There’s more to issues like the CPSIA than meets the eye.

In the UK, at least, we have a tendency to legislate in haste and repent at leisure. Our lawmakers get stampeded into passing laws in a hurry, and we get left with the consequences. Generally speaking, those consequences are lousy – people kicked out of their homes because if they work, they lose their benefits, but if they don’t work, they can’t afford where the council has put them; local authorities using anti-terror legislation to check who has the most environmentally unfriendly house and policemen confiscating board games as threats to the public good. Oh, and laws making it criminal to take a picture of a copper. And, of course, the CPSIA, which seems to be a perfectly sensible piece of anti-lead legislation until you realise how broad are its effects and how damaging its fallout.

The thing is, we have to do better than this. We, the electorate. We tend to reward bad behaviour. It’s a bit like an abusive relationship.

So as you look at Gordon Brown telling Iran that they should develop nuclear power in order to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels; as you see Louise Casey turning public service sentencing into humiliation rather than re-socialisation; as you catch Jack Straw bleating about how the government’s record on civil liberties is so good: remember it. And punish them when they have to re-apply for their jobs. Do not continue to reward bad behaviour.

The thing is that politics has a very short institutional memory – so we have to remember instead. We have to be sensible, because politics is not a sensible arena and politicians need to be trained in good action, so that a culture of being sensible overtakes the present one of being a twerp.

We have to have a culture where short-term idiocy does not overwhelm prudent planning. Because we already know where the present setup takes us – economic and environmental clusterfornicato-immolaticularity.

Thank you for reading. That is all.