Part P the reality.

[doozer]

What you are essentially saying is that electrical work should be completely unregulated because the current system is wrong. That's bizzare. To use an analogy: everyone (ok not quite everyone but we'll pretend) speeds on motorways. Ergo the current system of fines and points isn't working. Should we therefore give up and say people should drive whatever speed they like on motorways? I would say that it would be better to modify the system so that it does work.

We have, I admit, fostered a nanny state attitude which I completely agree is wrong however I am at a bit of a loss to know how to teach common sense. To me common sense would be "don't touch the wiring of your house unless you are confident you know what you are doing" because after all you can end up with more than burnt fingers if you get it wrong.

I would like to see an increase in the amount of vocational teaching in schools and a to see teachers stop portraying the attitude that if you don't read English Lit at Oxford you've failed.

[Doctor Evil]

"Nanny state", a political propaganda term used by the Tory party. And they all lap it up and use it, when it is not the case.

_________________________________________ Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 120,000 groups Unlimited download

to open account

[bigcat]

I wonder where you get 1/4 from, from what I've seen so far I'd have thought it was much higher. Of the last 7 I can think of seeing, only 2 even looked compliant.

I'm sure it will be enforced, just as the weights and measures farce was. And our country will be once again the worse for it. At least our laws, imperfect as they may be, are a lot better than in some countries.

NT

[Owain]

"Gary Cavie" wrote | Part R: Weekly rubbish bags can only be placed outside, | ready for collection, by a government licenced waste | placement technician

This is going the other way. It used to be government waste placement technicians hoisted the bucket on their shoulders, carried it to the lorry and emptied it and then brought it back and replaced it inside the gate with the lid on, whistling and proffering a cheerful Morning Squire.

Now you the householder have been given the freedom to sort your rubbish into four different coloured plastic bags, three different coloured plastic boxes, and one paper tag each year for the christmas tree, and put your different coloured boxes and bags out on different days on a three-week cycle (excluding christmas and bank holidays when households on red bag Wednesdays will be transposed with blue box Saturdays and should note that garden waste will only be collected if they've tied a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree)

Oh, and what does my local council do whilst spending £££££ per year on new wheelie bins? Illegally landfills the old ones.

Owain

[bigcat]

Part Zzz concerns the regulation of sleeping apparatus, known to the rest of us as beds. After 2007 it will not be permitted to sleep on non-compliant beds, and a vast mountain of scrapped beds is expected.

60 million of them in fact.

Part Zzz addresses 2 perceived problems: the lack of any restraint to the sleeper from falling out of bed, and the risk of falling onto a bed and sustaining back injury.

All new beds will require suficient restraint to prevent anyone getting out of bed while asleep. Since this has to cater for sleep walkers and sleep-mountain-climbers, all new beds require ends and sides 8' high, and with no footholds to enable climbing. The height also avoids the possibility of falling onto the bedside and being injured.

One will have to operate a system of safety interlocks in order to get out of bed, and lower an 8' side, which provides a suitable ramp to allow access for the disabled. Well, all 5% of disabled that use wheelchairs anyway. The other 25% that cant negotiate an 8' ramp twice a day, mainly the very elderly, will now need a carer just to get into bed. So will the arthritic 20% that cant operate the new interlocks. No plans to certify the necessary 100,000 new carers has been announced.

There has been some criticism of this proposal due to the fact that only one person has died from falling out of bed in the last 50 years. uk-d-i-y regulars have pointed out that emergency access to a nearby telephone will be prevented by this mecanism, and an estimated 200 more people per year will die from heart attacks as a result of inability to reach the phone in time. However the implementation of Part Zzz is going ahead regardless.

In short, the sale and use of beds as we know them today will become illegal. There has been talk of the possibility of gang activity moving in, with street corner bed dealers tipped to become a new kind of criminal, selling old beds for anything upto =A31000. Sting operations are expected, with jail terms of upto 5 years for... selling beds.

The new Eurobed is expected to cost =A32500. Sources have been quoted as saying that 60 million x 2500 =3D =A3150 billion represents an excellant investment in the nation's health and safety.

A few seem to th "Its great the government is thinking of our safety. We didnt even know we needed new beds!"

