Our old enemy the EU Working Time Directive (WTD) last sighted was embroiled in deep procedural wrangling as between the various parts of the EU machine. Can it be left to rot in this long grass for long enough to get it entangled with new EP elections and maybe a fresh start?

One key area where its impact will be felt heavily is in the health sector.

Fans of this collectivist attempt to control our lives proclaim that of course it is essential that doctors and nurses not be tired when they do risky medical work on patients. They must work fewer hours!

On the other hand, doctors will get senior qualifications with far fewer training hours, so we’ll have operations performed less well by less skilled doctors stressing out over their own lack of practical experience.

Plus, think about it.

Fewer hours mean more doctors, plus more shorter shifts to give the same amount of cover.

When a doctor hands over to her/his shift successor there is a short period to brief the newcomer on the medical issues going on among the current patients. Each handover necessarily involves ‘information decay’ – only so much of the mass of material in the departing doctor’s head can be passed on.

Shorter shifts = lower information-levels per doctor. More frequent shift-changes = more information decay = a greater chance that some or other complication will be missed = more mistakes/complications/deaths.

Finally, if you are a doctor on a long shift you know that anything which goes wrong on your shift will be down to you to fix. As long as the shifts are not excessive, a positive incentive for maximum concentration.

The more frequent the shifts, the less responsible you are going to feel for the patients under your care: "only half an hour to go – let her deal with it". Negative incentive effect.

All these costs occur on the margins, so it will necessarily be next to impossible to ‘prove’ that the WTD caused the deaths and extra pain of those patients who will suffer it.

But they nonethless will have been caused by that.

Caused by a power-grab far away in Brussels by people and institutions not interested in the real-life outcomes, but rather determined to assert their ideological control at every possible level. And not accountable for the repercussions in any way that matters.

Not good.