When the state’s representatives does something truly egregious, like shoot someone dead for no good reason or seize someone’s property because they want it to be owned by someone who can pay more tax to them, it is pretty easy to get folks angry by recounting such tales and get them to nod solemnly and intone “The state is not your friend”.
Yet maybe the proverbial straw that will break the political camel’s back may be one of the seemingly endless encroachment of the state into the little stuff of everyday life:
I tell her about that infamous legal text, and the insane requirements it places on all of us who break our own windows, in our own homes, in the course of a loving affray, and how we are compelled, if we wish to replace that window, to become members of the Society of Window Replacers, called FENSA, provided we can stump up the fee and pass the exam; and if we cannot pass the FENSA exam, how we must go to the council and deposit a plan showing how we propose to replace our own windows, in OUR OWN HOMES, in line with Britain’s commitments under the Kyoto protocol on climate change, and having replaced the window how we must then go back to the council and get a COUNCIL APPOINTED WINDOW INSPECTOR to come out and verify that whatever we have done is in line with those international commitments. And is that not mad, ladies and gentlemen, I demand. Is that not the height of insanity?
And it is via this sort of thing that the state gets businesses to eagerly sign up to ever more regulation. I mean if you in the window replacement business, the last thing you want is ‘laymen’ getting the idea that they do not actually need you.
Yet there comes a time when even the post-Thatcher strategy of regulatory gradualism used by socialists of both left and right accumulates to the point it cannot escape the notice of any but the most obtuse Daily Mail reader or wilfully blind Guardianista. As it gradually dawns on people how few things they can do with their own land, labours and capital without navigating a labyrinth of regulations and permissions, maybe the already palpable uneasy I detect will turn into something which is actually politically useful for attacking the whole system.
And when might that point be reached? Good question.
Yes, but…
I’d point out that there are, and have been for many years, lots of repair and replacement jobs around the house that require this type of self-certification, or alternatively local government inspection, or sometimes mandatory inspection. Such things as certain plumbing and electrical installations, for example, are subject to self-certification or inspection, and if you don’t do it you’re liable to have trouble selling your house. All gas installations must be fitted by a qualified person. And so on.
Speaking as one who has bought property in the past and then spent a small fortune rectifying the problems caused by enthusiastic but completely talentless DIY enthusiasts, some of them potentially lethal, I can to an extent see the point of some of this regulation. Do it right, and you’ll sail through any inspection.
When might the point be reached when all this sort of thing causes the overthrow of the system? Never, to my mind. Firstly, most people don’t do this kind of work themselves so it doesn’t affect them anyway, and secondly enough people suffer from previous owners’ bodged DIY jobs that many people will see the point of this kind of rule.
Not what the libertarian wants to hear, I suppose, but frankly I don’t think anyone else really gets particularly bothered about this sort of thing. It’s a bit annoying for a small number of people, and simply doesn’t have any real impact on pretty much everyone else.
EG
Really? I thought it was a damn joke. If one runs a business, okay, I can see why they might need to pass inspections and follow guidelines and regulations – within reason – but a house is neither a business nor a vehicle which might put others in danger. Its a house. It will only only affect the resident. It sickens me.
And if it catches fire through shoddy wiring, floods through incompetent plumbing, collapses because of improper structural work, or explodes through negligent gas fitting, then perhaps one might say that it could indeed affect others. All of these things have happened, and people have been injured and suffered loss as a result. Yes, it’s just a house. But often there is another just a house a few yards away, built onto the side, or above/below in a block of flats.
Perhaps not justification for quite so petty a set of regulations as we have, but it’s not hard to see the general point.
EG
It is annoying enough that the penetration exists and is growing, it is even more frustrating when regulations contradict, either within a single layer of government or between layers.
**************************************
I had a house built a few years ago. There are at least two issues that frustrate the hell out of me, both borne by over regulation. It was just a small tri-level and my wife and I were planning on using a third bedroom as on office, having two desks and some book cases etc. The layout of the room was such that there were only a few ways to organize it, assuming that the useless ‘stoop’ placed under the window was removed. I told the builder I didn’t want one put in. They looked at me like I was from Mars, and they said “But, it’s Code”. Oh, excuse me, I thought this was my house. How silly of me. The one in the model house was made from wood, so I didn’t care too much as I would just remove it and move on. When my house was built, it was made with poured concrete as part of the foundation. Now there is one, and only one, way to layout that particular room, which is not the way we wanted to do it. Small issue? It pisses me off nearly every day (I spend a fair amount of time in that room).
