LOCAL RULES (2)

I knew that the requirement to put up a new letter box was a big thing; but not exactly how big.

It turns out that there are 775,000 houses that must change their letter box by 31 December in order to comply with the law. That is a fair number. You can ask your local kommune to make an exception, because you have difficulty walking or because of physical problems on the property or whatever; and 21,000 have so far obtained a dispensation. However, that in itself is revealing. Some kommuner investigate each request individually, some (Århus, for example) simply approve every request, on the grounds that an individual investigation of thousands of requests would simply take up too much time (and so cost).

In other words, bureaucratic entities have refused to enact bureaucratic reforms, because it would be too (well) bureaucratic to do so. I told you this was a big thing.

Walter Blotscher