Paper Tiger

[poliphilo]

The literature put out by the government says a death must be registered within five days- no ifs, no buts- and the inconvenient occurence of bank holidays is no excuse for being late. This unsettled us a bit- what with my mother dying two days before Christmas, but we figured we could just about meet the deadline if we skedaddled. However the doctor charged with issuing the death certificate dawdled- and then dawdled some more (and you can't register a death without a certificate)- until we concluded that if she didn't care about governmental dictats then neither should we. Eventually, this morning- over three weeks after the death- my sister made it to the registry office, armed with all the relevant documentation, and no-one there so much as raised an eyebrow over the delay.

I think government (a) likes to frighten us, and (b) that it's well aware it isn't going to be able to enforce its demands.