h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'd never treat my lawyer as a second class citizen, you wouldn't believe how much money he's already helped me earn since I've started suing people, having achieved official victimhood status.

We lesbians are rolling in it. Watch out you non victims; especially those north of Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian's Dyke surely?

Rolling in it? Speak for yourself, I'm still a penniless student trying to earn enough at C***ys to take out my young lady in some sort of style.

I'm all for equal rights... and not just equal rights for members of the legal community! Hopefully when I'm qualified I'll be able to help those who are discriminated against get compensation... because I may be a lawyer but I do have principles! All this homophobia coming from Christian groups at the moment makes me feel ashamed to call myself a Christian sometimes (albeit a very tolerant and hopefully not-scary one!)

To get things back on track, this thread isn't really about rights and suchlike; that's well-covered on other threads.

I wanted to discuss the stupefying amount of money and resources spent on a massive bureaucracy and the more ridiculous manifestations. I can obviously bring up reams of facts and figures on the subject, after all there are tens of thousands of civil servants employed to compile such statistics, but I wanted to hear about people's personal encounters with the nonsensical jobsworths.

For example:

The Care Standards Act 2000 is a piece of legislation enacted to prevent abuses in granny farming. However, in the zeal to weed out the unscrupulous, elderly people are suffering. For every double room in a care facility, there *must* be at least 8 single rooms. So obviously, there is a limit to how many double rooms are available in the "system". Now, many elderly couples in need of care have spent their entire lives sharing a bed so the idea of being seperated into twin rooms in their twilight years is not an attractive one. In 2005 the NHS said there were over 5000 elderly patients occupying hospital beds because no care home places were available due to this legislation.

It's not necessarily a matter of the old stuff being incompetent. Times change. Old regulations that were drafted in simpler times could not possibly have taken into account the way new technology affects peoples lives.

To take a example from close to home, the Fraud Act that came into affect last week was designed to close loopholes regarding electronic banking that the original Theft Act coudn't possibly have anticipated.

I also think that criticising bad implementation (the CSA and the one for pensioners whose pensions have gone belly up) on the basis that the regulations where unnecessary is specious at best and dishonest at worst.