There should be a law against writing stupid articles like this!

On the general point, I found Australia amazingly over-regulated when I came here from the UK in 1979. Some years later, Bob Hawke correctly noted that there were more regulatory barriers between Australian states than between EU countries. I suspect that the comparison has worsened since.

On a specific issue, you wrote "Wouldn't you prefer to be in a car travelling at 65km/h with a driver who is paying attention than in a car travelling at 60km/h - or for that matter at 40km/h - with a driver who is not? Dr Alan Buckingham of the UK's Bath Spa University College argues that road safety is ensured by having capable drivers, safe cars and safe roads. Any government action should be directed at these goals."

I drive fast, and I drive safely. (I did have a minor injury acident in Asian Turkey in 1970, when I had the choice of driving into a ravine or having a head-on with a mini-bus. I chose the latter.) I keep my car in good nick, I stay alert, I don't drink, use drugs or a mobile phone, I've slowed for situations well ahead long before drivers ahead of me brake suddenly. I also respond to overtaking oportunities before other drivers. My experience is that most people who drive fast have a much higher situational awareness than those who drive slowly, they are more likely to signal and to treat other drivers with courtesy. It's the driver, stupid! Often abetted by alcohol and other drugs.

Let's give Alan Moran carte blanche to tear up regulations between now and the end of the year, then review the situation.

Casper has missed the point,our state govts don't care too much about road deaths,they crave the revenue to build the empires to that enslave us all in this wonderful "Nanny State" Never a few sentences pass a pollies lips these days without some mention of a safety net.They want to enslave us with taxes and big note themselves on how good they are when they give some of our hard earned dollars back so we will vote them in again.

The Howard Govt pays lip service to bringing the spiralling social security system under control,but so many people now depend upon it that Govts are fearful of losing votes if they try to make the really hard decisions and stop this mentality of free handouts.

"There should be a law against...(insert pet gripe here)" This is exactly the mindset that empowers lawmakers to implement an ever more suffocating 'nanny-state'.

The difference between an adult and a child is that an adult has the freedom to think and act as they please (within reason) but it comes with the responsibility to deal with their own problems. A child has very few freedoms but also very few responsibilities.

The question is; What do you want to be?

“In all their dealings governments should ensure that individuals' responsibilities are met and that individuals' liberties are respected.”

This is the balance that must be struck by our law-makers. The trouble is, everyone has a different opinion as to where that point of balance is, in relation to all sorts of things.

It seems that Casper Conde’s overall point of balance is considerably more towards individuals’ liberties than mine.

Even if it is only the tiny minority who play up in a serious manner, as per Casper’s beer-at-the-cricket example, isn’t it a fair and reasonable thing to implement regulations that strive to stop it? And isn’t it the right thing to do to place everyone under the same regulations? Isn’t light beer in plastic cups instead of full-strength beer in glasses a fair and reasonable policy? Let’s face it, the authorities could easily have banned alcohol altogether.

In this case, law-abiding citizens may have had the pleasure of a beer at the cricket reduced, but they are also hopefully saved the quite awful consequences of out-of-hand antisocial behaviour. It seems to me that the positives clearly outweigh the negatives in this instance.

However, when it comes to road safety, more regulations, or slower speed limits are not the answer, for as long as we have a pathetically poor policing regime - something that Casper completely neglects to mention.

“After large amounts of government advertising, speed cameras, double demerit points in some states and reduced speed limits, there has been no significant reduction in the road toll.”

Yes. The answer is not more restrictions or more severe penalties. The answer is to have a sufficiently high police presence so that there is a sufficiently high risk of offenders being caught, so that the drongos on our roads will actually take heed of the law instead of thumbing their noses at it. Comprehensive driver-training is also a large part of the answer.

In the bigger picture, the lack of policing of laws is a major factor. It leads to a number of serious problems:-

1. Those who are very familiar with particular laws and the policing of them know what they can get away with, while those less familiar stick strictly to them. Thus a double standard is set up.

2. Similarly, those who take the principled position regarding the law are put at a disadvantage compared to those who realise that there is some leeway or that the chances or being caught are slight, or the penalties if caught are minor.

3. Due largely to the lack of police compared to the overall enormously broad spectrum of things that require policing, many laws simply go unpoliced. Again, those who know which ones are not policed have a great advantage over those who don’t or who take the principled law-abiding position.

