>For America, there is the story of the chap from Puerto Rico or some
>other such poverty-stricken Central American banana republic who has
>been refused a visa on several occasions for not providing a full set
>of fingerprints.

It seems unlikely to have been Puerto Rico, since a) it's not in Central America, it's an island in the Caribbean and b) it's a territory of the United States.

>For Britain, there's the Unholy Trinity of the Data Protection Act
>(which means you cannot photograph your child in a nativity play),

Is it that, or is it you cannot photograph someone else's child in a nativity play? We have something similar here (although I think it's handled state-by-state in the US); I ran into it several times when I worked in the press. Photographing school events is a complicated process now, because there's always the possibility that one or more of the children you end up catching in any photo of a school play or sporting event is, e.g., on the run from an estranged parent, and would be exposed and put in danger by appearing in the newspaper. So all the photos of such things have to be cleared through the school office, whose responsibility it is to ensure that the parents or guardians of all the minors pictured have filed a release with the school district saying that it's okay for their kids to be in press photos.

>Human Rights Act (which means a car thief can sit on a roof
>threatening police with a shotgun whilst demanding they bring him a
>KFC Family Bucket and two litre bottle of Coke)

Well, a car thief can sit and demand whatever he likes here, too, but I grant you that our cops have no obligation to bring him anything other than some very-recently-expended bullets.

>and the Health And
>Safety Act (which means that if you want to do something next month,
>you need to start filling in forms about the December 1865).

Mm, yes, they bitch about Health and Safety a lot on Top Gear. We've got the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) here, which is similar, albeit not quite as addle-brainedly strict. It's one of those things that is well-intentioned and, realistically, you wouldn't want to work (in an industrial setting, particularly) without it - it prevents things like people being forced to work high steel with no safety equipment whatsoever, which I think we can all agree is a good thing - but since legal frameworks aren't good at anticipating contingencies, it ends up causing a lot of unintended annoyance.

One thing the US has going for it, in terms of crack-addled red tapery and its avoidance, is that we're not eligible to join the EU. That saves us a lot of hassle, most of which we then inflict upon ourselves through the mechanism of our own Congress, but still. :)

(As an aside, I saw a segment on the news once in which a grave-faced British academic asserted that the reason the United States cannot join the EU - as if at some point we had tried and been rebuffed - was that we still indulge in the barbaric pastime of capital punishment. Funnily enough, I had always assumed that the main source of US ineligibility for EU membership had to do with not being in Europe, but that goes to show you what I know about these things.)

... How did we get onto this topic again?

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.