Who regulates the regulators?

Michael Meacher has written an article on Comment is Free, bemoaning the fact that in a national culture that almost seems to be one of endemic failure, no-one is taking responsibility when things go wrong:

Take five recent events – 90 people dying from c. difficile at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust hospitals, the torture and murder of Baha Musa by seven British soldiers in Basra, the failure to repair the drains at Pirbright, which came within an ace of another foot-and-mouth outbreak, the shooting of Jean-Charles de Menezes at Stockwell, and losing a lap-top containing details of 600,000 potential recruits to the armed forces? What is the link between them? Nobody was held responsible.

There is another link between them – have you spotted it yet? Who is responsible for the NHS? The government. For the British army? The government. Pirbright? Yep, partly government owned. Who shot Jean-Charles de Menezes? The police who ultimately are the responsibility of… the government. And who lost the details of the recruits? The same organisation as the one who lost the details of millions of families on data discs – yep, it is that government again! Yes, no-one took responsibility for any of these fuck ups. But who did responsibility ultimately reside with? Where does the buck stop? Government.

Take another example:

The American firm ETS (another flagrant privatisation failure) not only served up its exam markings very late, but badly mismanaged the whole exam process (claiming hundreds of pupils had not sat the tests when they had) and used people to mark the tests who were completely unqualified.

Yes, a privatisation failure. But who is responsible for deciding to give this responsibility to ETS? The government. Privatisation can be a positive force, and a good policy to follow. But only if the government doesn't fuck if up!

However, Meacher is not content to simply look at government failures. He has other ideas as well:

Despite Northern Rock exposing disastrous flaws throughout the banking system, no committee of inquiry has been established to remedy these highly damaging failures in governance and transparency.

Maybe I’m wrong, but what Northern Rock actually showed the disastrous flaws of was Northern Rock’s business plan. Businesses do fuck up, and they do cease to exist. Whole markets can be affected, but ultimately it is down to the individual business to decide how they trade and deal with any fallout from those decisions. It isn’t down to the government to intervene in the markets – either in the above example, or in this one:

Codes of Practice for industry, where they exist, are voluntary and therefore ineffective. The voluntary ethical trading initiative, to stop Oxford Street stores trading on developing country sweat-shops, is unenforceable and repeatedly breached.

See, the whole point of the code being voluntary is to allow people to make their own choices. To let the organisations concerned choose whether money or morals are more important, and to let customers choose whether they want cheap clothes from sweat-shops or not. If government removes the choice it treats both business and the people who use business services as children incapable of making up their own minds. Furthermore, it ceases to be a moral choice if people make the choice with a metaphorical gun to their head.

Meacher’s solution, that runs through is article like a bad smell, is more regulation. Regulate the regulators. And everyone needs to get involved:

Meanwhile, regulators should be required each year to report publicly on what they have achieved and how all the main complaints have been handled, and there should be regional meetings at which the public can question those who regulate on their behalf.

Call me cynical, but I don’t think a whole host of people are going to turn up to those meetings. I would imagine they would be about as much fun as watching paint dry. And a really dull paint colour, as well. Puce or something. Anyway, given that, do we really think the vast majority of people in this country, who only seem able to get excited about something if it is a second rate actress auditioning for some bag of shite musical, would actually attend these meetings? Still, Meacher seems to be a fan of government coercion, so maybe he will make people attend.

And, of course, there is another level that can regulate the regulators – and guess what, it is the government:

Parliamentary select committees should summon regulators to public hearings where there is significant public disquiet about their efficacy.

There we have it. The answer to all of these problems, in the outdated, limited and moronic outlook of Michael Meacher, is the government.

Let’s look at just how qualified Meacher is to propose sweeping reforms to the business world and to advocate yet another layer of regulation in a country already groaning with government regulation:

Born in Hemel Hempstead, the son of an accountant and farmer, he was educated at Berkhamsted School, New College, Oxford and the London School of Economics, where he gained a Diploma in Social Administration. He became a researcher and lecturer in social administration at Essex and York universities and wrote a book about elderly people's treatment in mental hospitals. He was the Labour Party candidate for Colchester at the 1966 UK General Election, and fought the 1968 Oldham West by-election after the resignation of Labour MP Leslie Hale but lost to Conservative candidate Bruce Campbell.

So, a graduate, then a teacher in social administration (whatever the ruddy fuck that is) and then a Labour party politician. Meacher is well placed to pontificate, isn’t he? Like so many other politicians, the real world is, for Michael Meacher, something that happens to other people.

Parliament is a institution filled with half-interested amateurs who are more interested in their own wealth and their own egos than actually helping the poor fuckers who fund them. If they were actually genuinely interested in helping the UK, then they would realise the simple truth – the answer is more intervention and regulation from the government. After all, everything the government touches at the moment seems to turn to shit. The real solution to so many of Britain's ills is the government intervening and regulating one hell of a lot less than it currently does. Or to put it another away, it is the government learning to fuck the fuck off.