional way, that is.
I wouldn’t do it the conventional way. If, by some freak of process, I was in charge tomorrow, I would simply draw up three lists.
- Laws to be repealed immediately.
- Laws to be repealed as soon as sensible legislation can be brought in to replace it.
- Laws which will be allowed to remain.
List 1 will be massive, list 2 will be massive, and list 3 will be very small indeed.
On list one, the list of laws to be repealed immediately, one would find the majority of anti-terror legislation from the last twelve years. One would also find all mentions of the National Identity Register and the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. Every quango whose title contains the world ‘Excellence’ would be listed. One would have to wade through a myriad of budgets and EU instruments before you found the unusual and interesting acts that sit at the bottom of the list; the likes of the Right to Roam, the right to smoke on your own property and that sort of relatively harmless thing.
List two would contain the nitty gritty: the laws that are necessary for the running of the country but have been amended beyond usefulness. Laws here would be amended to bring back the Passport Agency and the allow accountants to work for their clients rather than the state. The system of taking tax and then paying it back in credits would be tweaked to become: taking less tax in the first place. Any military command with the word ‘joint’ in the title would be examined, and then likely found wanting and wound up. Devolution, while a wonderful idea, would be tweaked so that the issue of English legislation is made somewhat less farcical.
List three confounds me. I know, logically, that in twelve years in power, the current government must have done something that doesn’t need undone or fixed. The law of averages states so. I’m just at a loss as to what…
Anyway: three lists. Once those have been actioned, then the business of me running the country could begin in earnest. And wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?
If you give Land & Property Services a great big kick up the arse you’ve got my support.
Under list 1, LPS would be immediately reverted to its constituent parts: Ordnance Survey would remain as Ordnance Survey, VLA, RCA and Lands Registry would all remain separate, pending further investigation as to the actual point of them all.
Does that count as a sufficient kick up the arse?
If a person has the good fortune to own a piece of land and that person wishes to use that piece of land to make themselves a modest living and if they, using their own hard-earned, do something with that ground to assist them in that purpose, then why should the government come around and say, oh look! a nice polytunnel you bought yourself for ten grand. Guess what? We’re going to charge you an extra six grand in rates per year because you’ve made such a wonderful improvement in your property. Try and make a living selling clematis out of that why don’t you?
You know what I might do? Get in a bulldozer, knock the whole heap down and live in a yurt.
Six grand? Sweet jeebus. That’s above and beyond the call of common sense, that is. Six hundred would be above and beyond the call of common sense for crying out loud… What justification did they use for that?
They pulled it out of their asses altho’ it is a big tunnel. There has been no final decision yet but it’s scary and upsetting.
I would say so. You have my sympathy. Boo to them.