156

In our first issue we offered some web addresses for organisations in the United States of America dedicated to protecting the public from fraud and, in particular, Internet fraud.

In this issue, we look at some of the organisations in Great Britain that have a similar function. We also have a passionate article from a gentleman of the sea...

http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk  is a great source of information on consumer rights as well as enabling the visitor to locate the nearest Trading Standards office, learn about problems being experienced with faulty goods and get wise to some of the scams around.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog  regales the site visitor with true stories of dodgy dealings and invites you to seek advice which is, however, generally only forthcoming on topics in the limelight at any given moment. Still, a useful site for those who like to be forewarned whenever possible.

Does your country have sites to help citizens pick their way through the Internet consumer maze? We'd love to hear about them and share the details with MarineZine readers. 

Have we missed out any helpful sites in the countries we have covered so far? We'd appreciate your input and we're sure other readers will too.

STANDING FIRM

by Ken E. Wynn

Governments world wide are waking up to the fact that there are hundreds of billions of whatever currency one cares to think in, changing hands in the leisure boating industry.

The growing concern of bureaucrats, almost everywhere, must be that if people own yachts they may sail out of regulatory reach, beyond by-laws and statutes and into freedom. This is a sinister thought indedd to those who make it their business to control the every move of their fellow men and they must be constantly wondering whether they have missed something.

A cottage in the country...fine. A string of racehorses, that´s fine too, however decadent but a yacht? What's it for? Where are you going? What are you doing? Why are you doing it? 

Beaurocrats in chilly Europe become seriously concerned when told that you will see them in the month of August, when the weather is a bit better, but not before, as you are just off, sailing over to Antigua for the fun of race week.

One thing is certain. From the moment you set foot on that deck and are headed beyond their control, beaurocrats become distinctly concerned. For over a century government authorities have had carte blanche to measure your assets and seize them if they so wish. Your house or apartment, factory, stock, helpers - all comes under the their control.

Your bank and mortgage company are 'preferential creditors', after the Inland Revenue and the VAT Department, in spite of being those most able to stand the loss. Make a move that they any of those big-elbowed organisations don't like and poof! goes everything you own and have worked so hard to obtain, unless you also happen to moonlight as an insomniac accountant and can read and write gobbledegook.

Governments often mishandle their economies and put their citizens into a state of recession. Your clients can't pay you and soon you, in turn, can't pay the boys in their protected, inflation-proof, padded little tax-collecting jobs and, once again, poof! goes you, your lifestyle, your world and it's back to square one. 

In my own country, Great Britain, the hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies during, and after, the Thatcher years bear witness to this truism. 1984 came and went and, although goverments still wish the bureaucratic, Orwellian Utopia would come to pass e.g Brussels Rules The World, I don´t think it will. 

Many of us remember a female despot waving her magic wand, sorry, mace, and attempting to inflict a poll tax on the citizens of her country. It was a final straw, a bridge too far, beyond the limits of our tolerance.

The sense of being in the corner, as we had been in the major conflict of not so many years previously, united us in a World War II spirit. A bullying tyrant and her limp cohorts were brought crashing down, almost overnight, because the people said "That's enough!"

In this High-tech world of computerised global communications, more,and more people are finding that they can conduct their business whilst anchored in a palm-fringed bay, on the bluest of water, breathing the freshest of air and enjoying almost total peace of mind. 

Obviously this working environment is preferable to the stress-filled, mad-mad, fast-fast, noisy and unhealthy average city. But how long will this 'behaviour' be allowed?

Civil Servants have long displayed a deep distrust of people who not only work for themselves but enjoy what they do for a living. The questions they want answers to are "Where are you paying your taxes?" and "What are your assets and how much are they worth? Who are your clients? In which country, and what currency, are you being paid? Where is the boat registered? Where do we contact you?" Should they manage to divine that a contract has been struck between you and some other individual, they are full of even more questions. "Where was this contract signed, in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean? Asia or Australia? America or New Zealand? In our territory or someone elses?"

What, I wonder, gives them the right to pursue these lines of questioning when you happen to visit the land of your birth? More to the point, how in their wildest dreams do they think they are going to find you to ask the rest of their questions? They do not and that is half the trouble.

When land-based, one is aware that the answers to all these queries about one's dealings are either already known to the beaurocrats or answers can be pried from trembling lips within minutes.
Even respectable businessmen learn to live in fear of the man with the gilt portcullis (or equivalent national emblem) engraved on his briefcase, calling unanounced at their place of business or even their home, if he feels it will be more intimidating.

The interference in the running of small businesses has caused a mass exodus from the ranks of the self employed and a lot of the spontaneity and inventivness inherent in the British has gone with them.

Four inches of white cuff, hired for a certain dullness of character that will ensure no strange innovations are thought up to disturb the dry routine of Civil Disservice, can sit filing his, or her, nails in a comfortable office, shuffling papers in an earnest manner any time a footfall is heard, and eventually be rewarded for a distinguished career in the Civil Service (a misnomer, if ever I heard one,) having done little more than frustrate a portion of the public who pay the wages that provide this comfortable lifestyle. 

Try finding innovative, intelligent, fast-thinking entrepeneurs who employ people and put competition into business, thus keeping prices down for the consumer. You will discover that it is getting more and more difficult to locate these people because they have begun to realise that they can't run fast enough to win the race if they are dragging a bevy of bureaucratic anchors behind them.

This is 2001 and, as things stand, I don't think the beaurocrats of the world have a legal hope in hell of stopping people from shedding the chains of interference and bullying. This 21st century technology has the capacity to release us all, just as surely as the abolitionists freed the slaves whose descendants are nowadays being trained to see themselves as victims by proxy, because this makes them easier to manipulate.

Unless we are careful, we will allow these people to hobble the Internet and to gain the right to monitor it, not just to try and prevent bad and ugly things happening there but to ensure that there is nothing to which they are not a party, just as the fanatical lunatic leaders of some Eastern countries are determined to police use of the Internet by their citizens.

If there is even a glimmer of this happening in any of our our countries, let's all unite, once again, and say "Enough!"