4. Discretionary powers allow police and other regulatory authorities to treat people differently with respect to the same laws, and to do so with impunity.

Thus, the regulatory regime MUST have adequate and fair policing.

Casper writes: “The problem with bans and regulations is that individuals lose out”

YES, but not for the reasons he envisages – because of the often uneven and hence unfair regulation of those regulations!

To get to grips as to how over-regulated we are, here in Western Australia the Government Gazette for 2005 had 6920 pages and 1004 pages so far in 2006.Take the five other states and the territories from the ACT to the Coral Sea Island Territory and add the edicts of the Commonwealth plus all the acts of these various jurisdictions and you run out of bookshelf space. All this to regulate the affairs of 20 000 000 people

When personal responsibility is not a virtue. Government must take on the responsibility of parent to society. Hence the thousands of rules and regulations governing our lives. What's the answer? How do you convince government that you don't need it to step in and do what a responsible human should do for themselves? More local control, less federal control. More local community involvement. If every citizen took their civic duty seriously and got involved locally then federal government would have less to regulate. So we're back where we started, personal responsibility.

Caspar, good start to this item, we are over regulated. We need less, not more. Lawyers must laugh themselves silly but they probably create it or the need for it.

Any time there is a "problem" our governments think that legislation is the answer. All extra legislation achieves is to create more offenders or criminals. For what? The behaviour doesn't change so I can only conclude the governments simply use any issue to gather more revenue through fines etc.

Does anyone really think that the terrorism laws will prevent a suicide bomber? What penalty would prevent them? The death penalty? The smoking laws in QLD where smoking on beaches is banned have had 8 charges laid since inception. Does anyone think only 8 people smoked on a QLD beach? Remember Schoolies?

Your issues re vehicles and beer at footy though are trite and mean nothing. What does 1 man having a beer in the UK at the soccer have to do with crowd behaviour? Nothing.

The amount of legislation is brought to notice by the increase in number of pages on tax alone. That number has boomed under the current government.

Police numbers are certainly insufficient to monitor all the laws. There are so many that most offenders never get noticed and this is perhaps why the majority contnue to ignore basic laws such as exceeding the speed limit, particularly in school zones.

For Faustino, what a ridiculous statement re you driving fast. You are exactly the sort of driver that causes the problems. You seem to think you are entitled to exceed the speed limit as you consider you are a great driver etc. What tripe. Speed limits have many functions, one of which is to create smooth traffic flows. Drivers such as you destroy that and encourage all others to "race" you.

Try driving at the speed limit in all zones. You will find you are often on your own as the packs race past.If you do drive at the speed limit you will notice that a high majority of drivers do exceed the speed limit regularly.

Their is an alternative to 'regulation'. Regulation, of course, is designed to 'regulate' behaviour that is not conducive to maintaining other people's rights in society.

This alternative is, instead of regulation, to hold people more accountable for the damages that their actions have caused.

For instance, say we get rid of all speed laws, so that it is up to the individual driver to decide on what speed they will drive: the other side of this is that if a driver is responsible for an accident involving death or injury he or she should be held completely responsible for the results of that accident, unprotected by insurance or being able to hide behind an excuse that they were driving within an imposed speed limit. This includes a death from a car accident being treated as manslaughter or murder, instead of the pitiful 'negligent driving occaissioning death.

And what happens if we get rid of all the 'parking' and similar regulations?

Well, it would be the law of the jungle when it comes to behaviour:

May I suggest that anyone who proposes ridding us of regulations and laws have a good read of Hobbes 'Leviathan': where he discusses what happens in a state without authority, law and regulation, that is a life without law and regulation is one where only the powerful (and in our society that includes the wealthy) thrive:

"continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"

Ridding society of regulation will only benefit those whose power over others is limited by the regulation that they seek to get rid of.

Pegasus, Hamlet, I was supporting the argument that ”road safety is ensured by having capable drivers, safe cars and safe roads. Any government action should be directed at these goals.” And, as I said, I am aware of and courteous to other drivers rather than driving fast without reference to the driving environment. As for takng responsibility, I haven’t been involved in an injury accident since 1970 except for the odd occasion when I have been slighty hurt after, e.g., a driver drove into my stationary vehicle. That’s happened several times, due not to my speed – zero – but to their lack of awareness – close to zero. And I accept that I will on occasion be fined for my speed.