The second is the Code that there has to be a fire detector on every floor. Not only that, they are so sensitive they go off at the drop of a hat. As I said, the house is small, and the detector on the main floor is a scant 8 feet from the dectector for the upper floor, it is highly redundant. The ‘small issue’? The damn thing goes off every time I boil a pot of water or set the oven above 300*. It scares the hell out of the dogs, and the only two options are to wait it out, or open up the house, which is a bit inconvenient in a cold Wisconsin winter. The real loser is my wife who has to listen to me wail on about the fascists every time we have pasta.
So the question is when is enough too much? If one is talking about electrical wiring or pressure plumbing, MAYBE the bureaucrats were on to something. But then again, once situated, they have to have something to do afterward. Then they come up with these bright ideas. Perhaps it is the concept that it is a self perpuating thing. Once the basic safety is dealt with, there they still are, needing Good works to do, and budgets to justify. This is when Statism is really an industry unto itself. And its growth eventually will consume all.
I somehow really doubt that this will break the camel’s back, or even give the camel a mild stoop. Yes, requiring people to get an inspector in to check their windows is doubtless a violation of people’s rights to have badly-fitted windows, but, even then, I think the council are rather largely relying on you telling them about said window to begin with.
Perhaps I am wrong, and the council are secretly using all of those CCTV cameras we have nowadays to watch out for illicit window maintennance, but I really do doubt it. I can’t fault the principled argument that this law is a Bad Thing, but I’m sure there must be many many worse things to complain about.
The rallying cry of the libertarian revolution is not going to be the right to repair one’s own windows without fear of the council wanting to take a look at them.
toolkien:
Why don’t you replace the detectors with less sensitive models, or get more discriminating models, or move them on the same floor to a spot where they don’t go off all the time?
I had a similar problem with one of the smoke detectors in my house – move it three feet, problem gone but the detector’s still there, still works.
Departing on a flight of fancy for a moment, supposing we had an anarcho-capitalist society in which you could do what you wanted to your house. Presumably, you’d still want it insured, right? In order to reduce claims (and hence to keep profits high, dividends paid and shareholders happy), might not the insurers insist on certain structural requirements, fitting of smoke detectors, etc., as a condition of insurance? Of course, maybe you’d find an insurer who didn’t insist on these things, but his premium would be higher because he’d be paying out more often (assuming he could stay in business).
Not to be picky, but just because the state makes a regulation doesn’t mean a corporation would NOT make it given the chance.
EG
But it doesn’t work.
A good friend of mine and his wife we blown sky-high a couple of years ago when their house exploded, the result of a natural-gas leak. He has since died of unrelated causes, but his wife took over a year to recover and is still horribly scarred.
All of the gas piping was done by licensed and qualified gas fitters and passed inspection. I saw the remains of the house and the reason for the failure in the gas pipe was so blindingly obvious, even to me, that it beggars belief that it was done by a ‘professional’ and passed inspection.
I’ve similarly seen what passes for ‘professional’ electrical work, every bit as dangerous and bad.
For those reasons, I do all my own electrical, plumbing and gas work. It’s not hard to do right with some basic training, and as a homeowner, I have a powerful incentive to do it right, or certainly, much righter than a ‘professional’.
I just got finished delaing with an ‘inspector’ who came to sign off on a propane installation. I showed him the required pressure test, and it was obvious to me that he didn’t know inches of water column from inches of bicycle chain. He just looked, smiled and signed. How was I made safer by this? The vast majority o building inspection is nothing but busywork which does little to improve safety – safety lies in the quality of the design and wokmanship, and a cursory ‘inspection’ will seldom find flaws in either.
llater,
llamas
“Not to be picky, but just because the state makes a regulation doesn’t mean a corporation would NOT make it given the chance.”
