Why do we invent laws?

God knows we have enough laws, rules, regulations don't we? I'm talking about the UK by the way - other countries may be more blessed. Perhaps you do live in that Utopia where there are but two laws: (1) don't hurt anybody and (2) don't steal their stuff. If so, do please let me know where it is.

 

Parliament is constantly passing new laws. If I could be bothered, I'd look up the figures for new laws passed each year but really it's too depressing. And what makes it even worse is that it's often not even parliament that's doing the legislating, at least not directly. What tends to happen is that a bit of "enabling" legislation is passed which then allows the government to enact dozens of subsidiary regulations at various points in the future without the tiresome need to have them actually approved by our glorious elected representatives. And worse again, they hardly ever repeal old laws so every year the towering mass of rules just gets bigger.

 

But despite this regulatory overkill that we find ourselves burdened with, we seem to love to invent non-existent laws. I can't be sure about this, but I reckon it's a peculiarly British hobby although I can't quite put my finger on the national trait that gives rise to it. Something to do with the orderly nature of our society, coupled with the general loss of autonomy (the "computer says no" generation) which makes us want to assert a position of power over others wherever possible. This latter facet of our character may be due precisely to this massive and recent rise in legislation as whenever there's a new law passed, that invariably means there's one more thing you can't do, hence your autonomy is chipped away and hence the need to invent a new power base for yourself.  So paradoxically, the more laws you have, the more people invent new ones, and vice versa.

 

Actually, when I say "power base" I'm making mountains out of molehills a little. The sort of fantasy laws I'm talking about are usually minor things but they just give the enforcer that little bit of a lift and make life just that little bit more annoying for the enforcee.

 

So what sort of things am I talking about then? Well this piece was partly inspired by a comment on another piece to the effect that people were fond of wrongly blaming "health and safety" for all sorts of mythical obligations. This is certainly true and the Health and Safety Executive actually have a "myth busters" page on their web-site I believe to combat this sort of thing. Well done them but unfortunately this category of invention is largely beyond their control. The problem here is the judges, and of course their best mates, the lawyers.

 

The judges are perhaps the best example of those who seek to over-assert themselves in the face of legislative wing-clipping. The more that the government says that there's no truth in such and such a rumour that you must do X or face the slammer, the more likely are the judges to award damages because someone tripped over a paving stone or ruined a blouse after spilling curry on it (the menu omitted to say "warning: some of this food may leave irremovable stains"). We used to have a good chuckle at how this sort of thing only happened in the USA (MacDonald's in hot coffee shock) but like most things American, we have imported it into the UK.

 

So thanks to our learned friends, insurance companies will put reams of stuff in the small print of their policies, compelling you to put warnings on your menus or coffee cups or whatever, failing which they will not pay out. Which could be very bad news indeed. This is what gives rise to the "got to do that, it's bloody health and safety" business, not the boys at the H&S Executive. Of course what people should really be saying is "got to do that, it's them bloody judges" but the effect's the same. 

 

But that's just one area. What else is there? Well I'm going to list a few things that pop into my head and will try and update in future posts. Do please add your own. In fact I feel a whole new web-site coming on! Let's hope someone's not got there first. Here goes:

 

1.  Tenancy agreements: I know a letting agency whose agreements provide for a witness signature but this is not required in the vast majority of cases. They know this but won't change it as they feel compelled to use a standard form provided by some trade association or other. Or perhaps they're just too lazy. Also, they think that landlords have to have insurance (they don't); that they have to provide copies of insurance documents to tenants (they don't) and that all electrical appliances have to be regularly tested (they don't).

 

2. I was once told by a work "colleague" that people were legally obliged to attend and pass some council-run course before they could drive a minibus. Not true. What makes it worse is that it's the nature of your licence which determines this but the person trying to boss me around didn't know this so could well have been sanctioning illegal minibus drivers.

 

3. Smoking in hotel rooms is illegal: not true. Hotel rooms are one place you can still smoke. Now, the hotel may impose its own smoking ban but that's a different matter - they shouldn't hide this behind those annoying "smoking in these premises is illegal" stickers they put up. Take a marker pen with you and write "not true" on them.

 

4. Pubs: one or two things here. "Kids under 18 can't drink alcohol". Not true. They can't legally be served alcohol but when you're 16 you can drink various alcoholic things with a meal. Also: "kids under 14 not allowed in pubs". Not true any more, although it used to be and some of us think it might be a good idea if it was again!

 

5. Smoking again: the smoking ban is an EU thing and applies across Europe. Not true. The rules vary from country to country. You can smoke in pubs in Belgium, under the very eyes of those swarming Eurocrats who hang out there. Maybe that's why.