"where that point of balance is, in relation to all sorts of things" from Ludwig above.

We need to put the human face back into Ecological Economic Sustainable Development.

Otherwise, we create a cycle of Under-development where depletion within a system works against the value of what we already know, and that which has been passed down the history of previous gerenations.

A micro view.

We need to look at this at local and ground level.

Apologies Caspar, for misspelling your name.

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It seems to me Faustino… and I do not wish to offside you, just entertain friendly debate…. that those who drive fast correlate very closely with those who do not have sufficient awareness of risk factors and safety margins. Most of those who do have sufficient awareness behave in a cautious manner, which means not driving fast compared to others.

You accept that on occasion you will be fined for your speed. So clearly your fast driving is beyond the legal limit a lot of the time. This means that you don’t respect the law. It means you respect what you think you can get away with. It means that there are not enough police around to make you respect it, by raising the probability of being nabbed to such a level that you keep your speed legal, or under 10kmh over the limit, which seems to be acceptable to everyone including the police.

It seems to me that this is just the same mentality that hoons and people of poor safety conscience possess. I’m not implying that you are one of them. But it seems that you are not on the right half of the spectrum in terms of attitude.

Part of being a capable driver, on our public roads where there are all sorts of drivers with all sorts of abilities, is surely to drive within the law, or the acceptable extension of the law.

Ludwig, I disagree with your observation that “that those who drive fast correlate very closely with those who do not have sufficient awareness of risk factors and safety margins. Most of those who do have sufficient awareness behave in a cautious manner, which means not driving fast compared to others.” That’s not my experience. A bigger issue than speed on SE Queensland highways is drivers not driving to the left – often the left-hand lane will be empty while drivers proceed well below the speed limit in the 2nd and 3rd lanes (which, Pegasus, is a great way to reduce traffic flow). The police don’t seem to enforce the “drive to the left” rule.

I’m fundamentally concerned not to harm others and to help them. So I’m generally very law-abiding. But at the same time I exercise my faculties of perception, discrimination etc, if stepping outside the law harms no one and has some benefit, I’m prepared to do it – e.g. crossing an empty road when pedestrian signs say “stop”. As indicated, I don’t have speed related accidents, and in driving fast I don’t do so without reference to other drivers. Again, my experience is that many who drive fast have high levels of awareness and consideration. I also find that I‘m less safe when I drive well below my capacity – driving fast, I’m fully focussed; it’s hard to maintain that focus when dawdling. [In recent years, I’ve driven much less and more slowly because of illness, I recognise when my perception is affected by illness and respond accordingly, which at times in the early ‘00s meant staying off the road. And means I haven’t be incurring fines.]

And, thanks, but you won’t offside me with criticism which you clearly feel is well-based.

Excellent Faustino. You choose to exceeed the speed limit and claim there are no problems. How would you know that? You leave the damage in your wake, you get away but screw up those you speed past.
You don't see what you may have created do you?

You state

"So I’m generally very law-abiding."

How often do you drive? Once a year? If you drive every day you are breaking the law every day. That's not general I would have to say. Rather it's you choosing which laws you want to obey or ignore. What other areas do you infringe? Got a mobile by any chance? How about School zones? 40 too slow?

You also state that not driving to the left is a bigger problem than speeding. Rubbish. Only to those that speed mate. Give me stats showing speed caused accidents as opposed to drivers staying in the right lane (which also carries a penalty}.

Ask yourself why people do stay in the right lane. Any ideas? Could I suggest that a big part of that is simply they are concerned about speeding drivers who will overtake on the left if delayed for 2 seconds etc. How often have you overtaken on the left when blocked on the right? There are of course some that do that deliberately to annoy people who speed. Which is another result of you and others speeding.

As I said in my first post to you the majority of drivers do exceed the speed limit regularly so you are just one of many who choose which laws to follow and which to not follow. There are many who take those choices mate and that's what crime is all about. Failing to follow the legislative guideleines your democratically elected government has imposed, on your behalf as well as every one else.

Caspar, well done: your words are music to my ears - not so the grim reality behind them.

Australian regulations are threatening to bury us deep under. Some recent ones:

* One is no longer allowed to hire a "snake" to clear their own drains - the law now requires emplyoing an authorized plumber even to clear a 1m block in your shower.

