I'm kind of dipping my toe in the water as it were with this post as I'm not a David Icke conspiracy theorist but it's gradually been dawning on me recently how things work and I was wondering if anyone else agrees or can perhaps just tell me I'm paranoid.
A few days ago I posted about the death of the high street and how swingeing business rates and parking charges etc were contributing to this. Since then, I've had a number of experiences which have highlighted how there is what I view as a parasitic bureaucratic cum legal layer that ostensibly exists for the same reasons that such things have always existed but really is there only to serve the people who comprise that layer be it local govt, Quangos, lawyers or whatever. And nobody seems immune from them - no matter how small the concern.
I've been doing a bit of hiking round the SW coast path recently and made some enquiries into how much it would cost to arrive on foot with a 1 man tent. I was thinking 10 quid max. One campsite in Croyde quoted me £35! Of course, I commented on how steep the rates were and more than one of them mentioned higher business rates, work they had to undertake to satisfy their public liability insurance, increased premiums - things like that.
Now it seems they are getting their tentacles into these so called "pop up" ventures. Ok, if you have a pizza oven in your garden from which you sell pizzas to members of the public you should probably pay some kind of business rate. But a bloke up the road who has done this for the last couple of years had to stop doing it this year because of the normal crap - mostly work he needed to do for health and safety - and also disabled access. No point carrying on - how would he ever compete with Pizza Express?
Another thing that I believe will be short lived (can't remember the name of the website but it's very popular among caravaners etc) is that scheme where you park up for free and spend the night in the carpark of a local pub, shop, cafe whatever on the premise that you will pop into said shop and spend some money. This, apparently, flouts certain laws and they are starting to crack down on that now. Ditto the simliar thing where you let shoppers park on your drive via some website.
My point is that anything undertaken by the regular person in the street will ultimately have the life force sucked out of it by this smothering, parasitic layer leaving the way open for the big boys to carry on as before.
A few days ago I posted about the death of the high street and how swingeing business rates and parking charges etc were contributing to this. Since then, I've had a number of experiences which have highlighted how there is what I view as a parasitic bureaucratic cum legal layer that ostensibly exists for the same reasons that such things have always existed but really is there only to serve the people who comprise that layer be it local govt, Quangos, lawyers or whatever. And nobody seems immune from them - no matter how small the concern.
I've been doing a bit of hiking round the SW coast path recently and made some enquiries into how much it would cost to arrive on foot with a 1 man tent. I was thinking 10 quid max. One campsite in Croyde quoted me £35! Of course, I commented on how steep the rates were and more than one of them mentioned higher business rates, work they had to undertake to satisfy their public liability insurance, increased premiums - things like that.
Now it seems they are getting their tentacles into these so called "pop up" ventures. Ok, if you have a pizza oven in your garden from which you sell pizzas to members of the public you should probably pay some kind of business rate. But a bloke up the road who has done this for the last couple of years had to stop doing it this year because of the normal crap - mostly work he needed to do for health and safety - and also disabled access. No point carrying on - how would he ever compete with Pizza Express?
Another thing that I believe will be short lived (can't remember the name of the website but it's very popular among caravaners etc) is that scheme where you park up for free and spend the night in the carpark of a local pub, shop, cafe whatever on the premise that you will pop into said shop and spend some money. This, apparently, flouts certain laws and they are starting to crack down on that now. Ditto the simliar thing where you let shoppers park on your drive via some website.
My point is that anything undertaken by the regular person in the street will ultimately have the life force sucked out of it by this smothering, parasitic layer leaving the way open for the big boys to carry on as before.
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