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Clarke’s war on ‘red tape’

The Conservatives pledged today to cut the burden of red tape on businesses,

Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke announced ‘far-reaching and ambitious plans for reducing the regulatory burden on businesses’.

He said that since 1997, the Labour Government has introduced an unprecedented number of new regulations, which have ‘undermined social responsibility and reduced the UK’s economic competitiveness’.

The increase in regulation had not only hit businesses, but increased the bureaucratic burden on individuals, charities, public bodies and social enterprises. This has hindered innovation and social action and has also led to a rapid increase in government spending on administration and inspection regimes.

A different way was possible, he said.

Mr Clarke told the conference, “ The burden of red tape and quangos is a millstone around Britain’s neck, stifling our economic recovery and playing havoc with our public services too. We need the right kind of regulation, based on giving people the responsibility to make judgements not forcing them to tick boxes and fill in endless forms.

“ Under a Labour Government the regulatory burden has got out of control – costing more than £77 billion at the last count. It’s high time the Government got off people’s backs and started helping them instead. These new policies are the biggest and most serious attempt to lighten the load and I hope they’re the spark that lights the bonfire of red tape.”

His proposals:

• introduce a powerful new ‘star chamber’, chaired by Ken
Clarke, which will enforce a stringent ‘one in – one out’
requirement where any new law must include cuts in old laws which, together, produce a net 5% reduction in the regulatory burden;

• allow the public to nominate unpopular regulations to be
reviewed by Parliament;

• apply a ‘sunset clause’ to all regulators and regulatory
quangos;

• strengthen Parliamentary accountability of regulators and
inspectorates;

• publish detailed information about the expenditure and
outcomes achieved by local councils, so that the public can see if their council is delivering value for money;

• curb the powers’ of intrusive inspectors by allowing firms
to arrange their own, externally audited inspections and, providing they pass, to refuse entry to official inspectors thereafter; and

• consult carefully on changes that may be required to the
employment and discrimination tribunals system, to ensure the system offers fast, cheap and accessible justice, and that it is fair to all sides.

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What struck me was the “automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour“. How on earth is that going to work?

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what a shame Boris Johnson won’t recognise his shameful background in the same way.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6409757.stm

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The main objectives of the INDECT project are:

* to develop a platform for: the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence,

* to develop the prototype of an integrated, network-centric system supporting the operational activities of police officers, providing techniques and tools for observation of various mobile objects,

* to develop a new type of search engine combining direct search of images and video based on watermarked contents, and the storage of metadata in the form of digital watermarks,

The main expected results of the INDECT project include:

* to realise a trial installation of the monitoring and surveillance system in various points of city agglomeration and demonstration of the prototype of the system with 15 node stations,

* construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, UseNet groups, file servers, p2p networks as well as individual computer systems,

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There are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in the UK. That’s 1 for every 14 people.

There are 1million CCTV cameras in London. For every 1,000 crimes, only 1 crime A YEAR is solved. If you spend your day in a city in the UK, you could be viewed up to 300 times.

The whole San Francisco city has only 71 CCTV cameras.

Corby Council, UK has 90 CCTV cameras to catch people peeing against the lamp posts.

Dublin + San Francisco + Johannesburg + Boston have only 1,110 CCTV -cameras altogether.

Wandsworth Borough, UK proudly installed and maintains 1,113 CCTV cameras on their streets – to catch people peeing against the lamp posts. ( Last time I was in Wandsworth, I was busting but didn’t dare hitch up my tartan mini jupe to pee against a lamp post in case those pervs in the CCTV Camera Watch Tower could see me Yorkshire Pudding for free, to be honest with you all ).

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2661098/The-Sun-dossier-of-Labour-failures.html

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