Our sector is NOT a government franchise. We are not all the same, we think as individuals and we make instant decisions for individual animals. So the last thing we need is restrictions, forced uniformity or bureaucrats remodelling the sector in their own image
Bureaucrats Broke Britain
- Somehow we cobbled together a regulatory system that for the most part works. We regulate Car Safety with MOT’s and even a failed MOT can be driven between home, garage’s and MOT centres because if you couldn’t, an MOT failure would mean calling a car haulier for a broken tail light.
- Construction, food and airlines all have regulations but they were all written in conjunction with industry representatives and the businesses all function by balancing extra costs with providing extra safety.
- Regulations can’t eliminate risk. They can’t foresee events or circumstance such as a war, strike, riot, crime or epidemics and so have a very limited efficacy, but because of bureaucrats we’re surrounded by threats of liability and obligation based on the abstraction of health and safety ideas rather than recognising any practical reality.
Today’s bureaucrats have painted themselves as incompetent, arrogant, cavalier and reckless.
- Catteries & Kennels did not need a novella of regulations. They did not need any regulations without a single caveat or provision that reflected the differences in circumstances.
- DEFRA’s regulations failed to consider turnover, quality of care or experience as the primary factors.
- And licensing officers drove people with decades of experience out of business over minor infractions, because licensing officers demanded immediate closure based on what they read in DEFRA's regulations.
Bureaucrats Broke Themselves
- I grew up in era when the civil service represented the establishment. They represented sense and continuity and protected the public from any extremist who wanted to be elected dictator or wanted to rip up the rule book.
- Today, the civil service are the problem. Not because they have a greater calling but because DEFRA don’t have the talent available to implement even the simplest of policies without running everything past lobbyists.
- The only answer to sprawling ungovernable departments like DEFRA is that they need to be broken up into manageable sections where staff with relevant experience can be tasked to review regulations with a view to discarding them, not making up policies to write new regulations.
According to DEFRA's actions they formed the opinion that this sector was performing so badly that it needed to be taken over and turned into a government sanctioned franchise.
- Catteries & Kennels are not a government property or franchise and are unsuitable for ill-informed regulatory experimentation.
- There is no legitimate rationale behind DEFRA’s rules and only DEFRA thought that animal welfare in our industry was so awful that a hundred bad rules could make anything better.
- Making compliance with a hundred new rules as a condition of receiving a licence that has no material value to us or the public is beyond defence.
My personal sovereignty doesn’t need regulating.
- A disgraceful and unmanageable department like DEFRA should not be dictating anything to anyone until they get their own house in order.
- When I started this business, I didn't purchase a DEFRA run Cattery & Kennels franchise. And I don't want to be subject to any of DEFRA's regulations and I don't want to be associated with river polluters and farmer killers.
- Dictating staff numbers, 24 hour cover, weighing cats, single use scratching posts and telling us we don't need an ISO room and have to partner with a named vet are are all the products of too many shots at lunch time.
- DEFRA's flagship attempt to legislate our sector is nothing more than the incoherent ramblings of random drunken musings by people who thought that the number of words rather than the quality of them would impress the boss.
- DEFRA's regulations are a mirror image of themselves; prioritising red tape, introducing inefficiencies and increasing costs with no conceivable benefits.