Via The BBC, the government was defeated in the courts today over it’s cuts to the truly wasteful school building program (emphasis mine) :

The government has been defeated in the High Court over the way it scrapped part of England’s school building programme.
The education secretary’s decision to axe Buildings Schools for the Future (BSF) projects in six local authority areas was ruled unlawful as he failed to consult on it.

A judge ordered Education Secretary Michael Gove to reconsider the move.

The government said it had won the case on the substantive points.

Mr Justice Holman, sitting in London, allowed the challenges by the councils, declaring that Mr Gove had unlawfully failed to consult them before imposing the cuts.

The challenges related to the revamp or rebuild of 58 schools which, if allowed to go ahead, would have cost the government £1bn.

In five of the six council cases, the failure was “so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power”, said the judge.

There was no overriding public interest which precluded consultation or justifies the lack of any consultation”

The councils – Waltham Forest, Luton Borough Council, Nottingham City Council, Sandwell, Kent County Council and Newham – had sought a judicial review on the grounds that the way projects had been stopped was arbitrary and legally flawed.
They asked the judge to order Mr Gove to reconsider the schemes, properly taking account of their merits.

The judge said: “However pressing the economic problems, there was no overriding public interest which precluded consultation or justifies the lack of any consultation.”

Mr Gove’s decision-making process was also unlawful “because of his failure to discharge relevant statutory equality duties under the Sex Discrimination Act, Race Relations Act and Disability Discrimination Act.”

A whole raft of pointlessness there which just goes to show how tied up in rulings and legislation the UK has become.

Firstly, the consultation question – I was under the impression that we lived in a Parliamentary Democracy not some weird ashram style enclave where everything has to be discussed before a final decision is reached? Whilst I agree that arbitrary law making (as practiced in knee-jerk style by the last lot) isn’t good for business, what point in there in having MPs and ministers if they cannot decide the law without recourse to focus groups, lobbying and interested parties?

Secondly, the charge of “no over riding public interest”. Whilst judges may not care too much about bills rising given their inflated salaries, I sure as hell care when some half baked scheme to replace perfectly good schools with new shiny ones adds £1 billion to the pile of debt which is already on course to top £1 trillion in UK debt or more if you take the liabilities for RBS, Lloyds and co. into account.

Finally, “statutory equality duties” – this hideous hangover from the Labour years which gets Grauniad readers frothing about wimmins rights (and the so called rights of every other seemingly disenfranchised fucker) in an attempt to portray a decision as unfair.

As an aside, in the small town where I live, the local school is undergoing one of these rebuilding programs right now. A whole school block that was only built 20 years ago has been torn down ready for its shiny (and very expensive) replacement school block. A complete and utter waste of money that I will be contributing to through my council tax for many years to come.

Unless, that is, I manage to escape this blighted land before they stop us all the taxpayers leaving.

This place is doomed and no amount of legislative bonfires will change it.