Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

If I rewire my house I'll have to pay extra fees associated with part
pee now. Thats clearly a tax on safety.

Not when you put it like that. You're paying to have your amateur
workmanship checked by a professional.

(At excessive rates.) This is a tax because there is no reason to do
such work checks. Why? One might imagine there is need, but the death
rates show there is not. The death stats really are that plain (bear in
mind nearly all those quoted died from appliance faults, not fixed
wiring faults).

Whether someone works for money or for themselvs and how competent
someone is are 2 different things. I've lost count of the number of
professional sparks I've asked simple questions, only to hear how
little they really know.

There is of course also the question of why able and sometimes well
qualified people would need their work to be checked by the variably
capable and sometimes less qualified, esp in an area where death rate
tends to zero, and the work done by jo public has been shown by these
numbers to be not a safety problem in practice. Really its not
justified.

Lastly there is the reality that people greatly improving the safety of
their older installs will have significant costs added on for no
real-world gain, and this will result in less people doing the work,
thus greater dangers. You can couch it in terms that make it sound like
a check to improve safety, but the disappointing reality is more people
will die as a result of it, not less. Thus its nothing more than a tax
with occasionally fatal results. Ie a tax on safety.


NT