"I cant see the point of it, but I suppose its all progress"

"I've been worrying all week about the danger of falling out of bed and dying. I'm glad the gubmint is finally going to crack down on this awful danger."

"How my mother lived with her bed for 60 years and survived I'll never know. I keep nagging her to get a safe bed, but she wont listen. Old people can be so ignorant sometimes."

"I'm a bit worried it might stop me getting to the phone if I have another heart attack, but I'm sure the experts know what theyre doing, have taken expert consultation, and have weighed up all the issues."

"I dont have space for an 8' ramp, and cant afford =A32500 plus installation anyway. The council says I'll have to extend the bedroom, but youre not allowed to do that in a conservation area, so we'll just have to move. The house will no longer be considerd as habitable, and I'll owe the bank 100,000 for the cost of the new house. I dont know how I'll cope."

"I cant aford it either, I'll be homeless. What am I supposed to sleep on then?"

"They said theyre going to arrest me. I just cant afford it. If I'm in jail I cant operate my business, I'll go bankrupt. My wife's threatened to leave me unless I get 'proper safe beds.' I think I'm gonna kill myself."

Polls are showing 89% support for the new legislation.

[Andrew Chesters]

[e-mail] wrote

But does this mean I can't modify my daughter's bed (in a Wallace & Grommit style) to dump her straight into the bath when her alarm clock goes off?

[Owain]

"doozer" wrote | > | ... there is a big part of me that welcomes | > | the oversight of an independent body. | > But Part P does not provide any such oversight, let | > alone by an independent body. | What you are essentially saying is that electrical work should be | completely unregulated because the current system is wrong.

No. I am pointing out that the current system does not provide any increase in safety. Safety could have been far better served by making it a B Regs requirement for all electrical work to be done in a safe manner (as is the case in Scotland).

Greater regulation of tradespeople would drive out cowboys. Most American states require electricians to be individually qualified before they can work on wiring, and businesses have to get a licence from the state or county authorities. Customers can complain to those authorities and too many complaints do result in a loss of licence to carry on business. I wouldn't say the system is perfect but it is miles better than the current British system, where even in NICEIC registered companies there is no requirement for the person who works on your wiring to be either competent or qualified.

| That's bizzare. To use an analogy: everyone (ok not quite everyone | but we'll pretend) speeds on motorways. Ergo the current system of | fines and points isn't working. Should we therefore give up and | say people should drive whatever speed they like on motorways?

Why shouldn't they? It's not speed that kills people, it is driver error. Most speed-related fatalities occur in 30mph areas anyway.

Owain

[Ed Sirett]

I'm not worried about BCO. They have a totally impossible job trying to regulate the exceptionally 'vibrant' [1] community round here.

The last things BCO is going to do is try to track down unlicensed and uncertified work in private homes when they can scarcely keep track of or serious dangerous work on whole buildings.

[1] Vibrant is one of those words which sounds good but can mean almost anything you like. IMHO it means that building round here is about as well organized as the later stages of the biblical tower of Babel.

[Joe]

Possibly I was being too subtle, but I did use quotation marks. And I was trying to cover too much with too little: I intended the 'purchaser confusion' part to apply to the banning of Imperial measures.

I was suggesting that many, probably most, uninformed people believe that the Part P provisions will improve safety. I was not saying that I do. The subject has been done to death here over the last few months, but I've yet to see a question raised in the general media.

Again, possibly over-subtle. I was offering a topical example of an industry that was likely to be unfamiliar to most users of the group, and asking if they would be as automatically suspicious of claimed standards improvements as they would in more familiar areas.

Overall, I was suggesting that improvements in standards as claimed by the state are not likely to lead to higher real standards. I was suggesting that many group readers have some knowledge about the procedures covered by Part P, and can see through it more easily than others might.

Even that I doubt. I don't believe there are any substitutes for knowledge, competence and above all, the will to do things properly. Certainly, pieces of paper are not.

Suitable examinations can determine knowledge and competence, but a piece of paper does not prove that either were employed in doing a given job, nor that any effort was made to do it right.

[Steve Firth]

Not me.

Yeh, right.

