British legislation “an extended press release”

Wow, I never thought I would approvingly quote John Redwood (not in public, anyway), but he definitely nails it here. (I think exactly the same could be said of US legislation.) Thanks to Brian Micklethwait for the pointer, in a post in which he also nails something wonderful about the Labour regime in Britain (but certainly not wonderful for the Labour regime in Britain):

Meanwhile, it says a great deal about the terminal state of this present government that they are now making such particular fools of themselves in the one solitary area that they used until a year or two ago to excel at, namely manipulating the contents of the newspapers and the television. They have taxed and regulated the British economy into stagnation and presided over the relentless decline of all public services except weather forecasts and cricket commentaries, and this process of degradation began, or rather continued, as soon as they were voted in in 1997. But they used at least to be able to boss the newspapers. Not any more.