I learned about one little gem of a change hidden in the new budget: they will be making access to any Standards which are referred to in legislation free. Which is great news, there never should have been payment required to find out what your legal obligations are.
I was trying to look up what requirements were for Test and Tag on electrical equipment once, it’s spread over three different standards. Each one is somewhere around $100, so it would have cost hundreds just to be able to look at what was in the end just a few sentences. Access to the law is supposed to be free, it’s appalling that they were able to charge for access to it just by calling it a ‘standard’ instead of ‘legistlation’ and it is something that should have been fixed a very long time ago.
I keep thinking of more benefits to this - our Facilities Manager at work won’t be able to lie to us about things meeting the Standards when they don’t because we’ll actually have access to the Standards! We might be able to get a couple of issues with the kitchens at work fixed finally.
I’ve also thought of a couple more times I’ve wanted to access Standards for minor things - looking up requirements for labelling pet treats and labelling clothing when I’ve had a fancy to maybe sell a few of my creations at a market. It’s very offputting to know there are laws that cover what you want to do but you are not able to find out what they are without paying an excessive amount.
Yeah, the price of Standards is bonkers. Especially the International ones. Work buys e-access packages with eye watering prices and still doesn’t have all of these.
I learned about one little gem of a change hidden in the new budget: they will be making access to any Standards which are referred to in legislation free. Which is great news, there never should have been payment required to find out what your legal obligations are.
I was trying to look up what requirements were for Test and Tag on electrical equipment once, it’s spread over three different standards. Each one is somewhere around $100, so it would have cost hundreds just to be able to look at what was in the end just a few sentences. Access to the law is supposed to be free, it’s appalling that they were able to charge for access to it just by calling it a ‘standard’ instead of ‘legistlation’ and it is something that should have been fixed a very long time ago.
for businesses, apparently. The fact they were ever paywalled is absolute insanity.
fucking howard.
This is really good.
I keep thinking of more benefits to this - our Facilities Manager at work won’t be able to lie to us about things meeting the Standards when they don’t because we’ll actually have access to the Standards! We might be able to get a couple of issues with the kitchens at work fixed finally.
I’ve also thought of a couple more times I’ve wanted to access Standards for minor things - looking up requirements for labelling pet treats and labelling clothing when I’ve had a fancy to maybe sell a few of my creations at a market. It’s very offputting to know there are laws that cover what you want to do but you are not able to find out what they are without paying an excessive amount.
Yeah, the price of Standards is bonkers. Especially the International ones. Work buys e-access packages with eye watering prices and still doesn’t have all of these.