Control slipping from central States in small ways

Electric scooters are the pain de jour for western governments. The battery and motor technology that was supposed to support the develop of electric cars for which governments are planning and legislating has instead flooded the market with millions of cheap Chinese electric scooters. Incredibly popular with the urban young, they can be kept in the hallway of an apartment and need no expensive concrete car parks in the city centres. The only problem is that governments hadn’t anticipated them, haven’t legislated for them and now are in knots.

This Conservative government is a product of a deeply interfering political class who have legislated to regulate everything from smoking on the beach, eating medium rare beefburgers to watching internet porn, and has employed an army of street wardens to catch people dropping pieces of litter whilst turning a blind eye to the welter of gore on the street from stabbed children, spilt blood being less of an offence one presumes than a dropped fag butt. 

The Police won’t even turn out for a non-indictable offence these days but God help you if you don’t pay the TV tax. It’s all falling apart, common sense has divorced from their use of our taxes and electric scooters could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  The Telegraph reports on how Paris is coping with the development (I won’t call it a ‘problem’) and the answers are all unenforceable – unless one diverts police from anti-terrorism ops to scooter traffic control.

And God knows they must be having the vapours in Brussels trying to frame EU wide directives that govern scooter speed, motor power, battery capacity, fitting of winter tyres, compulsory reflectors, hazard warning lights and sound signal apparatus. Why do they need to? Well, they don’t. But it’s what central States do to validate themselves. 

Technology is moving faster, though, than States can legislate. People don’t see why we need such petty governance when laws against burglary aren’t enforced. It’s starting to slip away.