Yes but one is forced on you and the other you sign up for of your own free will. I’d rather comply with the insurance company to lower my rate, than do it because the goverment knows what’s best for me.
The issue between the difference between a voluntary insurance agreement and Force has already been addressed.
***Why don’t you replace the detectors with less sensitive models, or get more discriminating models, or move them on the same floor to a spot where they don’t go off all the time?***
1) Why must my house be prefitted with them in the first place? I didn’t ask for them, they just are built in and I’m charged for them (with a bump I’m sure).
2) The dectecor is at the highest point of a cathedral ceiling, again right next to two stair cases, one up, one down, hence why it is only a few feet from another detector (in fact two if you count the one that is just at the bottom of the down staircase. In essence, there three detectors are not that far from each other.
3) The detector is set into the ceiling a bit, so I would have to prepare the new spot and repair the old spot. Rather an inconvenient thing in my estimation. But I guess in a world where people are hopping to the demands of the government, maybe most people wouldn’t mind a 4 hour home improvement project right out of the gate, for a new home that they’ve just had built.
I WILL do something about the detector one of these days and it likely will something to do with a hammer.
In the end, the only people who make out from this scam are dectector manufacturers (redundancy), builders (markup), and inspectors (raison d’etre). To rectify the situation, one I didn’t ask or contract for, I’m going to have to shinny up a ladder and risk breaking my neck to cure a problem someone else made, and of course made in toto across the board by people who are too removed from the particular situation too see what the cause and effect is. That is in a nutshell the problem with nearly all regulation. The cookie cutter approach to variable situations. Simply because the average person is too wrung out from working all day to fork over half their pay the yokels doesn’t mean they don’t resent them. That’s the crushing effect of Statism on the individual. Most just take it and lump it. I’m sure most people assume they aren’t going to change anything.
At the root of this IS liberty, and should be part of the battle cry. Liberty simply isn’t being tossed in jail for printing something unliked by the ruling junta. It’s how we conduct our daily lives. We (at least in the US) are now so cowwed and accustomed to such illogic that most just shrug their shoulders and move on, too complacent or too scared to rock the boat. Maybe, at the end of the day, they default to the belief that the bureaucrats must know better than the average schmuck.
If the lending banks and the insurance companies had to pay for inspections themselves, rather than expect the State to do it for them, I think you would see far less inpection incompetance.
Now, now, everyone. Mr. Gray is sure that the government wouldn’t make regulations unless they were necessary and helpful and that all government-certified craftsmen are honest and competent. And that all bridges are legitimately for sale by shady men in the dark of night.
Well, I’ve read the runes, observed the flight of birds, and I think we’re at the tipping point right now.
Patterns to look for:
– News stories appearing with increasing frequency, the common element of each being intrusive government. Proponents of intrusion losing the moral high ground, and beginning to sound panicked.
– “Controversial” laws to roll back state intrusion being proposed in parliament (and probably voted down by the Labour majority). The kill-a-burglar law might even pass.
– The precipitous rise of UKIP as a political force.
Oh, and following on from the posts above, I propose a manifesto suggestion to anyone in UKIP: repeal the following for DIY or bespoke homes: planning permission, green belt, all building codes not related to public safety (where “public” is read as excluding the house’s owner/occupier and family).
Here in the US it is a States Rights issue, sort of. Housing has to be inspected to see that it is up to state and local code, but who does the work is the owners business.
There is an indirect federal standard. It is impossible to get an insured mortgage on a home that doesn’t meet the code. A non-insured Mortage isn’t much easier. So if you build it, you will live in it, or rebuild it to code when it sells.
Of Course, you can look for a fool with money. Or someone who wants just the land. In America there aren’t all that many fools who haven’t already been seperated from their money. But there are a lot of people who think they will find the fool while he still has money left.
I’m building my own house on some land in Alabama. I have always wanted to try slip form construction. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll have a new garage for my vehicles.
Well, we in America still have bizarre things happen, especially with our courts. Like this where the State Supreme Court in Washington State ruled that it is illegal for a mother to eavesdrop on her minor daughter’s phone conversations. Violating privacy and all that.