* baby-sitting is no longer allowed without an official diploma.

* same for taking care of older citizens.

* children are no longer allowed in the pool of my gym, even accompanied by parents - a new government regulation.

* on a night flight from Singapore to Adelaide with a stop in Darwin, due to a new regulation all passengers were forced to wake up, take their belongings, get out of the plane to stand in a long and slow queue to pass again through metal detectors before being allowed back on the plane - the one they were already on anyway.

And as usual, especially for professionals, forms, forms and more forms, taking all the time away from productive work.

Of course governments have constitutional rights to impose this nightmare on their citizens, but no moral rights. It is not for honest care that they legislate those laws, but for the protection of their own back-side.

This evil and stupidity of punishing and humiliating everyone for the irresponsibility of the few, makes me sometimes start thinking that perhaps the idea of the law being equal to everyone has failed and we have no other recourse, but to re-establish classes, of those who are willing and able to be responsible for their own lives and actions and those who are not.

Faustino, if you drive fast as a matter of course you must come up behind slower vehicles all the time. They must annoy the whihoo out of you? If they are actually exceeding the legal limit but are under the cruising speed (which is often 5 or maybe 8 kmh over the limit), do they still bug you?

In my experience many drivers who drive at the upper limit show real impatience and aggression to other drivers, who may be driving only very slightly slower than them. That sort of thing bugs me endlessly.

Even if a fast driver comes up behind and doesn’t follow too closely, I still feel strong resentment because there seems to be one rule for the law-observers and one rule (or no rule) for a significant portion of people who think that the law only applies to other people. I get this every single working day on a particular stretch of road. This duplicity and the inability for you to do anything about it is enormously frustrating. I don’t like lawless fast drivers.

Thank goodness there are very few dual or triple lane highways in north Queensland. I’ve had enough bad experiences in SEQ to desire to stay right away from them. I think that the ‘keep left unless overtaking’ rule is a crock! It is effectively telling us to ‘keep left so that speeding drivers can have a clear run’. It should be something like ‘keep left unless doing more than 5kmh under the speed limit’.

In my experience, people don’t dawdle in the inside lane. If they are going slower than the speed limit, it is generally because they can’t change lanes due to too much traffic.

On the Bruce Highway north of Brisbane and on the Gold Coast freeway, I found it almost impossible to pull out into the inside lane to pass slower traffic, while keeping my speed below 110 in the 100 k zones or 120 in the 110 k zones, without being tailgated by some @#@#&%% who wanted to go considerably faster!

Yuyutsu wrote:

* One is no longer allowed to hire a "snake" to clear their own drains - the law now requires emplyoing an authorized plumber even to clear a 1m block in your shower.

There is a reason why 'do it yourself' plumbing is problematic, as it is for do it yourself electrical work. The work that someone who does not know what they are doing can, and does, adversely affect people around them:L

The classic example was the guy who installed his own toilet suite and cistern. He didn't install the valves correctly, there was a backflow, and for a week the neighbourhood had blue tap water from this guy's blue toilet cleaner backflowing into the mains.

And as for professionals: I would say that the patients of Dr Pattel would have preferred a few more checks and balances to be put in place, mainly because it seems that more people would be alive if better regulation was in place.

Or are you one of those 'professional' people who considers other people's lives, health and safety to be simply inconveniences that get in the way of your own ego and earning capacity?

Hamlet,

There is a particular place under my shower, about one meter from the drain, that gets blocked again and again, mostly with accumulating soap.

To clear this blockage, you need to pass a "snake" through it, which is essentially a piece of flexible wire that can twist and turn inside the drains. Snakes usually reach 8 meters, but I actually only need to use more or less the first meter of it.

I admit that I have no experience in installing new bath-tubs and toilets, I have never attempted fixing and welding water pipes myself, I have never taken a course in digging flood-drains and I sometimes fail to fix even a simple leak in a tap, but I do claim with confidence that with the right tool I could easily fix my little blockage in 5 minutes.

The government, however, made it illegal for a shop-keeper to hire me a "snake" without a certificate of professional expertise in all the above. Their excuse is that with the "snake" I could penetrate and damage my neighbour's drain, this is despite the fact that I will only be exposing one meter of it (totally under my foundation concrete) and that I already know (from my plumber) that in my particular case, the setup of my drains is such that they have absolutely no connection with the neighbours.

