Re: New Electrical Regulations

[Andy Hall]

It's Cherie that works the controls - Alastair just does the voice...... ;-)

Think of the Judy Garland version of the Wizard of Oz.

.andy

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[IMM]

All the brainwashed Little Middle Englanders are coming out their shells. Oh good!

[Gary Cavie]

Huh? You believe everything Campbell tells you, yet we're the brainwashed ones? How does that work exactly?

[geoff]

In message , IMM writes

So are you, but you entertain us

[Andrew McKay]

One advantage the hereditary peers had over the HoC was that their justification or opposition to something wasn't based upon trying to extend their own political career, as happens so often in the HoC. There is merit in having reviewers of legislation who aren't dependent upon the whims of the electorate every 5 years.

And let us not forget that the HoL is not a law-making society. It is a law-shaping society. The HoC puts forward proposals for the statute book which are passed thru the HoL (generally speaking - there are exceptions such as the finance bill which the HoL can't touch by virtue of precedent). The HoL can debate and revise the proposals, which are then passed back to the HoC.

When you see some of the d*****ad proposals which are spouted by Blunkett and others you get to feel glad that there is a 2nd chamber.

I happen to wonder how this country ever managed to get thru the last

800 years or so with the HoL which is so obviously broken.

Andrew

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[Andrew McKay]

After due consultation, maybe.

Andrew

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[Andrew McKay]

Exactly. The way I see it there will be more people refusing to carry out work due to the restrictions imposed by the new regulations. That will leave fewer practitioners in the industry. Those that are left will most likely charge more. End result could be that the end user decides to do the job himself, without any regard to the regs at all.

We could easily see more deaths and injury result from the stupid application of these regulations.

Andrew

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[Andrew McKay]

I did some further research on this yesterday, and from the NICEIC web site it would appear that I can apply to become registered with them:

then looked into the costs. Basically to become registered with NICEIC I shall see an extra cost to my business of nearly £2000. Here's a breakdown of how I came to those costs......

1) I currently have £1M public liability insurance. That will have to be increased to £2M. I haven't checked the figure but I assume for the sake of argument that will be at least an additional £100 per year. 2) NICEIC annual enrolment fee = £376. 3) NICEIC first year enrolment = £58.75. 4) NICEIC application fee for address inspection = £411.25. 5) Purchase of Robin KTS1620 16th edition tester = £675.63. 6) Calibration certificate for KTS1620 = £88.12. 7) Training for C&G2391 = £140.

There will undoubtedly be other sundries which I haven't yet taken into account.

Some of the above costs are one-off (for example the KTS1620 would only be bought once). Others are recurring. I reckon on having to spend at least £1000 per year in maintaining my registration with the NICEIC.

It appears to be a quango.

Andrew

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[Andy Hall]

I would agree that having the Bank of England in control of interest rates was a good move, but only places it in line with most other countries. Brown is largely ineffectual, so fortunately has not done significantly damaged the economy.

Constitutional change is sufficiently important that changes should be by referendum, not by cabinet reshuffle and hoping that nobody would notice. Whether or not constitutional change is desirable, I very much doubt whether the majority of the electorate who voted for the government has in mind giving it the carte blanche that it imagines it has.

Returning to the topic, have you read the report on the ODPM web site?

While this proposed legislation is not quite on the scale of tinkering around with the constitution, it is of importance to a lot of home owners and certainly to anybody in this NG. Does it fall under your category of "simple social responsibility laws"? In other words, do you think it's a good thing?

From the report:

- They received 490 replies of which 206 were from electrical contractors.

However they did not take into account that this group represents a vested interest in restricting who can carry out electrical work.

- 143 were forwarded to the Minister by MPs acting on behalf of their constituents, including many that were from electrical contractors (142).

If this were in the House of Commons, I would be suggesting that "they are misleading the House" - We know the meaning of that coded language. I wrote to them via my MP (and received a reply from the minister). I know of at least two other people who also did who are not electrical contractors and who were not in support of the proposals either. This means that either somebody can't add up, or something rather more serious.

- The public respondents rejected the need for independent inspectors and expressed concerns that the added costs of an independent inspector on one or more occasions would deter the DIY worker and those working in the grey/black economy from notifying work at any time.

