Before DEFRA took over this sector I had no complaints and catteries and kennels were not being closed down.
Some would say that the problems were there but there was nowhere to air grievances and nowhere to seek any practical solutions or advice - so we all made our own decisions and we all took responsibility for the consequences.
Today, we’ve got problems with XL Bullies because a decision at the top is causing insurance problems, licensing officer problems, safety problems and cancellation problems.
These were caused by a decision that no one at the bottom has any definitive or practical answers to - and anyone following any "official" advice will still be held responsible for the consequences if somethng goes wrong.
We already know why DEFRA failed.
Constant budget cuts, trying to do more with less, retirement and lowered recruitment standards have turned dysfunctional departments like DEFRA into wastelands of incompetence and inexperience.
Which from that position DEFRA convinced themselves that they knew enough about tourism and hotels for companion animals to write reams of pointless, unenforceable regulations that were used by Local Authorities to reduce the country’s boarding capacity by a third without any consequences for the decision makers.
The politics of what we're up against:
- DEFRA are completely ineffective because the entire civil service has been intentionally eviscerated by politicians over the last few decades so it could be hijacked to serve Ministerial whims or corporate interests.
- And while not every senior Minister is involved and not every civil service employee is corrupt or stupid, the public are not able to tell the difference - If things don't work as they should, then there's something wrong at the top.
- The civil service appear to have become the enablers of a criminal enterprise aimed at transferring public money to corporate lobbyists, friends, donors and special interests. Many of whom were posing as fake service providers, and just like consultants and lobbyists only exist to funnel public funds into private hands and give monied interests all the influence they need to write advantageous legislation.
- I noticed that Michelle Mone, Baroness Mone is being investigated over an outrageous scheme to profit from the Covid outbreak - the National Crime Agency are looking into it but it took a concerted effort to devise a system to give preference to friends and donors above legitimate businesses and required a number of complicit bureaucrats, facilitators and coconspirators to pull off the heist.
Let’s just say that if we drop a piece of litter out of a car window, take a piss in a river or hand over public money to our friends there are actual consequences - but whatever bureaucrats do, they auto-assume that they are above any law despite the lack of any due diligence and quantifiable evidence of failure ... so it's the unequal application of justice that's the problem.
And all this prompts me to ask:
- Why aren’t bureaucrats subject to the same rules as the rest of us?
- Why should bureaucrats have special protections?
- Why shouldn't they be investigated and if necessary fined or jailed for the same civil and criminal transgressions that any member of the public would be subject to?
And of course, there's only Crickets