Hating the untidiness of whimsy - the curse of local councils

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Control, direct, order, limit, ban, manage, prevent, dictate, regulate, licence, stop.

Sadly these are the words that best define much of local government - and us local councillors. This is what we do - we stand in the way of community, cooperation, choice, innovation and initiative. And we revel in it.

In a statement the city of Leawood issued to TODAY, an official said that a property maintenance code enforcement officer had noticed the bookshelf but "thought it was placed in the yard for pick up." Several days later, the officer received complaints about it and notified the family the structure violated a city ordinance that states “no detached structure, including garages, barns, sheds, greenhouses, above ground pools, or outbuildings, shall be permitted."

And what was it that so offended the officials of this Kansas town? It was one of these:

In its most basic form, a Little Free Library is a box full of books where anyone may stop by and pick up a book (or two) and bring back another book to share.

A nine-year-old child had set one up in his yard. A little private initiative - done with hope and a smile - to build a local community. Stamped out by the council because some busybody 'complained' and some jobsworth decided the little box of books in the garden was an illegal structure.

Don't try to tell me that your council is immune from this obsession with tidiness and the tin-pottery of control. Here in Bradford you need a licence to have a village gala. Not for safety reasons but because the Council wants to 'exercise its market charter rights'. And your council will be the same - a little ban here, a stern letter there. Whether it's the spirited citizen who's told to stop mowing the verge outside his house or the children who are stopped from their little bit of guerrilla gardening, your local officials will react to any community initiative by either wanting to stop it happening or else to bring it within their control and regulatory orbit.

But, and this is important, those intrusive officials are only doing what they know people want. Every day they encounter people who would stop someone drinking quietly on a bench, prevent a second takeaway opening on the high street and ban any number of odd but essentially harmless activities. As Scott Doyon, in writing about the Little Boy with the Little Free Library observes, we really have a problem with whimsy - and certainly independently initiated whimsy in someone's garden:

The second error is that you add value to whimsy by making it more uniform and predictable when that’s actually the exact opposite of what happens. A Little Free Library, or any other inspired creative expression, is like a flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk. You don’t make it more palatable by camouflaging it as concrete.

If we want interesting places filled with interesting people doing interesting things then we have to stop doing what people who want boring places filled with boring people doing boring things want us to do. We - and that means political and community leadership - need to stop thinking that the role of the local parish, town, village or district council is to look sternly at whether someone should be allowed a house extension, to run a fair, to open a cafe or, madly, to want a shark on the roof.

Councils are filled with people who see the busy-ness of local community as a problem, who tut and frown at folk outside a pub drinking and laughing and who think only regulations, controls, bans and licences stand between civilisation and anarchy. And who hate the untidiness of whimsy.

This, more than anything else, is the curse of local government. We are wielders of the permit and the permission not huggers of the whimsical and weird. Perhaps we could change it round! The world would be more fun I think!

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A story...

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I knew a bloke who set up an erboristoria in Ragusa - or rather his wife did and Dave helped. Now, as you'll know, to set up any shop in Italy requires a licence and, in this case, there was a further licence because of the medical nature of a herbalist.

Now in Sicily there are three ways to get a licence.

The first way is to go to the municipio queue up and collect the requisite form, complete the form, attach the requisite payment and submit it to the appropriate official. And wait. And wait. There is a chance that, at some point in the future, that official (or someone on his staff) will not be at important meetings, at lunch or otherwise engaged. And will deign to look at the completed form, apply the stamp of approval and place it in the tray for the licence to be sent. There is even a chance that the licence is actually posted back.

The second way to get a licence is to get your neighbours cousin - the one with the nice car who never seems to work - to get his business associates to speak to the official in question. Shortly after this the license will be issued. However, each Wednesday friends of the cousin call in and politely ask for a small consideration for their efforts. Not paying this consideration is, I believe, foolish.

The third way to secure that license involves the most expensive espresso you've ever bought. You speak to the local mayor and he tells you he can help and can you meet him at his brother's caffetteria perhaps for a late morning caffè. You agree and on arriving you buy the mayor a coffee, hand him the completed form. He drinks the coffee (it being Italy this takes little more than a minute), says he's happy to help and leaves. The brother brings the bill across. Your eyes pop out but you pay secure in the knowledge that tomorrow your licence will arrive.

Quite which option Dave and his wife used I don't know.

It may all be a myth, of course!

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The end of civilization as we know it...

...or something like that as the European Court of Justice sticks it to Sky and the Premier League by allowing us to ship in those foreign decoders and watch the football as broadcast by Greeks, Finns and Luxembourgois. The sound of pub pontification echoes across the world (or would if more pubs were open) and many predict that the great football bubble will burst. In just a few short years will we see Wayne Rooney supplementing his meagre income by shining shoes at Piccadilly station and Arsene Wenger sat with a batter paper cup outside Highbury Station?

Somehow, people seem to miss the point. Quite rightly there is no copyright protection on a football match – after all, what’s involved? We point a camera at the pitch and, hey presto, a football match is broadcast. Not much human creativity there! So the issue never was copyright – the issue was the licence. And the ECJ has reminded us that we live in a ‘single market’ and that broadcasters cannot make arbitrary boundaries for their own purposes within than market that are enforceable. This is what Sky and the Premier League tried to do.

However, the idea that this will end the football bubble is misplaced. The licence agreements are time limited and subject to renegotiation. Up to that point the licensees (including Sky) are obliged to comply with the contracts – including, I assume, paying the fees. So in the short-term there is no effect on the Premier Leagues revenues. The problem comes when the licences are renegotiated.

The Premier League will – I’m prepared to bet – simply issue one set of licences for the whole EU. The losers won’t be Sky (unless some upstart Slovakian broadcaster outbids them) but the various local licence-holders. There won’t be a licence for Greece, a licence for Spain and a licence for Sweden – just one EU licence.

The publican in Portsmouth may be grinning broadly right now but her action, it seems to me, has caused little more than an irritation to the Premier League – but possibly a bigger bill for Sky (or that upstart Slovakian broadcaster).

It probably isn’t the end of the Premier League gravy train. Civilization will be saved!

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Labour's still wedded to the license state

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The bizarre polity that is modern India was - under its then perennial Congress Party rule - described as the 'license raj":

This is when India got its License Raj, the bureaucratic control over the economy. Not only did the Indian Government require businesses get bureaucratic approval for expanding productive capacity, businesses had to have bureaucratic approval for laying off workers and for shutting down. When a business was losing money the Government would prevent them from shutting down and to keep the business going would provide assistance and subsidies. When a business was hopeless an owner might take away, illegally, all the equipment that could be moved and disappear themselves. In such cases the Government would try to keep the business functioning by means of subsidies to the employees. One can imagine how chaotic and unproductive a business would be under such conditions. 

Every economic act, every profession, every industry acts solely on the basis of licenses granted by government. Not only was this corrupt but it crippled the Indian economy for a generation.

This lesson in failure - with India falling ever further behind places like South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and, latterly, China - is still ignored by social democrats. Ignored by those who see the purpose of the state as the direction of individual actions to a greater good - or rather to the preferences and interests of the political class.

Such a man is Ivan Lewis MP, the Labour culture shadow - Mr Lewis wishes to license journalists:

Lewis will suggest that newspapers should introduce a system whereby journalists could be struck off a register for malpractice.

Not only is this illiberal - but then we expect that from Labour politicians - it is stupid and enforceable only by arbitrary power. It would represent the first step towards the social democrat establishment controlling the output of the press, a big stride towards the hounding of journalists for the grave sin of criticising Labour politicians. And it is wrong.

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