Wasting police time

Many decades ago the police and our government used to have a bit of common sense. Unfortunately that has disappeared. The police are either taking very little notice of real crime or are behind a desk dealing with mountains of paperwork.

The police waste 56 million hours a year on paper work. If this red tape was cut maybe our police could actually do a real job and arrest the real criminals. Something tells me with the mentality they have now that they would probably waste their time telling shop owners not to sell sandwiches to children.

The police could also waste their time making signs telling people not to commit crime. Quite why anyone would not know this remains a mystery. The government puts up daft signs too. If a bunker is supposed to be a secret it may not be the best idea to have a sign saying ‘Secret Nuclear Bunker’ which points to the secret nuclear bunker. Maybe it’s not supposed to be a secret and that’s just the name of the bunker?

EU to destroy restaurant sector

If Gordon Brown is serious about cutting red tape then he has just been dealt a serious blow by the European Union. They want to force restaurant owners to include warning labels on their menus listing the full contents of all their dishes. Any restaurant that has secret ingredients in food like their source won’t be too happy especially now that the EU now wants all waiters to know all ingredients in every meal. In the end you will probably need an A Level just to be a waiter and we will end up with waiters getting about £10 per hour and destroying the restaurant sector.

EU guidelines, due to be published this year, could also lead to a ban on sales of home-made jam and cakes.

Amateur cooks will be barred from baking for village fetes unless their produce is marked with a detailed contents sticker instead of just the date on which it was made.

Why are we in the EU? It costs us £114,000 a minute and we get stupid laws like this. It’s only going to get worse when they get their way with the new constitution but atleast we have a few MPs standing up for us including the former Europe minister Keith Vaz.

40% of children can't do basics

Four out of 10 children left primary school this summer without mastering the basics of reading, writing and maths, figures showed today.

Ministers hailed the latest national curriculum test results as the "best ever", after a one percentage point rise across English, maths and science.

But results in reading were no better than two years ago, while the proportion of children making the grade in writing showed no improvement since last year.

This is disgraceful especially when schools are cancelling subjects like PE, art, history and geography to concentrate on getting their pupils to pass. If they can’t get them to pass we should stop employing people as teachers who barely passed their own exams and stop giving teachers so much red tape.

Brown lies to businessmen (2?)

A drive to cut the regulatory burden on business and reform the risk-averse culture of government departments will be launched by the UK government on Wednesday.

Gordon Brown is determined to make action on red tape a higher government priority, in a bid to outflank the opposition Conservatives on a core business issue.

The prime minister has told the new Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to cut regulation across government, and inculcate a new approach to risk in public policy.

John Hutton, business secretary, will on Wednesday outline to MPs a wide-ranging plan for implementing assorted ministerial pledges, including a 25 per cent cut in the administrative burden imposed by government departments.

Errmmm… Mr Brown, didn’t you say you were going to do this in October? Infact you said almost the exact same thing but as I said last time you won’t be able to succeed without leaving the EU seeing as how most of our regulation comes from the EU.

With your past record I seriously doubt you will leave the EU. Maybe you and the Labour party should be given lessons in telling the truth just like the employees of the BBC?