Bureaucracy Looming?

I was talking to a well-known engine man and friend this morning, who passed this little gem to me by email. As far as I can see it is genuine, the The National Jumblers' Federation has a secretary called Dave True.

I quote it as received with no comment:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The National Jumblers'Federation, by their very nature, keep an eye on rules, regulations and bureaucratic meddlings that may possibly concern the future of auto jumbles, other such gatherings and motor transport matters in general, particularly within the vintage and classic field.

In their latest issue they print a list of proposed measures that have been raised and temporarily put on the back burner pending the result of a General Election. These are as follows:-

1 A proposal to prevent people working on their own vehicles. All work to be carried out by an approved garage. This would kill restorations stone dead and close a lot of clubs. Also, how many modern garages would be prepared to work on classic machinery?

2 Only vehicle manufacturers through their agents and dealerships to sell spares. An instant end to auto jumbles. Where would we find classic spares?

3 Every vehicle to be subject to a possession tax each year, regardless of age or condition - even a box of bits.

4 Cradle-to-grave taxation on all vehicles, again regardless of condition.

5 The Kent Act to be extended across the whole of England and Wales, a disaster for stall holding events. At the moment a free licence can be obtained from Kent County Council and there are few Trading Standards officers to police it. If the present Government is re-elected then County Councils will be ordered to appoint all the jobsworths they need to enforce the Act and to recoup the costs, which equates to a hefty licence fee.

6 Local Authorities will be given greater powers to seize vehicles parked on private land.

7 The use of vehicles over a certain age, maybe only 15 or 20 years, will be severely restricted. Owners will have to submit to their local authority details of their intended trip and submit a route for approval. Local Authorities will of course have to charge a fee for this.

8 Vehicles over a certain age, not considered to be historic (by whom?) to be compulsorily scrapped.

9 All vehicles, regardless of age, to be fitted with catalytic converters.

10 All event organisers to be forced to apply for planning permission for their events, and the abandonment of the 14-28 day rule which permits venues, such as farmers' fields, to be used for occasional events without planning approval. Imagine the time it would take: there would have to be consultations with police, opportunities for the public to object etc. What about the proposed fees - £750 for an event worth 6000 to 9000 in attendance, £50,000 for events of 75,000 or more.

11 A proposal for compulsory security staff, all vetted and licensed, to be employed at any event where alcohol is served.

To quote Dave True, general secretary of the NJF: "If all the above items come to pass then the additional cost to organisers will be horrific. It will get to the point where stallholders will refuse to pay the rents and the public will not come because the entrance charges are too high. Result? A lot of colour drained from a lot of people's lives. How many people will take part in car boot sales every Sunday? Hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Do they realise their hobby/pastime is going to be severely curtailed?"

Isn't this absolutely frightening? Can you imagine how miserable this country would become? Are we to become the latter-day Eastern Bloc?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

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Reply to
Prepair Ltd
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Dateline 1 April 2005, perhaps?

Reply to
Tom

I did wonder, but the source appears to be genuine, and I did have a look at that side of things before I posted it, but of course there is always that possibility.

There 'is' a thing called the Kent Act which is discussed in other sites and forums, related to Jumble Sales and Boot Sales, so that much appears to have a good pedigree, if that is the word for it..

I did post it without comment!

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

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Reply to
Prepair Ltd

Perhaps our elected goverment!!! Is of the opionion... Push them to the limits, and when all hell breaks loose, we can get ID cards and any other so called security measures in... I'd like to see the local authority turn up at a gypsy site to claim all their vehicles, and stop them working on them.

Joules

Reply to
Joules

Reply to
Martin Hirst

Peter, I think Lords Protector Tony, GW, and our own dear simpering Paul Martin do have our best interests in mind. Just accept that fact and SMILE as you bend over.!

;-)

Mike in BC

Reply to
mcgray

In summary less freedom and more tax -

There was an attempt to have all cars MOT'd or scrapped a while back causing huge uproar from the vintage/classic car guys, which got dropped.

Anyway the election looming has a silver lining, the poll tax increase is "only" 7% this year compared at the previous year on year 10% hike.

Steve

Reply to
Steve

'Scuse me whilst I rant...

The whole bloody shebang was badly thought out in the first place. What really gets my goat is the way it's all done under the auspices of environmental/safety/crime policies.

The environmental aspect is a pile of poo - my crappy VW Beetle 1200 works out cheaper in car tax than my slightly less crappy Vauxhall Cavalier - yet the Beetle does 30mpg and emits a huge cloud of blue smoke on startup. The Cav does 40mpg and runs clean...but because it's a 1600 it cops a higher rate of tax. Neither aspect addresses the fact that the most significant environmental impact comes from the manufacture of a vehicle in the first place, and its subsequent disposal. Driving an old banger is recycling at its most productive!

As for the safety aspect, that's largely down to the driver. I've never knocked anyone over - so does that make my vehicles safe or does it make me a safe driver? You can make cars as squidgy as you like..but a ton of stuff at 50mph is still a ton of stuff at 50mph. As regards the mechanics, it's quite reasonable to suppose that a botch job on the brakes will lead to an accident...but where are the statistics to support blanket banning of 'home maintenance'? Perhaps they reside in the same office that provided the statistics for the speed camera ploy. It sounds suspiciously like a fat handout to the motor manufacturers..and it leads me to wonder how much they hand over to various political parties in 'donations'.