Under this government, it seems easier to obtain (heaven forbid) heroin and guns than a useful home-tool.

The fundamental trouble is that the government would not trust and respect its citizens. They prefer to always assume the worst case, just so that they cannot be accused of "negligence" in their office.

Living one's life by the worst scenario is a miserable condition, bereft of joy. It actually tends to invite worst scenarios and it also has a name: paranoia.

Pegasus, Ludwig, I am afraid there will be no meeting of minds on this issue! But I’m not aggressive, I regard driving as a skill, an art, one I enjoy exercising; and I’m often thanked for my courtesy to other drivers.

One day recently while driving around 50-60 in 60 zones, I twice had to take evasive action. In both cases, the other driver didn’t signal and must have been unaware of my presence. The first driver was parked on the left and swung out to do a U-turn as I approached. The second pulled into the parking lane on the left ahead of me and then did a U-turn from that lane. Perhaps neither of them ever exceed the speed limit, but I’d rather share the road with drivers like me than drivers like them.

Perhaps if I took you both for a ride you’ld share my view. :-)

Yuyutsu refers to “those who are willing and able to be responsible for their own lives and actions and those who are not.” I’m an intelligent and perceptive human being, and I prefer to apply my capacities in all situations rather than “do it by the book.

“This evil and stupidity of punishing and humiliating everyone for the irresponsibility of the few, makes me sometimes start thinking that perhaps the idea of the law being equal to everyone has failed and we have no other recourse, but to re-establish classes, of those who are willing and able to be responsible for their own lives and actions and those who are not.”

Yuyutsu, it is grossly overstated that everyone gets punished or humiliated by way of laws that are designed to curtail the antics of the irresponsible minority.

Secondly, as I explained above regarding the beer-at-the-cricket example, most laws work for the benefit of the majority, despite perhaps imposing some level of inconvenience.

Thirdly, as I have also explained in the road-safety example, the law is not equal for everyone until the policing or regulatory regime is sufficiently strong enough to place the law-abiding person and the aggressive law-only-applies-to-others person under the same restrictions.

We are actually seeing different subclasses as a result of grossly inadequate policing. We would see much stronger classes or castes if there was no law and order. We would see the least caste divisions with a strong regulatory approach, an essential element of which is strong policing.

Too many people cry foul over what they perceive to be too many regulations or too much police intervention. Quite frankly, they are wrong. Given human nature, we had better be very thankful that we have a reasonably decent regulatory system, because without it the aggressive, unscrupulous, rip-off merchants would win the day.

Alright, so you might have gripes about a few restrictions, but how about considering all the rules that you can think of and then placing the small number of examples that you listed in that context. You will find that the vast majority of rules are fair and reasonable.

Ludwig,

The fact that I consider classes - and I did not mean de-facto classes, but rather official/legal ones (in fact, there are such classes already - the jailed, the bankrupt and those with suspended driving licenses), is not because I like inequality (I hate it), but out of sheer desperation. The de-facto classes that you mention are quite the opposite to what I refer to - they reward the cruel instead of the inherently righteous.

There are far too many laws and regulations for good, honest people, and never enough for the crooked. How much more should good people suffer in the holy name of PC equity? Why should honest people be persecuted twice - by both the criminals, then by the government on its attempt to curb them?

Relating to minor crimes, such as commercial rip-offs, it gets to a point where it becomes preferrable to be cheated from time to time (and I have not escaped it either, despite all regulations), than to bear the constant burden of big-brother intervention. While big-brother's hand is not heavy on shrewd criminals, even his finger is too heavy on the meek, like smacking someone's face to kill a mosquito. For a government that fails to bring real criminals to justice, this is the easy way out to demonstrate "achievements".

I have nothing against effective policing of just laws, especially when it comes to serious crimes. The fact that there is not enough police to enforce the laws is also a side effect of the fact that the laws are too many, and it will remain this way until the politicians become concerned about their citizens rather than their attempt to cover each and every theoretical loophole.

How about this: I am even willing to risk the occasional beer-bottle thrown at me so that you (I personally don't drink) are not deprived of your right for a real-beer-in-a-bottle. The one who throwed the bottle, will of course, bear serious consequences and it will take many years until he has access to another bottle of beer.

