Timing being everything in comedy, at Kitchen Rat we couldn't help but smile when the Food Standards Agency (FSA) sent through a new press release singing the praises of its Simplification Plan.
Published by all government departments and bodies as part of the much publicized better regulation push, the FSA is understandably proud of the cost savings it has achieved by cutting nasty old red-tape.
For example, the lithe (one imagines) Safer Food, Better Business initiative has meant caterers have had to spend out a mere £28m to remain compliant with the relentless march of food legislation. The FSA says that if left to their own devices the bill would have been £66m and yes you're supposed to rejoice at that bit, caterers.
Although admittedly government statistics are a bit of a dirty word in the week they admitted they were - at best - a bit hasty to publish last week's knife crime figures, the FSA's announcement is especially timely as hospitality trade associations have just denounced the body's decision to go last week with a six-tier "scores on the doors" scheme, describing it as unnecessarily bureaucratic.
Or as Nick Bish, chief executive of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers put it: "As with so many well intentioned initiatives, the result is pointless red tape and overzealous regulation. It is the smaller operators who will be hit most because fundamentally it's a diversion of effort and expense from serving the customer." Well, quite.
In fact the British Hospitality Association is so annoyed with the way this has been handled and the implications for small businesses that it has reported the FSA to the Government's Better Regulation Taskforce, which works of course to reduce red-tape.
You can't make this stuff up.
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