It will take years, probably well over a decade, before UKIP becomes a serious electoral force in its own right. It might succeed in pulling the other parties (most likely the Tories) in the direction of smaller government, but it might simply split the vote. I don’t think libertarians command enough support to succeed without engaging in some kind of coalition with other interests; the Thatcher government represented something close to a coalition between libertarian-ish elements and traditional conservatives, though it proved to be an unstable mix.
Given that, even in the US, the trend of conservative policy has been away from libertarianism and towards big-government conservatism (something the Tories would probably be more comfortable with anyway) I find it unlikely that serious libertarian views will emerge victorious. Doubtless the Tories will roll back some of these measures if they ever get back into power, but only enough to get the libertarian vote.
I think a better way for libertarians to get their agenda heard would be to pressure all parties on these issues; even Labour would have to pay some attention if it were shown that serious numbers of votes could be won or lost. The US presidential elections showed how the internet could be used to organise previously disparate groups into a cohesive electoral block, able to support certain candidates and influence them. I think it’s a model that might just work in Britain, especially given the way our electoral system works.
Libertarians in Britain and the States must go prospecting among the apathetics: the rising numbers, especially among the young, who don’t buy the tired old “choice” between parties of careerists any more.
Concessions designed to raise turnout and make it look as if we still care, such as PR in some elections, give libbos a new chance of getting noticed and elected. But will they take it? The crowd round here seem more interested in fantasising about private spaceships and slurping wine than in licking themselves into a coherent movement.
JM – so it begins: Boris on BBC2’s Newsnight last night, flabbergasting Paxo with the passing mention of the fact that from New Year, you won’t be allowed to ‘change a lightswitch’ in your own home.
So much of this sort of issue could be far more effectively left to market forces. Insurance premiums drive a lot of building code adjustments and have done so for years. If folk want to slash their heating bills, then loft and window insulation makes financial sense. The govt is, as usual, following best market practice.
Of course, banning people from doing all kinds of DIY makes sense in a country in which more and more people are being infantilised by a fear or risk, and hence your average Brit lacks the knowledge to change a lightbulb.
No wonder it costs a fortune to hire a plumber or sparkie these days.
I don’t get it. This sounds like the kind of nonsense that is unenforceable, and that only dweebs and dorks comply with.
Or are you saying that one cannot buy glass in Britain without a permit ?
Well, he’s wrong. From January 1 2005 the replacement of switches and sockets on existing circuits will *not* need to be done by a certified contractor, but the addition of a new circuit will need certification. It’s covered by Part P of the Building Regulations, in case you want to go and check for yourself. Self-certification is, of course, possible (also under the same regulation).
To be honest, how many private homeowners add a new circuit to their domestic wiring? The vast majority of people needing such a thing done will hire a contractor to do it.
Apparently, each year an average of 10 DIY-ers are killed and 750 injured by dodgy electrical work. Looking into this further, according to RoSPA no fewer than 1600 people manage to get hospitalised each year through accidents with wallpaper, of all things.
EG
So, not only do you Brits have no rights to determine what you can do with your property, people can come in and take it from you whenever they want and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
Can you say Communism yet? The Marxists took over, right under your noses. Collectivists don’t believe in property rights. And being statists, they don’t believe individuals have any rights either.
“Can you say Communism yet?”
Yes it’s only four syllables – if you look the word up in a dictionary, you will find a pronunciation guide (though I personally would refrain from attempting to pronounce that captial C) – does this help you?
I like Americans, but you sometimes act as though you are the only people who know how to say ‘freedom’ – which incidentally, the majority of you have yet to learn how to pronounce correctly in the Queen’s English. 😉
Hey, Mike, you’re showing some spirit! Attaboy. Teach a few more of your countrymen the knack, and direct it at your government, and we should see some changes around there shortly.
Well, I was burgled recently, the thieves getting in by smashing a first-floor window. It was around 5 by 4 feet and heavily double-glazed.
I called the emergency repair people who manufactured and fitted the replacement pane in 3 days. I did not contact the council nor, at any point, did the company suggest I had to.
A pretty pointless law, IMO, if no-one pays any attention to it….