In what is a rare and hopeful sign out of the UK – a nation that is notable for a societal script that has, until just recently, run parallel to that of George Orwell’s 1984 – the new government has launched a well-conceived web site that invites the public to nominate old laws that should be struck from the book.




Here’s an excerpt on the topic from an article that ran on the Metro.co.uk site…



Parliament invites public to nominate 'old laws' they wish to abolish



The public is being invited to nominate laws they want to abolish in what deputy prime minister Nick Clegg called a move away from ‘the old way of doing things’.



At the Your Freedom website people can propose ways to get rid of pointless regulation and red tape.



Mr Clegg said: ‘We are turning things on their head. The traditional way of doing things is that government tells people what to do. We are saying, ‘‘Tell us what you don’t want us to do’’.’



Letting dormant laws accumulate on the statute book sent out the ‘wrong signal’ and there was plenty of ‘old stuff’ that should be dropped, he told BBC Breakfast. The last government had gone too far in invading people’s privacy, he added.



‘Did that make us safer? No, it didn’t necessarily make us safer, so we’ve got to get the balance right.’ From today any minister who proposes a new regulation will also have to propose an existing law to be scrapped in a ‘one in, one out rule’.



The website is at: www.hmg.gov.uk/yourfreedom