Amy,
I'm no new labour apologist, but most of tbe laws quoted are actually pretty sensible when looked at in context, and I'm bored, so here they are in context.
• Carrying grain on a ship without a copy of the International Grain Code on board
do you want grain you're going to eat to be carried in unregulated cargo ships that could previously have been carrying anything from coal to municipal waste, and need to be thoroughly cleaned and sanitised prior to carry grain according to the standards set out in the International Grain Code? Pretty difficult to be sure a ship's meeting the standards if there's not a copy of the code on board wouldn't you say, or do you not care about eating rotten, contaminated grain?
• Shining a light at an aircraft to dazzle or distract the pilot
Relates mainly to idiots shining laser pens at planes on take off or landing approaches, dazzling them, and causing them to be unable to properly see the landing lights they need to line up with in order to ensure a safe landing. If you don't think this should be an offence, preumably you think it's perfectly ok for people to endanger the lives of planeloads of passengers for shits and giggles?
• Unauthorised fishing in the Lower Esk River
you think people should be allowed to fish our rivers totally unregulated until there are no fish left?
• Obstructing an authorised person from inspecting apple, pear, peach or nectarine orchards for the purposes of ascertaining whether grubbing up has been carried out
From what I can tell, from reading
the act, this relates to farmers who'd received payments from EU/Government funds under the previous tory government to grub up their unused orchards, with an obligation placed on them not to then replant orchards on their land for at least 15 years after the funding was granted. This regulation allowed the government to actually check that the work they'd paid for had actually been done, and that the farmer was complying with the undertaking they'd given not to replant an orchard within 15 years.
Whether or not paying people to grub up orchards is a good idea is a different argument, but giving people a lot of money to do something, without giving yourself powers to check they have actually done it would be pretty stupid don't you think?
• Failure to attend a hearing by a bus lane contravention adjudicator
Do you approve of bus lanes? If so, presumably you'd accept that they need to be enforced otherwise they'd not work...
• As a merchant shipping officer, falsely claiming a door is closed and locked
In the event that a ship capsized / sprang a leak etc someone having falsely claimed a door had been closed and locked when it hadn't could easily result in a ship sinking that wouldn't otherwise have sunk / or sinking much faster than it should have done. Do you like seeing people drown?
• Selling non-native species such as a grey squirrel, ruddy duck or Japanese knotweed
Invasive species that are rapidly out competing our native species, leading to their decline and likely extinction unless massively expensive efforts to save them are successful. Or causing huge amounts of damage to land they contaminate eg japanese knotweed that's such a problem it can grow through tarmac, and IIRC concrete, meaning that where it invades building sites etc it can lead to the entire top soil having to be removed and replaced as the only way to get rid of it. Not allowing people to continue to import and sell such species would seem to me to be a sensible first step to tackling the problem at source, but feel free to attempt to defend you position of continuing to allow people to sell these problematic species without restrictions.
• Obstructing workers carrying out repairs to the Docklands light railway
no idea what this is about, but it sounds reasonably sensible to not allow people to obstruct people repairing a railway system, and presumably was a part of the act that enabled the DLR extension to be built.
• Keeping a dog on a lead longer than a maximum length in a designated area n
I'm not sure what this is about exactly, but where it says 'dogs must be kept on a lead' it would seem sensible to define what is meant by a lead, including a maximum acceptable length for a lead.
• Using an automatic rail-weighbridge which has a disqualification sticker on it
if it wasn't specified as being illegal, then truckers would be perfectly entitled to use out of order weighbridges, and dodgy transport companies wanting to get around the weight restrictions would simply find and use weighbridges that weren't supposed to be being used because they were giving a false reading or something.
• Not having a licence for a church concert
This is actually not having a license for a public concert anywhere, not just churches, though that does also apply to churches. Churches don't just hold occasional choir recitals, some act in the same was as community centres in hosting regular concerts, theatre shows, and being hired out to outside organisations for all sorts of uses, so why churches should be exempted from regulations designed to ensure adequate fire escapes, toilet provision, emergency lighting etc. and that they don't cause excessive noise problems for their neighbours baffles me (speaking as someone who spent 10 years organising festivals and events).
I'm sure labour did put a lot of unnecessary stuff on the statute book, but those examples say more about the person using them than the labour government IMO (as a non labour voter, and campaigner against a fair few of their policies). ie that you're happy to repost badly researched sub UKIP stuff without actually subjecting it to any actual critical analysis of your own. Unfortunately this alone undermines the rest of your argument, which is a shame, because labour has done a lot to harm our civil liberties, just not really through any of the examples you give. Or maybe I'm just brainwashed.
Oh, and I just noticed you've linked to alex jones...