“There are far too many laws and regulations for good, honest people, and never enough for the crooked.”

But Yuyutsu, laws are for everyone. They are to the benefit of most of us. If laws only apply to good honest people and not crooks, then it is the policing regime that is at fault. Clearly the laws are in place to prevent the crooks from being crooks.

“How much more should good people suffer in the holy name of PC equity? Why should honest people be persecuted twice - by both the criminals, then by the government on its attempt to curb them?”

People are not suffering twice. They are being protected from the suffering that they may well face if the laws weren’t implemented. It seems to me that you are thinking about this in entirely the wrong manner.

It is true that up to a fairly substantial extent the more regulations that we have, along with good policing, the freeer and safer we all are. There is a point where too many laws tip the balance, but I think we are a long way short of that.

Governments don’t implement and administer laws equitably. They generally try but full equality and fairness are never going to be possible. But despite the fact that some will be more adversely affected than others, a lawless or poorly administered legal system would be much less fair.

“I am even willing to risk the occasional beer-bottle thrown at me so that you are not deprived of your right for a real-beer-in-a-bottle. The one who throwed the bottle, will of course, bear serious consequences”

You might be willing until you or your child or partner actually gets a bottle in the head. The one who threw the bottle might get penalised if the authorities can determine who it was. More to the point, once that sort of yobboish behaviour starts in a crowd, there are often many brainless dregs that join in. I think you should seriously rethink your position on this example

"But Yuyutsu, laws are for everyone"

It is here that I cannot agree with you: some individuals need more laws - some less.

If any, the only moral justification in the first place, for anyone to impose anything on another, is in self-defence or defence of others - and authorities are no exception to this rule. It is totally unjust to impose laws on someone who would otherwise not hurt others.

You may argue that it is practically too difficult for justice to be carried out unless the same laws are streamlined to apply to everyone, so my point is that enough-is-enough, too much oppression is applied to honest citizens due to the dishonest minority, so it is time to revisit this assumption and investigate the option of dropping the requirement of equality. This by the way, will allow more police to be present where they are actually needed.

Although it would make some shudder, to some extent legal classes are already a fact: jailed prisoners and the bankrupt have many more laws imposed on them than the average person. Those extra laws are there because these people cannot be trusted. Would you not agree with me that imposing similar laws on the average citizen would be draconian and unjust?

The next logical extension is that apart from the punished classes, good citizens (which are the majority) who can prove to be responsible, of good-will and posing no risk to others in society, should be rewarded by being admitted to a privilleged class, where natural justice prevails with much fewer formal laws (I could carry that thought even further, so in the extreme, saints should have no laws whatsoever imposed on them).

In the beer example, it is unlikely that such hooligans will be able in the first place to get admitted to the privilleged class, hence there is no way they will be allowed to bring any alcohol to the game (if even allowed to sit near you at all), while yourself, an honest, responsible and harmless citizen, should have no restrictions to drink your real-beer from a glass.

“some individuals need more laws - some less”.

This may be true to some extent, but there are real problems with placing people under different restrictions. You have got to be very careful about that.

Besides, how would you pick who is really honest enough to be placed under minimal restrictions and who isn’t? There are plenty of examples of trust being abused and of people who are excellent humanitarians in some ways but crooks in others.

The fact that we have a reasonable system of law is why we have a minority of dishonest people. Without laws or with a poorer system, more people would become dishonest. Arguably they would have to or they would be left at a significant disadvantage.

One of the glaring examples of this is speed limits. The majority of people are highly dishonest when it comes to the actual law because they exceed speed limits by a few kmh all the time. But if they drove a few kmh under, to make sure they never actually broke the law, they would get tailgated and treated with contempt, and would actually be driving in a less safe manner.

You cannot separate the good folk and the crooks. Very few people are innately entirely good. The majority of us are opportunistic to some extent and will break the law if we perceive that there is a real benefit in doing so and that the chances of repercussions are small.

Thus I would say to you that the law MUST apply equally to all as far as is possible, with a few exceptions. One exception is when people have been shown to be offenders or at least repeat offenders. In many instances they should be under tighter restrictions. Another is for people under age, with respect to alcohol, driving, voting, etc.

The idea of having a whole upper class, which enjoys considerably less legal restrictions is I think a dangerous concept. It would be a blatant move towards inequality, which would no doubt have serious repercussions.