On the announcement that Tony Blair is to step down as prime minister on June 27, here (pinched from the BBC) is how he has aged over the last ten years:
Not too bad, really. You should see how the rest of us look after ten years of his sanctimonious and bossy leadership!
Sometimes you wonder whether a story is a spoof. Apparently, it's real - seven European cities are felling their traffic signs and signals, and asking drivers to be thoughtful and considerate!
Bravo! It may be a function of our highly regulated culture that I am initially slightly nervous at the prospect of removing the road signs. My first reaction is wonder if we can make it without someone telling us how to handle each junction. But pretty quickly the 'less is more' instinct kicks in. Best government is small. Best legislation is minimal and simple.
The linked article is littered with unhelpful terms like 'anarchy' and 'utopia'. Of course, this is neither. It is a realisation that the more busybody regulation lumped on people, the less they think. Someone finally had the courage to ask - what if we allow intelligent people to engage their own brains? What if the driver is actually best placed to make his own decisions?
My favourite quotes from the article are: "The many rules strip us of the most important thing: the ability to be considerate." That's right! Rules replace thinking.
..And: "The glut of prohibitions is tantamount to treating the driver like a child and it also foments resentment. He may stop in front of the crosswalk, but that only makes him feel justified in preventing pedestrians from crossing the street on every other occasion. Every traffic light baits him with the promise of making it over the crossing while the light is still yellow."
This does not mean there are no road rules at all. And a legal framework is still necessary to judge situations when things go wrong. It's just a huge shift in balance... coming at the same problem from an entirely different angle. And apparently it's working - from the article, "the number of accidents has declined dramatically."
Traffic-light controlled intersections are governed by computers. Anyone who has sat at a red-light on an otherwise deserted intersection knows the unique blend of humiliation and fury of trying to reason with the machine-in-charge.
This is why round-abouts work so well... though an entire mystery to our American cousins. They give a guiding direction to the traffic flow rather than interrupting and controlling it. The rules are simple and elegant - go clockwise... give way to those already on the round-about - that's about it! It scales beautifully from the lonely white circle painted in a village centre to the huge garden-planted island in a city rush-hour.
Most shoking of all about this story is that someone in the European Union is actually thinking about trusting people rather than bossing them around.
I laughed when I heard this story - until I realised it was our millions in tax money down the drain.
HM Revenue and Customs brought in management consultants to improve efficiency. The consultants implemented such a dim-witted litany of busybody rules (no personal photos on desks...) that they completely alienated the workforce. Now they're dealing with work-to-rule and overtime ban among 14,000 civil servants. Improve efficiency? Not likely.
I've previously posted on what I think of pointy-haired rules. If Revenue and Customs really want rules to improve efficiency, they might try some long-term thinking:
1. Show staff a little respect.
2. See rule 1.
Good people work hard and care about what they do. They also understand what they do and why it is important. When some authority comes crashing down from above with performance targets, it invariably cocks things up.
1. Targets measure the wrong thing. In the old Soviet days there was a directive to produce so-many shoes. So the manufacturers produced that many shoes. They may have been hideously uncomfortable and all of them brown, but the targets were met.
2. Targets prioritise the management of the task above the task. In Britain the New Labour government introduced targets to cut hospital waiting lists. So the hospitals treated all the easy cases first - this reduced the waiting lists, but it increased the waiting time for anything non-routine! Think about it... the length of the waiting list doesn't matter a bit! It's how long you have to wait that counts.
So now our beloved leaders have introduced targets to cut waiting times. And now the quick treatments are prioritised to lower the average waiting time. The result - patents needing slower treatments need to wait even longer!
All along, the targets are there to get the government re-elected, not improve health care. In the health service, targets pervert clinical priorities. Good practitioners don't need targets. Government does.
3. Targets make the right thing damned inconvenient. Yesterday we heard the report that a Welsh police force had reached its targets on tackling violent crime. Good news? Only if you're a violent criminal. In response, the police have stopped collecting intelligence in the field because it would lead to a higher target the following year. So the target becomes an incentive to do a worse job.
Following the earlier post, Why I Hate Rules...
