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But the amount of resources shouldn't dictate the penalty amount once resources have already been expended on the investigation? I don't know enough about the

But the amount of resources shouldn't dictate the penalty amount once resources have already been expended on the investigation? I don't know enough about the process to answer that. Maybe it's true but if penalties can be challenged and a higher penalty will in practice cost more to defend then maybe not. FWIW I agree there is a morality problem in keeping rules that are not then effectively enforced. But I'd rather have a quantitative problem that the principle is being recognised and a penalty applied even though the penalty isn't yet big enough to represent a true deterrent than the qualitative problem that there is no mechanism to penalise bad behaviour at all. One of these is much easier to push towards a good solution over time than the other. And I'd also rather converge on a good solution from this direction than go in very heavy-handed as some were suggesting elsewhere in this discussion and potentially cause catastrophic side effects very quickly.

willcipriano 3y ago
> Maybe it's true but if penalties can be challenged and a higher penalty will in practice cost more to defend then maybe not. That ascribes a level of foresight that you don't see anywhere else in government. Very unlikely, corruption more probable explanation.
- Silhouette 3y ago
  Again I don't think that's entirely fair. There are plenty of competent and well-intentioned people working within "government" in the broad sense in this country. The public sector here is huge and does a lot of useful things, many of which we take for granted but would certainly miss if they went away. We just notice the big screw-ups because when you're running a national government for tens of millions of people those headline failures are going to have an impact on a lot of people. When it comes to government I am certainly a sceptic of modern politics but with the rank and file staff in the civil service, QUANGOs, and other government-run services I prefer to assume good faith. Clearly a lot of those people got dealt a bad hand with the recent administrations in particular but no matter which colour of politics is currently running the show there will always be some element of that and yet those useful things still get done.

willcipriano 3y ago

> Maybe it's true but if penalties can be challenged and a higher penalty will in practice cost more to defend then maybe not. That ascribes a level of foresight that you don't see anywhere else in government. Very unlikely, corruption more probable explanation.

Silhouette 3y ago
Again I don't think that's entirely fair. There are plenty of competent and well-intentioned people working within "government" in the broad sense in this country. The public sector here is huge and does a lot of useful things, many of which we take for granted but would certainly miss if they went away. We just notice the big screw-ups because when you're running a national government for tens of millions of people those headline failures are going to have an impact on a lot of people. When it comes to government I am certainly a sceptic of modern politics but with the rank and file staff in the civil service, QUANGOs, and other government-run services I prefer to assume good faith. Clearly a lot of those people got dealt a bad hand with the recent administrations in particular but no matter which colour of politics is currently running the show there will always be some element of that and yet those useful things still get done.