Sane-washing DEFRA

by Cat Whisperer — on  ,  ,  , 

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A degree doesn't make you clever, being rich doesn't stop you from being an idiot but if you're a bureaucrat it means that you don't have the skillset to run a business or the expertise to write regulations for a sector that you failed to consult with.

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"Every minute taken up by pointless bureaucracy is a minute that isn't spent on care." Is as true for the NHS as it is for farming, catteries and kennels.

One of the most salient facts about our business model is that it'll cost you £30,000 to build a cattery on the grounds of your own home - In 10 years you'll build up your reputation, you'll never go hungry but you'll never save enough money or have the time to take a holiday.
In that 10 years, you'll probably have made £30,000 in profits, not paid any tax and you'll never see your initial investment again unless you sell your house and the cattery as a going concern ... which is why so many catteries closed after DEFRA authorised local authorities to threaten businesses with low ratings and financial demands because DEFRA didn't know that catteries are run by people not rules or regulations.

"It's so much easier to come up with bat-shat crazy ideas than it is to implement them"

DEFRA had no concept of how unique this sector is, how different every establishment is and how universally inclusive the solutions needed to be. So of course DEFRA invented solutions to imaginary problems, introduced an unworkable rating system and rewrote the entire regulatory framework made up of non-universal, arbitrary and un-policeable rules that cost everyone money and failed to improve animal welfare.

Then when it all went wrong, DEFRA sat on their hands while a third of the UK's boarding capacity was driven out of business in the pretence that it was someone else's fault ... and refused to fix anything because that would be an admission of personal and department-wide incompetence.