4. Rules replace thinking. I worked for a company that did not allow us to receive gifts. This was to avoid bribery. We had delegates visit from Finland and my first act was to insult them by refusing their gift. Oh, how I wish I had thought rather than supinely following a rule.
By definition, rules make exceptions unacceptable. Exceptions to the rule need to be authorised. Therefore, handling any anything other than the mundane becomes a pain in the arse. Rules work best for unthinking dead-beats doing boring things.
5. Rules promote dolts. Any organisation with an unholy excitement for rules will feel threatened by the maverick, the original thinker, the innovator. Those with flare get sidelined because they cannot thrive when hampered by insidious regulation.
On the other hand, those boring plodders who thrive on mediocracy enjoy the safeness of always doing the right thing at the right time in the right way. Keep your head down, follow the rules, and you'll do well, my son.
In a highly regulated environment, a lack of imagination is an asset.
6. Rules imply that the rule-maker knows better than you. Now sometimes, that is quite right. If I'm touring a nuclear power plant and someone has posted the rule - don't stick your hand between the rods... ok.
But often rules are made by busy-bodies who imagine that their infallible little opinions are above question by the unwashed masses. This is especially galling with rules about what you can and can't say.
I hold the unfashionable view that those in authority are there to serve, not to lord over the rest of us. They have a responsibility to ensure our freedom, not to manage how we use it.
1. Rules are for twonks. I'm not just making this up, the Bible says so... kind of: Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless... - I Timothy 1:9
It seems to me that most rules get made because some bozo screwed up. "No coffee in the reception area!" Guess how that rule came about. So now we all have to live at a standard that the gorilla from the 3rd floor can manage without trashing the furniture.
In the UK I can't carry a knife. Why? Because some knuckle-draggers can't resist stabbing people. So the law treats us all like maniacs who can't be trusted with sharp objects.
Now, I know we need laws. And I'm blurring the distinction between a law and a rule. Major laws, like those against murder and violent attacks are fine. But the problem with the incessant rule-making of our condescending rulers is that they consistently miss the mark because they aim at easy targets. It's easier to stop me carrying a pocket knife than to stop the utter scum who gets his kicks from slashing anyone who looks at him. Enforce the laws he is already breaking! 
But politicians prefer to make more laws. How could that improve the lowest depths of human nature?
The government now wants us all to carry ID cards. They tell us it'll help counter terrorism and fraud. No it won't. First the IT system will fail, then the project budget will explode, then the terrorists will attack anyway (only they'll have nice shiny ID cards when they do), and the fraudsters will counterfeit the cards. Yet more rules made because of scum, that will not make them one bit less scummy.
2. Rules are for other people. Rule makers are notorious for ignoring the rules. I feel this point is so obvious it doesn't even need documentation. Rules are used by those in authority to wield power over the masses. Government ministers set the state school curriculum, then send their kids to private schools.
Did you ever see the film, "The Cider House Rules"? Michael Caine's character runs a remote orphanage with complete contempt for the rules made by people who rarely visit and have no concept of what it takes to run the place.
3. Rules don't inspire me. Rules can never bring out the best in people because they treat people like they are stupid. If you treat people as stupid, that's what you get.
Greatness requires breaking rules. Who do you really respect in human history? Think about it...
Gandhi? - You don't protest like that!
Martin Luther King? - You can't say that!
The Apollo Program personnel? - You can't go there!
They broke rules of convention, received wisdom, and even the law.
What about great fictional characters - think of books or films. How exciting would they be if the hero played it by the book. That tells me that we aspire to be above the rules. We instinctively know that being a goody-two-shoes, dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't' is boring and only a shadow of all we can be.
What about Jesus? He healed on the Sabbath, ate with the publicans and sinners. He broke enough rules to get himself executed. He also summed up hundreds of Old Testament laws in two commandments - Love God and love your neighbour. That's what I'm talking about. He knew that if you want to inspire people, you've got to trust them to figure something out for themselves.
The hundreds of laws in the Old Testament kept a check on society, but they were not enough. People are not improved by the imposing of restrictions from outside. Something has to spark on the inside. When people love God and love their neighbour, they don't need petty rule-makers, they need freedom.
