A total lack of enforcement

At one point, one particular week last month, a person died or was seriously hit and injured by a car. If there is anything that marks Labour’s stint in government, it is a lack of enforcement.

“The problem is that the common factor in all this is the fact that the government fails to act, due to the misguided notion that people will vote for them because they irritate them less, while in reality the lawabiding citizen is left to fight his daily battles alone with those who openly flout the law. ”

Everyone does what he or she wants because there is absolutely no control and, even worse, many people have a sense of entitlement. They feel they have a licence to be above the law because the powers-that-be give them that entitlement. The problem on our roads is one of the biggest disasters but it is not the only one – just the biggest one.

There are issues with financial services, issues with the construction industry, issues with permits, issues with health and safety, issues with the environment, issues with justice being served and issues with about every other type of enforcement.

Our roads have become a veritable free-for-all. The police are nowhere to be seen, the wardens have all but disappeared and our roads are – I repeat – a free-for-all. Everybody tells you that the best approach to instil proper behaviour is the carrot and stick approach. This government uses carrot, after carrot, after carrot but the stick is nowhere to be seen andwe all know that where there is no stick, there is no compliance. Overspeeding is rampant, parking is disorderly and haphazard, with double parking allowed on busy roads being the rule of the day.

Cars are parked at traffic lights or on zebra crossings with impunity; mobile phones are stuck to peoples’ ears everywhere, putting the lives of others in danger; motor cycles and scooters overtaking on the inside are the order of the day. Cars with tinted windows are seen frequently, while traffic signs or markings are simply there to be ignored or only apply to the others, not self!

There is dirt everywhere one looks. Recycling bins are used as rubbish dumps and all sorts of refuse is dumped around them rather than in them.The roads and streets are full of litter and the few bins present are left to overflow with all kinds of rubbish. There is never any enforcement with regard to those who break the law in this regard.

If one can put a finger on anything, it is this total lack of enforcement. I recently corrected a woman who was dumping bulky refuse around a skip and told her that she should keep those things at home until the bulky refuse service people collected them from her house. To this she replied that she was a lawyer and knew the law and she then simply walked away, leaving everything where it was.

I will not even begin with the construction industry and its health and safety legislation. Workers refuse to follow the law and contractors look the other way. Contractors break the law constantly and those who should enforce building laws fail to act. A demonstration of this is that, in a couple of weeks, several building blocks have collapsed – thankfully with few injuries – but many people have been deprived by force rigeur of a living abode then and now. The forces of order are, again, noticeable for their absence.

The problem is that the common factor in all this is the fact that the government fails to act, due to the misguided notion that people will vote for them because they irritate them less, while in reality the lawabiding citizen is left to fight his daily battles alone with those who openly flout the law.

It is the mentality of a mediocrity that marks the way this government does things: promotions for blue-eyed boys, contracts given without a tender being issued, people employed in their thousands on a ‘trusted friend’ basis without a call for application being promulgated, government property being given away for a pitance and corruption abetted in all its sinister subtle and not so subtle forms. If this is the situation of things about us, it is because it is the presence of state of mind of this government. In reality we deserve much better.

Arthur Conan Doyle – writing as Sherlock Holmes – famously exclaimed that “mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself” and this is currently manifested in all its fullness by the collective mind of a government that is anything but exceptional.