Thanks gentleman. No don't think I can give up now, nothing better to do these days so might as well keep trying, lost too many close friends in this business over the years not to.
Frank, liked that post from Mr Speed, it is a significant legal, social and economic problem as he outlines. His point that the regulators are generally defeated if put to the test in a Court is well established with CASA their failure rate is 1 in 2 in the Courts. The others probably roll over just to be done with it.
CASA is well and truly down that path. As I see it they never really set out to add more but were allowed to carry over the monumental regulatory suite they have which was a left over from the days of DCA and the infancy of aviation. Now like all regulators when they stuff it up they immediately seek stronger powers so by default they cover up their incompetence, laziness and stupidity by making everything and anything an offence of some sort, that way they can get you whenever they like. It is the stupid sods of politicians who have acquiesed to this rule by regulator by stealth and because they like it as well, that way they do not have to do any deep thinking about anything, can hide behind the regulatory activity and then claim to have right on their side. As I remarked in an earlier post on another topic we are now cursed by the 'law and order' mentatility in public life, where the answer to every ill, every failing and each and every little inconvieniance suffered by Bloggs is to be met with more enforcement and more law and more police (or regulatory staff).
First check out the CARs and CASRs and see how many breaches are now of a 'Strict Liability' Nature which prevent a general rebuttal in a Court of Law on the facts presented unless one has the ability to prove 'mistaken fact' not impossible but difficult. Natural Justice issues are also possible but this is going to be an expensive road for anybody. So the scales are already tipped in favour of the regulator and as we have see they have been funded to unbelievably extravagant levels so can throw millions of taxpayers dollars at you if they want to and generally do.
Second, CASA have issued over 15,000 (probably more but I could not be bothered to check) dispensations against their own rules. In such a system the capacity for favouritism and bias to be fostered is monumental and more than self evident, that said, it is also indicative of how useless the regs are and how convoluted they are that basically everyone has to get a blessing from CASA via a dispensation to do what is sensible or practicable. As most would agree it is a deplorable way to do business.
Imagine how much money operators could save, including the mangy roo, by reducing their regulatory compliance burden. Probably all start making a decent profit and return on capital.
Anyway we could improve safety incrementally but regulation improves nothing. We are probably as safe as we can get as humans and quite frankly the research shows what we see now is the f*!@kup factor and not much will change that really. More does not mean better and more does not mean worse, more is more.
Anyway new motto in life to ''keep sticking it up them - they don't like it up em'.