Monday 24 May 2010

You Pay ... Then You Pay Again

It's been another interesting day in the bureaucratic nightmare that is running a business in EU-led Britain.

Our attempt to book in four vehicles at the coachworks, who handle general maintenance for the larger end of our fleet, was met with laughter at the other end of the phone today. While it's never been a problem before, it turns out they're jammed to the rafters with tipper trucks, scaffolding lorries and flatbeds having new mudflaps and bumpers fitted. The EU have decreed the old ones to be illegal, so every truck of its type in the country must be adapted by a certain date or be taken off the road.

It's all extra cost to the operators, of course, which they will obviously pass on to their customers. If they be private sector, there'll be increased prices in goods and services, if it be public sector, the cost will be passed to the taxpayer. In both instances, that is us, the public.

In our case, the MOTs and associated works won't be completed in time for us to use our own vehicles, so we'll be adding to our running costs by hiring vehicles at a premium for the interim. The ones in this instance are used on public sector contracts, so guess who's going to be paying for our extra overhead?

Quite a system. We pay the wages of the EU muppets in the first place, and we also pay when they stop making paper clip chains and pick up a pen instead.

Seriously. Can we leave yet?


4 comments:

JuliaM said...

"...every truck of its type in the country must be adapted by a certain date or be taken off the road"

/facepalm

A rolling series of due dates according to vehicle age was beyond them, then?

JJ said...

Hasn't Cameroon rowed back on the repatriation of edicts that effect Britain?

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

The issue really is the joyless, self indulgent, perverse, jobsworth zealotry which too many of our public servants bring to interpretation and enforcement of EU edicts.

I tackled a County Council nabob a month or so back about what I perceived to be a very wilful (and expensive) interpretation of an EU "rule" and he and his minions couldn't even produce the supporting documents with the relevant "rule". His comment was telling though "in this country we tend to stick more rigidly to the rules than some in Europe" It wasn't even clear if there was a financial sanction for breaking the "rule" in question that exceeded the cost of implementing it!

dunno about face palm - more slap head ... roll on public finance meltdown so they must actually start doing their jobs rather than trawling the (ever expanding) rule book for possible opportunities to be obstructive........

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

This was the subject of at least several hundred thousand pounds worth of public funds being torched in implementing "emergency legislation" against .... well - check it out.

http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2004/apr/jellysweetseubannews


Aieeee !! attack of the killer sweeties