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

My Weakly Rant

“When I was a child, I longed to have a bicycle and prayed to God to give me one. But then I realised that God didn’t work like that, so I stole one instead and then prayed to God to forgive me.”

As if to confirm that we are being strangled by red tape, I read that GBH (Gordon-Bennet Heathcliff) has carved himself a niche in history by introducing 2,823 new laws during his first year in office, and this despite his repeated promises to cut red tape.

But it not just the sheer volume of legislation, it is the armies of officials that will be required to enforce them and even then, the quality of the enforcement leaves one reeling in disbelief.

My little brother – who has a degree in planting trees – proudly tells me that he is now, after a three month correspondence course, a registered ‘Access Auditor’ and has a phd to prove it.

This is wonderful and means that I (an architect, with a qualification which takes twenty-eight times as long to acquire - on a good day, and is then only referred to as ‘a diploma’) now have to submit all my plans to him so that he can check that my buildings have entrances.

His salary for this onerous task is higher than mine and carries an index-linked pension, subsidised mortgage, car allowance and all the other benefits that local authority officials steep in.

You can be sent to prison for four-and-a-half years for talking to a hands-free telephone when driving a car (if you are involved in a fatal accident). Fair enough! Personally, I think that ANYONE using a mobile telephone – hands-free or otherwise – in anything other than the privacy of their own home or office, should be incarcerated in specially-built prisons for mobile phone users. But that’s not the point.

It’s NOT in the least bit ‘fair’ as it is apparently long way short of a custodial sentence to drive into people and kill them because your head is under the dashboard looking for a tissue to clean you makeup and merely a minor misdemeanour to deliberately run into someone on a bicycle and kill them. The crime is not killing people, it’s what you were doing while you were killing them and appears to be more significant than either the motive or the offence (of manslaughter or murder). It’s all in the rules – somewhere.

When are they going to make it illegal for drivers to talk to passengers in vehicles? Shouldn’t all vehicles be redesigned so that the driver sits in a soundproof capsule or maybe drivers should be accompanied by a local authority ‘speech enforcement officer’ on all journeys to ensure that they remain silent?

And what about satellite navigation? We have already had a patient die after the ambulance driver got lost because he didn’t know the way to the hospital and relied on satellite navigation that either he didn’t understand or didn’t work. Nobody thought of questioning whether it might be a good idea if ambulance drivers had some idea as to how to get to hospitals BEFORE they were let lose collecting patients.

Moroccan ambulances have the words ‘MAD Assistance’ emblazoned all over them – maybey ‘Ol Blighty should consider doing the same.

But - what will happen when someone gets killed because the driver is so intent on looking at the sat-nav screen that they don’t see someone standing in the middle of the road in front of them? Perhaps they will sue the manufacturers of the equipment.

Very recently, a child was tragically killed in an accident whilst canoeing with her father and brothers. Somehow the reports implied that this was ALL the fault of the man who hired them the canoe. He didn’t have any ‘training’! Training in WHAT for heavens sake?

Just as one now appears that you require local authority officials and the emergency services present if you want to organise an egg-and-spoon race at the village fete, every last thing that we do has to be done in such a way that it can be supervised and checked and someone else can be blamed for acts of crass stupidity!

Parents cannot take their children swimming alone unless they have a certificate from the regulatory authorities certifying that they are NOT someone who, it has taken me three days to discover, is a described using a word that is banned by auntie and needs to be delete before I am permitted to publish this!!!! (Which rather proves my point – one cannot even describe the law without breaking it!!!) The mother of a severely handicapped child is not allowed to accompany her child to school in a taxi (which she needs to do as she and her husband are the ones trained in the administration of the child’s medication) because she has not been ‘vetted’ ad even then – it appears – she still has to be accompanied by some form of supervising ‘officer’.

Is the time coming when EVERY parent will require the attendance of a local authority enforcement officer, a paramedic and a policeman whenever they take their children anywhere?

Costermongers can no longer sell fruit and vegetables unless they have been checked by the local authorities’ ‘kiwi-fruit size enforcement officers’ …………………….


Hang on – that was just one week’s news and we haven’t got to the silly season yet.