Brickbat: Slow Dancing

Everett Collection Inc. / Dreamstime

Last year, the Swedish parliament voted to end a requirement that bars and clubs must have a permit to allow dancing. But police are still citing clubs where "spontaneous dancing" breaks out without a permit. An industry official says she has asked lawmakers why it is taking so long to actually get the dancing permit requirement removed from the books and gotten only vague answers.

Comments

[Jerryskids]

This whole thing doesn't make sense. If Parliament abolished the law, shouldn't that be the end of it? How do you get hauled into court over a law that isn't a law any more?

Visita has pressed the Swedish government to find out why it is taking so long for the law to be abolished, but says it has only received vague answers. Campaigners had originally hoped the law change would be implemented by the end of 2016.
Two Moderate and one Left Party politicians wrote individually to former Interior Minister Anders Ygeman to ask the same question.
The official response is that the matter is being processed ? but it is important that dancing does not cause public disturbances or risk safety.

So Parliament doesn't actually run the show over there, the bureaucracy does? The law isn't actually abolished until the bureaucrats say it's abolished? What's to "implement" and "process"? Just stop hassling people over not having a permit they're not required to have. You can think "it is important that dancing does not cause public disturbances or risk safety" all you like, but if Parliament says there's no law saying bars have to have a permit for dancing then you can't just pretend that there is such a law, can you?

[sarcasmic]

I would guess it's something along the same lines as cops around here arresting people for filming them. Despite the courts saying it's not OK, and their being no law against it, because cops face no consequences for unlawful arrest they go ahead and do it anyway.

Short answer: FYTW

[Rat on a train]

They have to wait until the next edition of the code register is published and distributed to all jurisdictions. I mean, parliament may say they repealed the law, they may have send a notice that they repealed the law, but I still see it in the book on my desk. I can't just ignore a law that is still on the book.

[Robert]

They must have some sort of administrative procedures rules. Those usually take time when a legislature requires rules to be adopted, but you'd think when it's just a matter of rescinding a requirement, it'd be fast & easy.

I thought these "cabaret laws" were peculiar to US cities, but apparently they were a worldwide phenomenon. Still, with liquor taxes as high as they are in Sweden, who goes to bars there anyway?

[Brandybuck]

It's the difference between the rule of law and not. Despite it's innumerable flaws, the US legal system is still based on the Rule of Law. (Which is not the same thing as rule by statute). But many nations just do not have that. In those nations, the legislature can pass anything they want, rescind anything they want, but it doesn't mean anything until the actual people ruling the country does something about it. And in the case of Sweden, those people are the bureaucrats. If push came to shove, and cops stopped ignoring the law that the legislature rescinded but the Masters haven't gotten around to disposing, then the king might have to step in to force the cops to obey the bureaucrats.

[Telcontar the Wanderer]

Goddamnit Drax.

[Fist of Etiquette]

An industry official says she has asked lawmakers why it is taking so long to actually get the dancing permit requirement removed from the books and gotten only vague answers.

Because it's a revenue stream?

[Shawn Levasseur]

Where's Kevin Bacon when you need him?

[Rat on a train]

Dancing in Norway?

[sarcasmic]

No one needs Kevin Bacon.

[Radioactive]

...to the sixth degree...

[Fuck you, Shikha (Nunya)]

Like his client, you can't handle the truth.

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

In the Bacon Brothers rehearsal hall working on their version of "The Politics of Dancing" and "Safety Dance"?

[Longtobefree]

Yet Sweden remains the shining example of how to run a progressive country?

[Brandybuck]

Sweden works only because Swedes are fundamentally polite people in a largely homogeneous culture.

[Enjoy Every Sandwich]

Maybe progressives regard dancing as a microaggression committed by cishetero shitlords.

[Libertarian]

Only in America!

[Rhywun]

Or, well, NYC.

Guess whom the law originally targeted.

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

I'll take "Sophisticated European Social Democracy" for 500 Alex.

[Robert]

I'd pay you a lot more than that to take it off my hands, if it was on them.

[Inigo Montoya]

So if American officials need to be sat down and made to watch "Fargo" (at least the wood chipper scene), it looks like Swedish officials need to be sat down and made to watch "Footloose."

[Sports Reporter Charles Manson]

The director's cut, with the famous chainsaw scene?

(NOTE - that was a joke, there isn't a chainsaw scene in footloose that I know of)

[DatCrazyMongoose]

This comes to mind.