This was ignored as were a number of other comments submitted by the public.

The report mentions that 63% of respondents were in favour of the proposed legislation, but of course they omit the correlation between that and the "main players" and "industry" groups.

One can deduce fairly easily that that correlation is quite clear.

So essentially, we have a situation where the government proposes to go with the line of following the interests of trade associations, who will gain financially and whose members will gain financially from it. They actively campaigned to their members and through the trade press.

The general public was not made aware of it, as witnessed by the small number of responses. Were there signs up in B&Q making people aware of the effective demise of DIY electrical work? No.

I think that it's going to be quite interesting when the public at large finds out about this and realises that once again they have been ignored in favour of dogma.

.. and you consider this to be socially responsible legislation?

.andy

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[IMM]

BALLS!!! They were attempting to keep their wealth and the history of UK politic clearly indicates this. Read some history, especially re: the Irish famine and the enclosures in England and the Clearing of the crofts in Scotland. They were a self interest group, nothing more and collectively have successfully hung onto their wealth over the centuries. No other major western nation had such a ridiculous system. You obviously sucked in the propaganda.

[IMM]

Maxie, I aim to please.

[IMM]

You are in cloud cuckoo land, Little Middle England as most would say. The closet Tory surfaces.

[Andy Hall]

What on earth are you talking about?

My post was about the proposed part P to the Building Regulations.

Perhaps you would like to return to the topic and comment on that.

.andy

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[IMM]

You were on about Gordon Brown being useless. When in fact the rest of the world admire what he is doing.

[tim]

That's because the rest of the world haven't noticed that he is naked.

Trying not to be political here, there was a recent report by a very influential group suggesting that GB had not done particularly well. The only reason that the world hasn't noticed is that he has been lucky that there hasn't (yet) been an obvious signs.

Tim

[Dave Plowman]

And of what political persuasion would that group be?

Err, the standard signs of a failing economy are rather difficult to conceal. Let's face it, the Tories tried and failed.

[Andy Hall]

The Americans seem to admire his boss as well, but they don't have to live with the consequences.

The topic is the proposed part P of the Building Regulations. Are you going to comment on that or are you embarrassed by its lack of democracy?

.andy

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[Martin Angove]

It's not the speed camera which caused this accident, it is the idiots who were ignoring the speed limit and so desperate to avoid a fine that they hadn't taken account of other road users.

I'm doing a lot of motorway driving at the moment - M1, A42, M42, M5, M50... you can guess the rest - and this is one of the things which causes a *lot* of problems IME. There I am, quite happily tootling along at as near 70mph as my speedo and prevailing conditions will allow, occasionally moving to the middle or third lane to overtake something slower, and all the while people are rushing past at 80 or 90mph, often impatiently sitting so close to my boot that I can't see their headlights, when all of a sudden the whole motorway grinds to a halt.

What is it? An accident? A closed lane? A speed restriction?

No; there's a jam sandwich or a battenburg cake sitting in the left lane doing 60 or 65mph and no-one dares pass it. The resulting "slinky effect" can cause stop-start traffic for miles.

When they introduced timed speed restrictions on parts of the M25 it wasn't because of safety concerns, it was simply that it proved possible to increase traffic flow by forcing everyone to travel at a slower, but

*steady* speed.

Oh crumbs, *very* OT. Sorry, but people who complain about speed cameras are one of my pet hates at the moment. I'll try to restrain myself in future :-)

Hwyl!

M.

[tim]

no idea?

But the 'excuse' is 'world events' and as the UK isn't suffering a diaster, everyone believes that. The faults with what GB has done would all seem to be stored up for later. They may never come to fruition, but I doubt that.

Tim

[Owain]

"Andrew McKay" wrote | I then looked into the costs. Basically to become registered with | NICEIC I shall see an extra cost to my business of nearly £2000... | There will undoubtedly be other sundries which I haven't yet taken | into account.

Especially the billable hours lost in dealing with all that admin and doing the training, exams etc.

| Some of the above costs are one-off (for example the KTS1620 would | only be bought once). Others are recurring. I reckon on having to | spend at least £1000 per year in maintaining my registration with the | NICEIC.

If your hourly contribution to fixed costs is £30, that's about an extra weeks work you'd have to do a year.

Owain