[thorn bird]

Yup K, it took a weasel worded Eastern Block Ex Stasi lawyer and his acolytes to put CAsA legal in ascendancy within the organisation and set in train the pogrom that was to become the so called regulatory reform. Written by lawyers, for lawyers, siphoning off half a billion plus of taxpayer dollars, taking almost thirty years plus to sort of complete.

But there was method in their madness.

By making the regulatory suite so obtuse and unlike anything else in the developed world, those in the industry who must comply with them, of course, have a great deal of difficulty understanding them, nor recognise the hangman's nooses hidden behind the legal jargon. They (industry) are, by and large, very practical people, not lawyers. Weasel words don't fit in their lexicon, common sense and real risk management do, not the esoteric horse shit pushed out by bright young things with lots of letters after their names.

This set things up nicely to retain a whole bunch of lawyers to produce another manual to explain what they do mean, by then the reg's will most likely be out of date again and need reform, what do they call it, a self licking ice cream?

P7 (butts in) - Yeah - but... your plain English 'understanding' of a law ain't necessarily 'legally precisely' the meaning of 'the law'. Double jeopardy - plus legal costs. Oh, it;s a great system alright.

So why don't industry retain a lawyer to sort their compliance?

I asked a fairly astute gentleman of the law, he was retired judge, what it would cost. His response for a simple GA charter AOC, around two or three million for the manuals and half a million a year to maintain them. He said it with a smile, but I'm not sure he was joking.