“Gold Plating” is the practice of getting an order (a ‘directive’) from our masters in the European Union and adding lot of additional regulations to it. Sort of…
“If this arbitrary order has not destroyed your business we will add regulations to it, and we will keep doing so until you are destroyed”…
…”Why are we trying to destroy you?”…
…”Well what else do we have to do, it would be lazy and unethical to just sit in our offices and not do anything”.
The British Civil Service is supposed to love gold plating more than any other civil service in the EU. The British Civil Service having long prided itself on being more hardworking an ethical than Civil Servants in other nations (do not even think about bribing a British Civil Servant to save your business – he would rather starve than let you survive).
Examples are tossed about, supposedly a Directive on slaughter houses that started off as about 8 pages in Brussels (EU HQ) was turned in to about 7 pages in France – and about 97 pages in Britain.
No surprise that almost all of the little local slaughter houses closed down.
The BBC (and other such) still has the occasional item about how sad it is the all the local family owned places have gone, and how animals are now taken to great corporate factories (which actually have worse records for the quality and safety of meat). The little places may not have understood the paper work or been able to afford all the special people the regulations insisted they have (such vets – mostly from Spain) – but they did the job better. “Oh the wicked supermarkets” (they get the blame for destroying the “local food” from “local farmers” system that the media claim to love) “and now on to our next story about the need for more regulations concerning such and such”.
Well the British Conservative party has promised to end gold plating and if a business thinks that a EU directive has been interpreted more strictly in Britain than in other parts of the EU (or just used as an excuse for another regulation orgy) they will be able to take the matter to court.
Well this is good as far as it goes. The promise to end gold plating is nice to hear (although I doubt the Civil Service would take any notice) and taking things to court might work sometimes – although the British courts (like the courts of most nations) are a mess (and getting worse – as they slowly reject what is left of the old ‘out of date’ principles of law).
However, it is also a wonderful way for the British Conservative party to look as if they are “doing something” about regulations and “standing up for Britain”. After all by concentrating on ‘gold plating’ the Conservatives duck the issue of whether to defy ANY of the endless thousands of Directives that come out of the EU.
Too cynical? I hope so.
This blog entry suggests gold-plating is less of a problem than before [has been replaced by worse problems,] and rips into Conservative proposals for tackling EU regulation – including gold-plating – claiming they are outdated and ineffective.
One of the worst examples of this recently is that the Health & Safety executive have decided that the EU “Working at Heights” directive (which is designed for people working on buildings) should also apply to mountaineering when an instructor is present, cos the instructor is _working_ at a height. This would then mandate double roping, safety rails on mountains, and warning signs warning about ice etc. As far as the double roping goes, this would actually result in a _reduction_ in safety standards, since the complexity of the system will go up. Double roping in an industrial environment is sensible, since the 1st rope is used to support the weight of the worker, and the 2nd is a safety. But, in rock climbing, the _only_ rope is the safety rope, and the weight of the climber is taken by the rock.
But when has killing an industry ever bothered the professional bureaucrats as long as their domain is ever widening???
The first comment points to some good arguments (arguments I should have made more of).
And the second comment makes the correct point that gold plating (whilst certainly NOT the most serious problem) is still a problem.
As for my example: I think I should have said that the E.U. directive started out as 30 pages (at E.U. H.Q.) was reduced to 7 or 8 pages in France and put up to 92 pages in Britain.