An over-regulated state?

In Switzerland just about every significant change in the law has to go to a referendum of the people, and, since people are generally resistant to change, nothing much changes in Switzerland, which, since 1848, has been just about the most stable democracy in the world, not to mention the richest. The Swiss Parliament building, in Bern, is tiny compared to the Palace of Westminster, and the Swiss civil service comprises basically two girls, a typewriter and a tin of biscuits. And the country seems to rub along pretty well. There are, of course, government departments, such as the Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport, which I think is marvellous ("today haf we invaded been? Nein? Gut! Zen let us ze football play"), but they're probably looked after by the two girls in between coffee breaks.

And then look at us. We are also a bicameral state. We have 635 MPs, a colossal Upper Chamber and a vast civil service. This enormous machine can only function if the government generates enough new legislation and new regulations to keep the civil service busy, and, of course, itself busy, otherwise people would start asking questions, wouldn't they? (I know I would.) But how much of it is really necessary for good governance? Not much, I think. Ask any teacher - a worthwhile profession, teaching, you might think - how much time is spent actually teaching, and how much looking up the rule book. Or ask a social worker. Both professions lament the falling standards of new entrants, and is it any surprise? Who worth her or his salt would want to work in these over-regulated and undervalued professions if there was any alternative? Governments that interfere in social affairs sow the seeds of discontent, and reap the harvest. Left to themselves, societies are quite good at self-regulation. But once nanny is in charge of every little detail of life, people are too ready to hand over responsibility to nanny and a breed of victims is created.

Have you ever worked in a small company that grew bigger, and in the process of growing found it necessary to have an Admin Department, and a Personnel (oops!, sorry, Human Resources) Department, which then took over the company? Bureaucracies are self-sustaining - they need people to count the paper-clips and check the clock-cards. Their skills are eminently transferable (after all, if you can count baked beans in the newspaper industry you do the same in the nuclear power industry), and there is enormous competition for the top jobs, which drives the salaries up into the stratosphere. Yet what bureaucrat has ever added anything, even a millionth of a gram, to human happiness?

I mention all this because I found out today, too late, that I could have gone to a neighbouring town to be Put on Film with a Short Sentence in support of our local council's drive to eliminate hostility towards minority groups from our fair borough. And at that I issue a hollow laugh.

Now, even allowing for the fact that the idea that a local authority, which is at bottom the sort of outfit that invented the camel, could ever change anything at all that would be of even moderate use to mankind, is ridiculous, I allow myself this hollow laugh, because round here some minorities understand the system very well indeed, thank you, and attempt to exploit it to their own advantage.

Let us take for example our local Community Safety Partnership, a body which, though completely lacking in teeth, is empowered to intervene when there is potential racial tension, or sex-orientation tension, or neighbour tension. Now the Partnership is not a court, but an initial part of a process of which mediation is the first possible stage, and all it takes is for a victim of racial intimidation, or homophobic [what a ridiculous word - "fear of the same"] intimidation, or any other form of bullying, as for example between neighbours, to complain, and the wheels are set in motion.

It was to the Partnership that I was "invited" last year, together with two other families, because a neighbour had complained that we had victimised him because he was gay, and as you can imagine it was a very anxious time for all of us (one young wife with four children was reduced to taking sedatives after being verbally abused in the street by the complainant and his partner on at least two occasions, and having the complainant's car aimed at her -as it was also at me), and I had had to suffer 24-hour TV and CD noise at full blast while his house was empty, or being hosed in the back garden or having my washing watered by hosepipe when he thought no-one could see him, and all in all, it was a very unpleasant two years, during which time most of us lost at least a stone in weight. And it was all because I had objected to his plans to build a 50-metre, nine-room extension to his semi-detached 2-bed bungalow.

When I talked to friends about this neighbour problem it was like turning an iceberg upside - down - so many of them had had, or were having, nightmares of their own. This is the undetected and unprotected state of affairs in society today - not the obvious bullies who win elections for the BNP, but the ones that live next door to you and make your life a misery in secretive and nasty ways.

And it is precisely these people who walk around with smug expressions on their faces, because they are protected, and we, the real victims of bullying and oppression, aren't.

There is a Commandment, I seem to remember, about not giving false witness. But, even in the 21st century, there is no redress for victims of false witness, and there is something very seriously wrong here if a body which is set up to eliminate prejudice and intimidation is utterly powerless when there is a glaring example of it.