Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (80493)	10/25/2004 6:32:16 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793914

We are on our way here. Adam Smith Blog Regulation is UK's biggest industry By Eamonn on Regulation It's official. Regulation is now Britain's biggest industry. David Arculus, the Chairman of Severn Trent Water and head of the government's Better [sic] Regulation Task Force, suggested last week that the cost of regulation to the UK economy was now more than £100 billion a year. That's more than a tenth of our gross domestic product (GDP). That's bigger than tourism (£76 billion), or our much-vaunted financial services industry (£66 billion), or even the National Health Service (£67 billion and rising - and rising). I no longer believe any of the politicians' promises to 'sweep away red tape'. Michael Heseltine, another businessman and self-made millionaire, tried it when Industry minister in the 1980s. His deputy, Neil Hamilton, headed up a commission to reduce regulation. Tony Blair has been talking about it for years. But the number and intrusiveness of regulation continues to grow. One reason, says regulation-watcher Christopher Brooker, it that "for every single new law, however made, it is always possible to find some seemingly altruistic justification. Once health and safety, conservation, the environment or fighting discrimination has been invoked, no one seems capable of asking whether the law actually achieves its purposes." In other words, any time you suggest suspending a regulation, scores of people will cover you with contempt. And you will be blamed for anything that goes wrong without the aegis of this 'protection'. The trouble is that, when you have tens of thousands of regulations, nobody can run a business free from the fear that they are transgressing some rule. So businesspeople waste vast amounts of money trying to find out what the rules are, and then making sure they have enough 'compliance officers' to stay on the right side of them. Unless you have any ideas, Britain's biggest industry is going to carry on growing even bigger.