The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #127659 Message #2934416
Posted By: Rob Naylor
25-Jun-10 - 03:58 AM
Thread Name: Entertainment & Alcohol Licence ? UK
Subject: RE: Entertainment & Alcohol Licence ? UK
Bubblyrat: Far better to adopt the French attitude,and ignore the whole stupid,ridiculous,time-wasting,petty beaurocratic,irritating nonsense !!
The difference is in the attitude of officialdom.
A few years ago, we rented a holiday cottage next to a farm in Brittany. The farmer there sold pork in local markets, and I was astonished to see him one day slaughtering pigs outside, in his yard on the farm. Two of our local slaughterhouses had just closed down through being unable to economically meet the new requirements for veterinary supervision and hygiene, and here he was blithely killing pigs in the open air with no sign of a vet in attendance, or any special hygiene precautions.
I commented on the apparent differing standards in the UK and France in interpretation of the same EU rules. His reply was "well the food inspectors like good "artisan" pork too. I suspect that in England your inspectors are not food-lovers" and sure enough a guy from the inspectorate turned up the next day and collected a rather large package of meat.
That wouldn't happen in the UK...it might on occasion with specific individuals, but not elevated to the art of semi-official collusion that it appeared to have acquired in parts of France!
The UK appears to harbour a large sub-set of officials who don't use common sense to follow the spirit of regulatory guidelines, but seem to take a delight in gold-plating EU directives and then making sure that the letter of these regulations is followed in all cases, with all is dotted and ts crossed.
If you once get caught out ignoring the rules, however illogcal some of them are, your venue/ organisation/ whatever will have problems ever staging an event again.