I'm a food producer[1], my wife is an import/export agent. We struggle under aload of bureaucracy at present that imposes a ludicrous financial burden on us in the name of "higher standards". The consumer simply won't pay for those higher standards so we have to soak up the costs. Meanwhile larger producers simply piss about (and in) your food as they see fit because the cost of complying with these regulations is much lower in proportion to the turnover.

As an example, we sell olive oil. I've picked every olive by hand, adied by my wife. I've personally supervised the pressing, bottling and labelling. What I sell is good. Yet I still have to perform the same bureaucratic handstands as someone who buys in all their ingredients and has no idea what is in what they sell. Not only that, but the big suppliers deliberately adulterate what they sell, knowing damn well that there is no analysis that will detect the fact that good olive oil has been adulterated with bad.

That's just one example.

[1] As well as several other jobs.

[brugnospamsia]

I'm 44 years old and while I freely admit when I use a tape measure I'll use feet and inches if that side of the tape measure happens to be conveniently close, (sometimes maybe even 3 feet and 7.5 cm !) but I learned my science in SI units and can't understand why people want to buy things in a system based on 16. When I'm measuring bread ingredients I know a litre of water weighs 1kg at room temperature, I have no idea what that is in pints and pounds. .. Would anyone really want to go back to pounds shillings and pence ? (not least because of the horror of paying 19/6 for a pastie !)

How many people (especially in these days of self-service) actually go out to buy exactly 1lb 12 oz (or 0.8 kilogrammes) of apples ? If it's celeriac or fennel or a nice fish, I'll choose one particular one I fancy, if it's carrots for juicing, I want as many as I can fit in my basket.

I learned the other day that the Chinese used to sell things in volumetric measures that were actually bells - the accuracy of which were presumably dependant upon the local availability of people with a good ear for musical pitch.

[brugnospamsia]

But what of "average" drivers like myself whose life is threatened by the outside lane of the motorway having become a "fast lane" for the BMW crowd ?

And I long for the day when the street where I live has the speed limit reduced to a more realistic 20 mph to rein-in those who think speed limits are a figure to attain as quickly as possible. (what I really long for is a society where basic consideration for others would make such speeding unaceptable)

Jeremy

pedestrian, one time motorcyclist, daily cyclist, occaisional driver.

[bigcat]

DIY work on beds is due to be made illegal by Part Zzz due to the superior safety of professional cowboy work. Sorry. Doing what you wish with your life, regardless of how eminently sensible it may be, is not permitted under the new Cowboy Clause.

One major supplier says Dumpout beds will be produced if there is sufficient demand, but no product has been forthcoming. Users face a likely 3 year wait for an approved dumpout bed. Price tag is expected to be in the =A38,000 region. If its ever produced. Industry analysts say expected sales would need to top 1 milion for production to begin, and this is considered unlikely.

DIY modification to an existing approved Eurobed will require the owner to have the bed recertified. Recertification takes 6 days and costs =A3120,000, and covers unlimited production of identical beds. Tests included in this appraisal are: bounce test moutain climber tests a,b,c popularity of paint colour test

2000 newton ramp crushing force test 10,000 newton base orgy test nibbleproof coating test flexure of fixing under load test One expert noted that no paint lead-content test is included.

There has been some complaint from the small bed business bureau, but the bed industry spokesman is in favour of the new legislation, saying it will eliminate the cowboy operators. Coincidentally, the bed industry spokesman is paid for by Megabed Corp and Inbed Corp, and attended the press interview with a noose round his neck. However I'm sure this wont affect his avowed deep respect for morality and impartiality.

None of the local businesses interviewed seemed to consider themselves cowboys, but cowboys never do. Our shifty looking local town centre Crumbtown Pine Emporium says they will simply go out of business, but thats the cost of progress. We dont mind sacrificing these dodgy little businesses, we have no concern for them because (we've been assured) theyre bad news for the community.

Unapproved dodgy-diy modifications will automatically incur a =A32000 fine or 60 days jail time. Megabed Corp ('We own your beds for you, you just pay the yearly license fee') has cautioned owners that each component part of the Eurobed is approved, so replacing a screw with an identical but unapproved screw from another manufacturer will now be illegal.

