Imagine a school with a set of complicated rules. It’s an old school, very old. About 1000 years. Numerous head teachers have modified the rules over time – banning running in corridors, or creating tort for pencil poking. Occasionally the deputy head of timetabling thinks they are getting a bit complicated, and simplifies them a little. But this doesn’t keep up at all with advances in technology – new rules about smart whiteboards, PFI and computer hacking. So it gets harder and harder to understand all the rules as time goes on.
Even though the rules are quite complicated, they’re by and large pretty good, and the kids agree with them. However, sometimes, accidentally or deliberately they break one, and end up in detention. The kids try as hard as they can to obey the rules, but they still get it wrong. Why? Because the staff won’t let them see the rules.
There’s a copy of the rules in the staffroom, but the kids aren’t allowed in there. They put up parts of recent rules on the school website, but these are meaningless without the older rules that they modify. There are several private publishing companies which sell the rules. The publishing companies are so old they have their own copies of the rules, and they have lots of staff to maintain them. But not all the kids have rich enough parents to afford to buy those rules.
Sounds crazy? It’s worse than that. The school’s a country, and it’s called the United Kingdom. And the rules are “statute law”; that is the law “as amended” by acts. i.e. The law in force today that we have to obey.
Just recently, I’ve tried requesting the database of statute law under the new Freedom of Information act. Unfortunately, the request has been denied on grounds of cost. The Department of Constitutional Affairs claim that making an SQL Server database dump takes more than three and a half days.
Just to add, the picture is, appropriately, of Westminster school and is taken from Wikimedia Commons, a source of freely licensed images.
It’s worth saying that the above isn’t a bad description of the way the rules worked at Westminster, either!
! There are really private companies that sell books of the Westminster school rules?
Interesting that they invoke the 600 pound limit – I wonder what their estimate of costs would be, and if there’s any mechanism whereby the appropriate funds could be provided from another source? Otherwise maybe you could lower your sites initially and just request a ‘test chunk’ ?
Do a FOIA request on any document relating to the calculation of the cost of complying with your previous request.
hey do you know where one could find the rules? how did u find this out anyway, are you an ow then?
It looks like this may no longer be true.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/
see also
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7916858/New-government-website-collates-800-years-of-British-laws.html
Pete, yes, legislation.gov.uk is great. And its precursor statutelaw.gov.uk (launched after this blog post, but a couple of years ago) covered a lot of the same ground, but not as structured data.
legislation.gov.uk still isn’t completely, but that’s hopefully only a matter of time. The main thing missing now is really case law – things like the law reports, and judgements.
hello my name is shakairah and im doing a class assignment on what schools don’t have rules and how they live with it and why they don’t have rules in their schools!
can you help me by telling me some schools that you know that don’t have rules ! please
thanks hopely yoou reply(:
Shakairah – have a look up of Summerhill school. It has rules, but the kids make the rules by consensus!
thanks :)