Mr Bates vs The Post Office has been an extraordinary successful vehicle to humanise the victims of a small number of out of control unaccountable self-serving monsters.
Monsters who ensured that regular law abiding people had their livelihoods cancelled, were relieved of their savings, lost their homes, lived in cars and some were put in prison for crimes the Post Office knew were never committed.
- DEFRA’s grand plan was to demean our sector by giving incompetent individuals employed by local authorities the unlimited power to reshape our sector by applying unworkable regulations that were written without having the slightest idea of what the objective was and with absolutely no exemptions, caveats or time-frames.
- Closures and loss of livelihoods has been widespread and like the Post Office DEFRA made mistakes and then compounded them by doing nothing to resolve the issues that were brought to their attention.
- We’re four years in and no one has been fired and DEFRA hasn’t even started to clean up their mess up - every year we’re still dealing with random application of regulations, random costs of inspections, rising costs of doing business and our sector is being forced to cancel holidays and pass on the costs of DEFRA’s interference onto all our customers.
DEFRA’s initial incompetence has been compounded through their lack of interest and lack of urgency and both failures to act lead directly to a third of the UK’s companion animal boarding capacity disappearing.
DEFRA’s regulations were supposed to have raised the reputation of our sector, but DEFRA’s incompetent and arrogant bureaucrats closed the doors on good establishments and opened the doors for hundreds of side hustles - where there is no need for any controls, insurance, qualifications, regulations or inspections.
This discussion of the Post Office fiasco and the DEFRA debacle is covered in ten short articles:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5,
Part 6,
Part 7,
Part 8,
Part 9,
Part 10