On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 11:10:09 +0100, "IMM" wrote:




Best thing Tony has done so far - hand over control of interest rates to
the BOE, That was the highlight - it's been all down hill ever since!

the economy is the best it has been since WW2, constitutional change, the
most important and lots of simple social responsibility laws. They have to
stay.


I would agree that having the Bank of England in control of interest
rates was a good move, but only places it in line with most other
countries. Brown is largely ineffectual, so fortunately has not done
significantly damaged the economy.

Constitutional change is sufficiently important that changes should be
by referendum, not by cabinet reshuffle and hoping that nobody would
notice. Whether or not constitutional change is desirable, I very
much doubt whether the majority of the electorate who voted for the
government has in mind giving it the carte blanche that it imagines it
has.

Returning to the topic, have you read the report on the ODPM web site?

While this proposed legislation is not quite on the scale of tinkering
around with the constitution, it is of importance to a lot of home
owners and certainly to anybody in this NG.
Does it fall under your category of "simple social responsibility
laws"? In other words, do you think it's a good thing?

From the report:

- They received 490 replies of which 206 were from electrical
contractors.

However they did not take into account that this group represents a
vested interest in restricting who can carry out electrical work.


- 143 were forwarded to the Minister by MPs acting on behalf of their
constituents, including many that were from electrical contractors
(142).

If this were in the House of Commons, I would be suggesting that "they
are misleading the House" - We know the meaning of that coded
language. I wrote to them via my MP (and received a reply from the
minister). I know of at least two other people who also did who are
not electrical contractors and who were not in support of the
proposals either.
This means that either somebody can't add up, or something rather more
serious.

- The public respondents rejected the need for independent inspectors
and expressed concerns that the added costs of an independent
inspector on one or more occasions would deter the DIY worker and
those working in the grey/black economy from notifying work at any
time.

This was ignored as were a number of other comments submitted by the
public.

The report mentions that 63% of respondents were in favour of the
proposed legislation, but of course they omit the correlation between
that and the "main players" and "industry" groups.

One can deduce fairly easily that that correlation is quite clear.

So essentially, we have a situation where the government proposes to
go with the line of following the interests of trade associations, who
will gain financially and whose members will gain financially from it.
They actively campaigned to their members and through the trade press.

The general public was not made aware of it, as witnessed by the small
number of responses. Were there signs up in B&Q making people aware
of the effective demise of DIY electrical work? No.

I think that it's going to be quite interesting when the public at
large finds out about this and realises that once again they have been
ignored in favour of dogma.

... and you consider this to be socially responsible legislation?







..andy

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