One lawyer also points out that Megabed's contract indemnity clause means any owners so doing will have to pay all Megabeds legal fees involved in prosecuting any customer found to have made unauthorised changes to any part of their beds. Customers wishing to change from chromed screws to brass could have a nasty shock, warns Trading Whatnots, with expected legal costs of upto =A325,000 per case. Megabed is currently 'upgrading' their team of 'family' lawyers.

One selfish local landlord has been fined a total of =A310,000 and sentenced to 300 days in jail for possession of 5 unauthorised beds. He was reported by the concerned mother of one of his tenants. He said in court today 'Im just trying to make a living.' The jury found him guilty despite the judges remark 'I dont know what all the fuss is about.' The judge has been earmarked for upgrade education, and disciplinary action is expected to be taken against him. Unconfirmed sources report him as saying 'Im very very very sorry for ever thinking such a thing, it was just a moment of thoughtlesness, i was so silly, could I please have my job back.'

While one website claims this is merely another protectionist fleecing scheme, it is clearly a great idea for the advancement of mankind, and EUBed, the Elimination of Unsafe Beds Act, is expected to become law in

2007, following its succesful public education campaign titled 'The EUBed, protecting you.'

On a more serious note, the whole business of regulation and its many pros, cons and pitfalls is quite an interesting subject. And it seems to be one that is sometimes under-understood when applied. I wonder if theres a decent study on it somewhere. I wouldnt even know what the study of regulation was called.

[Mike]

What we need is the old pre-Raygun US system where laws are set to what 90% of local inhabitants would do. So speed limits are set to what 90% of drivers drive at.

[bigcat]

sensible it may be, is not

Only competent persons are permitted to do what they want with your life. Competent persons is defined for the purpose of the Act as 'any

17yr old with an NVQ who has paid their EARACHE registration fee'

While some have expressed concern at this aspect of the Act, we have been assured that appropriate safety measures will be in place. But no-one can tell us what they will be.

[Roger]

The message from "brugnospamsia" contains these words:

At 44 you are the same age as the SI version of the metric system. Those of us who are a generation older (I am 60) grew up using Imperial units as a matter of course and, if we were lucky, learned the complexities of the cgs and mks systems along with the finer points of the Imperial system at school.

AIUI our quaint educational system still insists on teaching centimetres as the primary unit of length despite that not being a preferred unit under the SI system.

As for water I thought every one would know that a gallon of water was

10 lbs (or a pint is a lb and a quarter).

Even lsd had its benefits. Decimalization hiked inflation to such an extent that fractions of a pound are no longer of much importance but

240 will factorise by 3 as well as 2 and 5 which makes thirds (6/8d) and smaller fractions easier to use.

[Roger]

The message from "brugnospamsia" contains these words:

Snip

In other words anything but an average driver.

What is an average driver? Probably someone who drives 12000 miles a year and doesn't *usually* exceed the 70 limit by more than 15% and the

30 limit by more than 50%.

FWIW I am not an average driver either. I only do 4-5000 miles per year and don't usually exceed 30 limits by more than 15% or 70 limits by more than 50%. :-)

[doozer]

Now that sounds like a half way decent implementation. Perhaps we should contact our MP and suggest a system along these lines (although I doubt very much that will change anything). I don't particular like the idea of having state registered x (where x is any trade) but it does solve the problem in a way that a member sponsored body can't.

Perhaps I should have chosen an issue that isn't quite so contentious. I was attempting to provide an example of a situation where the law is being widely broken not begin a discussion about whether the current speeding laws are correct. I could also have chosen copyright infringement when downloading music or shop lifting for example.

[Mike Harrison]

Not just that, it will actually decrease safety as it increases the barriers to upgrading older and/or unsafe installations to current standards, and making unsafe practices like use of trailing sockets more attractive to the avarage man in the street..

No it woudn't - it would just drive them further underground.

[doozer]

I have every sympathy for your situation, there are many regulations that impose an undue burden on small businesses. The problem, though, is that not everyone is honest and devoted to quality as you are. If the regulation was removed there would be people that would sell crude oil as olive oil because it was cheaper.

What we have to do is achieve a situation where the burden of regulation is minimized but the quality is kept as high as possible.

If you don't believe that people would adulterate food in the name of profit just look at the example of the Austrian wine produced in 1985 which was laced with ethylene glycol!