Originally Posted by
Wheeze
WP, that is correct. But, unless you have come into direct contact with it, it is difficult to comprehend the massive power and imperviousness to redirection that commissioners wield.
My eyes were opened about 15 years ago when we came up against a European Commissioner who was completely resistant to common sense change when he was imposing a Health and Safety Directive that would, at a stroke, have removed the tool of MRI scanning from medicine. This was an unintended consequence of H&S legislation aimed at protecting workers exposed to industrial electromagnetic fields. Despite major lobbying from all European Radiological Associations, Commissioner Spidler was completely intransigent. In the end, all these associations had to link hands with the manufacturers to pay for a full time lobbying office in Brussels. At the eleventh hour, after 10 years of pressure, the commission agreed to 'de-rogate' the law as it applied to medicine. This is a posh way of saying suspension not removal of the threat.
The complete bollocks of this took massive time, energy and money away from more pressing uses such as patient care. That for me was the 'tipping point'.
