Sunday Times Column (25 November 2012) - Yes, siree - count me in for genocide and conservatory- building

Sunday Times Column (£)

Twenty years ago I would land at Heathrow after every trip to America and kiss the tarmac, thanking every god I could think of that I was back in the land of the free.

Back then in Britain we were allowed to smoke and smack our children and rush about the countryside on horseback.

Footballers could call one another names, children could cycle in home clothes, we could drink irresponsibly and park on a yellow line while we popped into the shop for some milk. We could use cameras to film school sports days, abuse useless counter staff and get on a plane with our toothpaste. It was nice.

America, meanwhile, was drowning in a thunderstorm of petty bureaucracy that meant every janitor was armed with a walkie-talkie and a gun and encouraged to shoot anyone who broke any of the laws, no matter how bonkers they may have been.

You had to wear shoes while shopping. It was illegal to deface signs telling you it was illegal to deface signs. You were not allowed to swim in the pool if you’d had a tummy upset within the past 14 days. Drinking in the street was prohibited. And you were not permitted to take any smoking material onto federal property. You couldn’t even use a police car park if there was a cigarette lighter in your vehicle. It was madness.

In Soviet Russia you were allowed to do everything but vote. Whereas in America 20 years ago you could vote. But do nothing else. And it’s still bad today. In summer my daughter was carted off by the police for smoking near a fruit machine while under the age of 21. And we had to produce photo ID before being allowed to rent a locker. It was almost as though they’d studied the ancient British laws governing London taxi drivers and high sheriffs and thought, “Ooh. They look good. Let’s insist New York cabbies carry a bale of hay in the boot, and ban people from taking fish into a cinema in Colorado.”

And it’s even worse if you are part of a television crew because you’ll need a permit before you film anything. And even when you get a permit, there will be a problem. An example: you can get permission to film on Wall Street. But it does not entitle you to film any of the buildings. And have you tried to take a picture in this concrete canyon without any office block appearing in the back of the shot? It’s pretty tricky.

Another example: you can close a street in Detroit but you must give every single business whose door opens onto the street in question several weeks’ notice of the closure.

And if you don’t, an angry policeman will arrive to tell you the mayor has chewed the district attorney’s bottom and that the DA has chewed his bottom and that now he’s going to chew yours.

However, I was in America last week and I have some good news. Because while the fools in state and federal government continue to cut away at every basic human freedom, people are starting to find ways round the nonsense.

There’s a bar in Los Angeles where the roof does not quite meet in the middle.

This means that, technically, it’s open to the air and that means you can smoke. And at the fabulous Roosevelt hotel in Los Angeles, there is no smoking allowed anywhere. But no one stops you if you do. In fact, they’ll even bring you a saucer, saying you can use it as an ashtray.

It gets better. Because although we were forced to have a highway patrol officer in attendance while filming on the road, he was empowered to let us do what we wanted. Which meant that last Saturday I went past him on State Route 111 in southern California doing 186mph.

So to sum up: they’ve made a law that requires me to have a policeman on site, and by doing so have enabled me to break the law he’s supposedly there to enforce.

But it gets even better. We also wanted to film some aeroplanes that needed to be flying at 300mph about 6in off the ground. To make sure that didn’t happen, the authorities sent along an aviation inspector, who turned up and promptly moved heaven and earth to make sure that it did.

Everywhere we went it was the same thing. Normally if you make one little mistake on your visa waiver form you are sent to the back of a three-hour queue. This time I’d made lots. I couldn’t be bothered to rummage around in the overhead locker to find out what my passport number was so I’d made one up. I said I was staying at a Premier Inn. And that I had been on a farm, and in Africa and that I had done a bit of genocide. None of which bothered the Homeland Security chap one bit.

Plainly, then, everyone is becoming content to let the politicians huff and puff and introduce silly laws to appease tiny but very noisy minorities. Just so long as the people employed to enforce those laws don’t. This is very cheery news because, of course, what happens in America happens here shortly afterwards.

At present we are in a mess. You couldn’t shoot a badger. Then you could, but only if your shot was monitored by a government official. And then you couldn’t shoot a badger again.

You couldn’t build a conservatory on the end of your house. Then you could, so long as it was less than 27ft long. And then you could build a chemical plant as well, and your neighbours weren’t allowed to object four times — only twice. Provided they weren’t smoking at the time, or under arrest for hugging a teenage fan 30 years ago, or for taking make-up samples home from work just before the police arrived to search the building for evidence of a crime they said hadn’t happened.

It’s time we started to behave like modern-day Americans and used our nous. These badgers are killing my cows. I shall shoot them. No one will be inconvenienced if I stop here for a moment to buy stamps. And if I’m warned by someone’s employer that I face prosecution for telling counter staff they are morons, I shall write back saying they are morons too.