Banned wagon
FEARS have been expressed that farm- ers will be forbidden to drive their trac- tors for more than two hours a day under health-and-safety legislation aimed at cutting their exposure to vibrations. In fact, there is an astonishing amount of legislation preventing willing citizens from engaging in work, of which the European Union's Working Time Direc- tive — limiting employees to a 48-hour week — is only part. Regulations intro- duced last year limit 15- and 16-year-olds to working just 12 hours a week, on the grounds that longer hours would detract from their schoolwork. Yet, thanks to the government's introduction of university tuition fees, many teenagers now rely on weekend and evening earnings to further their education.
In Glasgow, education authorities have banned schoolchildren from joining milkmen on their rounds before school. Public-sector workers are mostly now forcibly retired before the age of 70, and often before the age at which a state pension becomes payable: tax-worker Bill Killroy-Brown was forcibly retired from the Contributions Agency at 60 out of supposed concern for his health, even though, with a five-year-old daughter to support, he was more worried about his health should he be forced out of work.
Planning rules are being used to limit the number of hours that small business- es are allowed access to their offices. A small manufacturing company in Sussex was surprised when it was told employ- ees were not allowed on to the premises in the middle of the night — even when all they wanted to do was to negotiate orders in the Far East over the fax and telephone: something which simply can- not be done in the UK during normal working hours.
What was the company supposed to do? Stop work and get drunk, perhaps: while making life difficult for those who want to work, the government is plan- ning to allow pubs in some residential areas to open into the small hours.
Ross Clark
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