 

6. You can't kill foxes: yes you can: they're a bloody nuisance. Just not with dogs.

 

7. All buildings which might be used by the public must have full disabled access, etc. Nope. The Disability Discrimination Act provides all sorts of get out clauses. We had premises used by the "public" for many years and we never did anything about disabled access nor, in fairness, did any council jobsworth ever tell us to.

 

Well that's enough to be going on with, more fantasy laws anon. In the meantime, I must get to work on that web-site and watch the £millions roll in... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Festival report: Cropredy - Nik Kershaw

Hello there you in your denim shorts and wellies uniform - how's the festival season for you this year? Ours has been limited to Cropedy, thanks for asking. The Hop Farm is no more; there was no one worth shelling out for at Lounge on the Farm; V and Reading simply too much like a war zone for the more mature festival goer; failed once again to get tickets for Glastonbury. On this last point, what's the secret here? Our boy and many of his friends got them as did a number of people one reads about who claim to go every year. But for us, despite being welded to the Internet and phone with military precision from 5 minutes before the allotted time for Glasto ticket sales - nowt. Not a sausage. Again. Is there some cunning filter in the ticket sales process which, via cutting edge artificial intelligence, determines that you're too old/fat/boring for Glasto? Or perhaps our rural telephone wires, having been nibbled by badgers and entangled with the roots of various crops, are just not up to competing with those equipped with this super-mega-speed fibre optic whatnot.  

 

So anyway, we made do with Cropredy last weekend. The weather was great (again) which was just as well as the musical line-up was thin in places: Romeo's Daughter anyone? How about Martin Barre, the Dunwells or Brooks Williams? Thought not. The reason for this may be that they blew the budget on Alice Cooper. A spectacular coup and the old snake charmer didn't disappoint. And I must mention 10cc. Despite having only Graham Gouldman left from the original line-up they are just wonderful; do not write them off as washed-up has-beens - go and see them if you have the chance. But the act I really wanted to bring to your attention was Nik Kershaw.

 

 

"Little" Nik Kershaw goes large at Cropredy

 

I guess you've got to be the wrong side of 40 to remember little Nik's heyday which was in the early '80s when he had a decently long string of hits. He was marketed as a spiky-haired pretty boy Duran-a-like which may have done the trick for his chart success but didn't do much for his long term credibility rating. Consequently, those of us who were snobbishly into more weightier sounds took little notice. Until, that is, I heard the song Human Racing on the radio. My first thought was that it was Stevie Wonder, partly because of the sound of his voice (and maybe the sonic limitations of my radio) but also because of the strength of the melody which was, and remains, absolutely beautiful. 

 

So imagine my surprise when I discovered it wasn't penned by Little Stevie Wonder but by Little Nicky Kershaw (and he is little). This was about the same time that I used to bore anyone in earshot with my prediction that George Michael, then famous as a prancing spray tan disco boy with a shuttlecock down his shorts, would come to be known as a major talent. This was on the basis of a series of sensational melodies under the Wham brand. (Here's a conundrum for you: if Andrew Ridgley contributed nothing to Wham, how come that's when Georgie M made all his best records?) So on this basis, the same surely applied to Nik K who would one day shake off the shackles of the record company marketing boys and bestride Tin Pan Alley like a colossus, Ivor Novello and Grammy awards tumbling from his overburdened arms.

 

But it didn't quite work out like that (a big hit for Chesney Hawks aside). I wonder why not? I bet Nik does too. Funny old world, this pop music lark. How can you be demonstrably such a good songwriter and not clean up? Let me just bore you with a bit of detail on Human Racing. I've always liked to knock out the first few lines on the keyboard but only now have I sat down and worked out the whole thing. This in itself is saying something because, as anyone with a decent ear for music will attest, it normally takes about as long to work out how to play a song as it does to listen to it. But not in the case of Human Racing. It starts in A minor (but resolving on A major), moves swiftly to D before, after  a brief dalliance with A minor again, moving into the key of F, which is where the verse ends up. But not content with that, Nik modulates abruptly into Ab for the chorus and contrives to end it on a kind of Bb 9th chord, thereby giving him the basis for that semitone drop at the end of the chorus back down to the A, which is of course where we came in.

 

Yes alright, I know a series of tricky chords and unusual key changes does not of itself a good song make but believe me, all this stuff helps to explain just why Human Racing sounds so good. If you haven't heard it for a while (or ever), I urge you to head straight for Spotify. And if you play an instrument, get it out and work your way through it using the above scribblings as your guide (that weird chord at the end of the second line in the verse is F augmented by the way). I guarantee your life will be enhanced as a result!

 

So back to Cropredy. Nik's show was excellent, although this year he was tout seul (the Alice Copper budget issue again?), which was inevitably a bit limiting. But he made a valiant attempt at all his hits, except, guess what? He didn't play Human Racing.

 

 

"Do Human Racing Nik!"

"With all those tricky key changes mate? You're joking!"