In the news

I am making four main arguments -

(1) Good regulation is a good thing (obviously what is good regulation is subjective, but I would argue that for many industries it is fairly tough regulation.)

(2) I generally detest those who argue for de-regulation because they generally seem to me to have no interest in good regulation, their only interest is less regulation. Usually for their own selfish reasons, such as so that they can get home from a night out for 50p less. These people are, of course, the first people to moan when things are not exactly how they want them to be despite the fact that they were cheering loudest when de-regulation happened.

(3) A big part of good regulation, IMHO, is a high barrier to entry such as the knowledge. The reason for this is that, I believe, ensuring that people have a lot to lose by fucking up (in this example losing their licence to drive people round, perhaps because they were held responsible for a serious accident or assaulted someone) gives them a big incentive to stay on the straight and narrow. A black cabbie who loses his licence is throwing away both a good salary (due to the high barriers to entry) and two years of his life which he spent acquiring the knowledge. He has a lot to lose. Contrast that with someone who has spent a few hundred pounds and filled in a few forms in order to get a much less good salary - they have not got anywhere near as much to lose and therefore nowhere near the incentive to keep their nose clean.

(4) De-regulation often does not lead to greater choice. For example at the moment you can hire a mini-cab or get a black cab. The more mini-cabs encroach into the world of the black cab the further we are down the road to a world where we no longer have the choice, it will be one size fits all (inevitabaly the dumbed down, cheap as possible service)

I do not have a huge interest in the story (and was not really responding to the story). My initial post in relation to it (30152) (which I stand by) was more of a general rant about the attitudes of some people to de-regulation (in response to Greenhell trolling "anachronistic crybabies who will go the way of the red pillar postbox and the routemaster bus. so long suckas!" [I should have stuck him on ignore earlier!]) and continued by hippytroll [who I really should not have responded to - going to usercontrol panel now].

tldr

"possibly being Britain's most prolific sex attacker."

**John Worboys - Black Cab Rapist
**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Worboys