We now have nice little signs on the roads in Hampshire that inform us how many accidents have happened on a particular stretch of road. Very nice they look too...but there aren't any improvements to the road. Guess the signs worked out cheaper....and it's funny how the speed cops hang out on the long, straight stretches rather than in the little villages....

And as for crime, well, it would appear that just because Johnny Scroat can't handle a pint and likes to put his fingers in the till, the rest of us have to stay indoors.

I needed that....

Regards,

Reply to
Stephen Howard

"Stephen Howard" wrote (snip):-

Neither are 'botch jobs' the preserve of the home mechanic. I had my Escort serviced and MOT'd by a well known chain as they were offering a discount for RAC members. Came away with an annoying squeak squeak squeak from the back brakes - "oh we've only de-dusted them sir, it should go off". It didn't and infact soon became a clonk clonk clonk, on jacking up a back wheel I could feel the brake binding over part of a revolution. Back to the garage "we'll check them over", when I collected the car they said that the drums must be distorted and that they had slackened off the handbrake cable. I protested that the brakes had been fine before they 'serviced' them and that they were supposed to be self adjusting, but the noise had gone and I needed the car for a long journey the next day.

After about an hour on the M4 without touching the brakes, I pulled into a service station went to decelarate down the slip road and the pedal disappeared into the carpet - a couple of pumps produced some retardation and we came to a halt with wisps of smoke coming from both back wheels!

Suffice it to say we limped home, I changed drums, shoes and cylinders myself and normality was restored - I never did find out what the garage had actually done to cause the problem in the first place.

Sorry for such a long and OT post.

Reply to
Nick H

Ahh! Tom I wish it was. From 12000miles away it might sound like a wind up, but living in this poxy country now, it doesn't seem too much like a joke. Passports for horses & cattle, can't even put a new light fitting in your house ( or workshop!), chancellor's spent all our pension funds on gay rights officers for local government, highest fuel prices this side of Uranus, 700 hours of parliamentary time spent on banning foxhunting; 70 hours on removing habeus corpus. April fools?? They're running the ****ing country!

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Reply to
jrlloyd

But think about the positive, offhand in the last 20 years they've got rid of your ante-diluvian licensing laws... and they've um, and they've um, well, anyway you can get a drink most anytime now, which has to be good! :-)

Look at us, we can still have machineguns! You think you've got problems! It takes forever to reload enough ammo for a good blat! :-(

Tom

Reply to
Tom

Tom upside is with all day drinking and this crap 'beer' they keep importing from the United Simpson's of America who want's a machine gun?

10 bottles of Buds best rice wine and you can fart quicker that puff the magic dragon can fire.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

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Reply to
John Stevenson

You need them - your country's over-run with orcs, trolls, fanboys and all sorts of critter. I know ! I've seen them in the films!

Reply to
Andy Dingley

John, John, I'm totally shattered! You've succumbed to the lure of the feline's offsprings' urine? What about real ale? No more? :-(

To think there was a time when the English drank real ale, men were men and women were glad of it! Of course there was a time when men up your way, purportedly pranced around the greenery in green tights, but I'm sure it was just a blip in things, manliness..:-)

Tom

Reply to
Tom

Makes for good all year round hunting, though. We also get to shoot the odd film, too.

Reply to
Tom

Good God no Tom, Wouldn't be seen drinking this s**te but it's in all the pubs now and seen to be 'cool' to drink this stuff. It's a bad thing as well and it's stuffing up the whole industry.

Bud and some of the other Busch brewed drinks [ can't call these beers ] are actually brewed from rice and not malted barley as it's cheaper. Rice bless you, it not beer it's fooking pot noodle.

Anyway because of this it has a taste to it that isn't all it should be. To get by this they carbonate it to hell and then serve it at minus

370 degrees to stop it frothing all over the shop. So now you have fizzy pot noodle.

Because breweries have to sell this paddy piss they have had to put better refrigeration systems in and it's more cost efficient to do this over the whole of the range. So now we are getting decent beers and real ale, which are still freely available being served at minus 370 degrees.

This means when you go up to the bar and order your pint first it's now impossible to quaff it down whilst the rest of the order is being served then get yours back in again. I have to do this because once in about 1968 I had a pint spilt and wouldn't want to repeat that traumatic experience again.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

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Reply to
John Stevenson

Ah, huh, mind you, you could put this to very good use!

-370º would be handy for cryogenic tempering of highly stressed parts! A quick swish around in your pint... Work & "leisure" together..

Tom

Reply to
Tom

Well at least my home brew is real ale... Plus I get to stick two fingers at the chancellor over his tax... Then again, it won't be long till I need a license and a cryo plant to be able to brew in my own home, under local council supervision... Where do I sign up for the machine gun and reloading kits...

Joules

Reply to
Joules

Blimey - I'd always fancied New Zealand anyway!! Can you really own a machine gun legally, without having to drive a BMW M3 with blue fairy lights on & wear sunglasses & your cap back to front? I can see what you mean about the reloading though - since my son has started shooting a 12 bore as well, I actually bought some cartridges last autumn for the first time in 32 years!

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Reply to
jrlloyd

In message , Tom writes

So when an ex-colonial from the wrong side of the pond says, "Your Mother drank warm beer!". Is it meant to be a compliment or an insult?

Reply to
Mike H

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