While the call for greater clarity is important, the ambiguity or 'wiggle room' in the phrase is important
>“in the opinion of the Secretary of State”
IDK specifically about English law, but I worked directly with the DMV in Vermont. Slightly outside of the project, but the state allows pretty much any vanity plates, of course with the law specifying "shall not be objectively obscene or confusing to the general public". But this leaves room for interpretation. I heard of an incident where a state trooper was sent to retrieve a plate that had inappropriately passed screening, reading "3MTA3" (read it in the mirror).
Laws do need to be sufficiently precise to be not abused with selective enforcement, but sufficiently flexible to handle edge cases.
The MP was being a bit disingenuous in querying this wording when she pondered whether the Secretary of State knew "his SQL from his Javascript".
In British law, this phrase is code for leaving the implementation details to the civil servants in the relevant ministry, who will have the de facto power to make law here. In this case that's probably a reasonable thing to do, rather than attempting to codify exactly what is or isn't computer code in the inflexible primary legislation. In general, though, it's a mechanism to reduce accountability and erode democracy.
Comments
While the call for greater clarity is important, the ambiguity or 'wiggle room' in the phrase is important
IDK specifically about English law, but I worked directly with the DMV in Vermont. Slightly outside of the project, but the state allows pretty much any vanity plates, of course with the law specifying "shall not be objectively obscene or confusing to the general public". But this leaves room for interpretation. I heard of an incident where a state trooper was sent to retrieve a plate that had inappropriately passed screening, reading "3MTA3" (read it in the mirror).
Laws do need to be sufficiently precise to be not abused with selective enforcement, but sufficiently flexible to handle edge cases.
The MP was being a bit disingenuous in querying this wording when she pondered whether the Secretary of State knew "his SQL from his Javascript".
In British law, this phrase is code for leaving the implementation details to the civil servants in the relevant ministry, who will have the de facto power to make law here. In this case that's probably a reasonable thing to do, rather than attempting to codify exactly what is or isn't computer code in the inflexible primary legislation. In general, though, it's a mechanism to reduce accountability and erode democracy.
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