The council employees who currently carry out this work are not bad people and do genuinely think that they are making premises safe for the public. Many people, some of them also council employees, seem to wish to defend the PEL regime because of what they think it is, rather than what it has come to be in practice. Or because they feel the good intentioned efforts of other employees are being unfairly attacked.

In reality the current system is a dishonest sham and a disgrace and resembles a protection racket more than a real system for peotecting the public.

Even for large outdoor events like Glastonbury, where we could all see that some form of additional control is required, this system fails us. Most authorities intentionally raise the fee to huge amounts for these events, to ensure that they do not take place in their backyard. And in the case of Glastonbury, all sorts of bogus public safety concerns are raised to cover the simple fact that many just do not like the music or the event, when the police and authorities are satisfied that they have taken all the measures they can.

There is so much wrong about the current system but very little critcism finds it way into any of the objectives and justification of the Bill. Which really takes the old system on trust but increases the scope in an attempt to cover everything and tries to plug up every possible loophole. Fees and annual inspection charges will be intially be set nationaly but will only ever be moving in an upward direction to form a stealth tax on all music making and entertainment.

Experience of the current system has clearly shown anyone who takes the trouble to look at the evidence, that we cannot just trust local authorities to sensibly enforce this legislation and to also ensure our freedoms under other legislation. And we we must never again be blindly prepared to do this in the future, whatever we may think of the general good intentions of council employees.

The whole basis in the Bill for the continuation of blanket entertainment licensing, given all our other 21st century legislation is totally bogus.

Will people ever stop being so bloody charitible towards an outdated and discredited system that shows no charity at all to its many victims?

Rant over........