Amount of time that the state allows you to comply with rules when the rules change? As short a time as they can get away with.

Amount of time that the state takes for itself when the rules change? No end of time. One example is the way that government aims to break the law ‘only’ 10% of the time. How far would I get if I aimed to comply with only 10% of the law on murder?

Another wonderful example is in the police forces from across the UK continuing to fail to comply with the law on data retention. When being told that the data of innocent people couldn’t be held without reason, they said “nah, we’ll keep doing that until the government can find a way to make it legal for us to do so”.

Again: if a private citizen used that as a defence, they would be rightly laughed out of court. When an agency of the state does it, it doesn’t even surprise us any more.

Isn’t that all quite depressing?