In our case that's the reverse of the truth. At one time power assisted pedal bikes had to be registered with number plates front and rear, VED with tax disc, third party insured and a full motorcycle licence was necessary.
In stages all that has been removed in favour of sanity and more freedom, and the authorities are not about to lose their sanity on this subject.
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I'm
truly astonished you can make such a statement.
If you compare the statute book now, to how it was 30-40 years ago, the UK is like a police-state, in some ways we have less freedoms than CHINA.
1) We have Political Corrrectness laws removing the most basic of all human rights (the freedom to express opinions and share thoughts) by telling us what we can say or cannot say, online and off-line, in areas of religion, social history, human sexuality, ethnicity and immigration, politics. If you express an opinion which is not PC and say anything which is deemed even slightly discriminatory (and the scope of that definition is very wide) towards any particular peoples, you've committed a criminal offense or get labeled and become a political and social outcast. Ken Livingstone the former London major is the latest PC victim. He dared to use the name Hitler in a sentence and make historic references to the Nazis being pro-Zionist, and immediately faced a media firestorm and is now suspended from the Labour party and his political career hanging in the balance, as many Jews took offense.
2) We have laws telling us a political party cannot represent its own ethnic citizens
3) We have laws telling us we must do business with people we might prefer not to.
4) We can no longer own or use hand-guns (even the British Olympics pistol team had to practice overseas).
5) We can no longer hunt foxes on private land with dogs.
6) Under new the new Public Order Act, there's a whole range of new offenses and new police powers governing what people can and can't do in public spaces. ie We can no longer assemble in public gatherings if the police decide that. The police can order a group of 3 or more people to disperse from an area, and even restrict or remove the right of individuals to travel to certain areas. Drinking alcohol in many public places is banned, as is smoking cigarettes, because it might harm or upset someone.
7) We can no longer protest march on certain issues in certain areas if the police and/or government decides that.
8) People can be arrested and detained, for up to 28 days, without any charges being brought.
9) People can be searched in the street, even a full body cavity search, merely on the suspicion of being in possession of illegal drugs.
10) Cannabis a long-time considered "soft-drug" by the UK and many countries, is now a B-Class drug with potentially very hard sentences for even a relatively small amount, which is automatically deemed "intent to supply" and so carries a prison sentence.
11) Replica blank-firing firearms have been outlawed from public use in the UK and possession of them carries the same sentences as a real firearm possession if arrested in some situations. New legislation dictates that replica handgun collectors can only have replica guns with bright red plastic nozzles indicating its a non-firing replica, so there's no public confusion.
12) It's now technically illegal to criticize a religion in the UK in a very public way, if it's likely to cause upset to anyone of that religion.
13) New legislation is being passed to regulate what people can say or do on social media, making it a criminal offense to insult people online if it causes them "alarm and distress".
14) Businesses open to the public now have to build easy access ramps and other facilities, such as toilets for disabled people, and must bear that cost.
15) In the 21st century in supposedly the most democratic place on earth, it's still a criminal offense in the UK to watch a television (or any live broadcast) without a license where the vast majority of the revenue goes to one corporation of which the government is the sole stakeholder in, and owner of. The government is now proposing even more regislation in this area to make it easier to harass and fine people, who choose not to watch live TV or allow TV Licensing into their homes to inspect.
16) All health supplements (both herbal and vitamin/mineral) now have to be individually licensed and approved by the government. Not satisfied with this, the EU and UK government regulated the health and beauty industry even further. Any products which claim benefits or medical usage, have to be registered as "health devices" and meet compliance criteria. Even basic one-part products in some cases.
17) It's now a serious criminal offense to have a knife with a fixed blade over 2 inches in a public place without good reason, carrying a maximum fine of £5,000 or 4 years imprisonment.
18) The Brown government proposed a controversial "Data Bill" which had two main aims: 1) to make it a legal requirement for ISP's to store ALL data from everyones internet connection 2) to allow government agencies and police, the powers to access that data freely without a warrant. Thankfully that Bill didn't succeed, but we have a watered down version of it none the less, and the government does have access to "meta data" and the scope has been increased to include phone calls and text messages, as well as internet communications.
19) In addition to the above, the UK has more CCTV cameras (under police and/or government control) than any country on earth.
20) The government passed new legislation allowing it by-pass the Data Protection Act and have access to peoples bank accounts who are suspected of welfare fraud or money laundering. Forget innocent until proven guilty. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right?
21) Anti-terrorism laws now give police and the government more powers than ever before, and many social rights groups in the UK have made persistent accusations that the government and police have abused these powers for non-terrorist (and often political) purposes.
22) Due to EU legislation harmonising UK economic, trade and taxation policies, HMRC is forced to apply a grossly unfair import tax and tariff system (which is basically legalized racketeering) on many small businesses (my own included) who are taxed massively and disproportionately on small imports into the EU (often paying as much as 25-30% import taxes), relative to large companies, which often pay hardly any or none, as they have the ability to by-pass EU borders and bring goods and services to the EU marketplace via the backdoor. As a result, any small UK businesses engaged in imports have the highest tax burden now in the Western world, and are at a major trade disadvantage against the United States and another countries which have zero-import taxes and duty. You literally are better off either leaving the UK completely and moving to the States if your business is importing goods regularly, else importing your goods via the States, and exporting them directly from there to end users in the EU.
23) Under EU legislation we can longer decide who we wish to deport from the UK (if they hold an EU passport), nor how many migrants are allowed into the UK each year.
24) Not satisfied with minimum wage legislation imposed on all businesses employing people, the government has now gone even further, raising it and and enforcing it further. We now have the absurd situation where someone collecting litter in the street is paid the same wage as someone assembling soldering and electronic consumer products, making it extremely difficult for many small start-up and early growth businesses to employ people, and thus creating an industry of "flexible temporary contract" employment agencies, where nobody has long-term job security anymore, or can even can be sure how many hours they work they will get from one week to the next.
25) The right to use a throttle on an e-bike without pedaling that existed in the UK since the early 1980's has been removed under new legislation which came into effect January of this year, as the EU pushed the UK to ratify the EU Directive on e-bikes and remove a significant difference (read, freedom) between UK and EU law.
The Blair government passed over 1,000 pieces of legislation in its 10 years of government, many of which affected or restricted social and even basic human rights.
You could look at some of these laws, and say yes that's probably been beneficial and done some good. However the vast majority have had negative effects on the economy and businesses, removed or restricted peoples rights they had previously.
You could conclude from this, we have excessive and arbitrary policy-shaping and law-making, largely driven by the colossal bureaucratic and technocratic nightmare of a Franco-German institution that is the EU. Where the shady and largely unaccountable EU Commission churns out endless Directives and regulatory laws upon peoples who never elected to be in it, and never get any say on any issues.
