Published at 11:38, Tuesday, 22 April 2008

They should have seen it coming. No point complaining now. Mediums, psychics and spiritual healers are to be regulated by new law threatening prosecution if they’re thought to be fakes.

And how will the law be enforced? Beats me – ask a fortune teller and listen hard: One knock for vigorously, two for not at all.

It won’t be easy. And already there are signs of some very unhappy mediums – if you’ll pardon the pun.

Parliament is about to debate moves to see all forms of paid-for paranormal activities fall under new consumer protection regulations. As well as tackling a raft of more mundane commercial sharp practices, these regulations will also replace the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951.

It’s still unclear as to how far those new regulations will go. For instance, all those twice-divorced lonely hearts, wondering now if they could report the clairvoyant who, in 1992, promised one true love for evermore – well your guess is as good as Madam Other Worldly’s, Minister for stabbing in the dark.

And anyone puzzling over how consumer protection laws will help them sort the genuine mediums from charlatans is likely to have to wait an awful long time for a sensible answer.

Under old legislation, it had to be proven that any accused psychic was setting out to commit a fraud. Under the new laws, some mediums fear they’ll have to prove what they do and they complain that, as they’re at the mercy of notoriously difficult spirits in the afterlife, that's never going to be easy.

No sniggering now; this is a serious matter – serious enough to concentrate Parliament’s minds anyway. But that’s probably understandable. There’ll have to be a general election at some stage and they’re all going to need as much help as they can get – even it comes from the other side.

The rest of us tend to seek out the services of mediums less earnestly – at pier-ends, fairgrounds or girlie parties with the psychic offered as minor attraction trailing behind supper, wine and female gossip.

The Office of Fair Trading says enforcement of the new regulations will not target sessions like these, nor churches. Instead they’ll be more likely to be used against foreign mass mailshot fraudsters, extracting large sums of money.

That’s a shame really. The false “true love for evermore” prophets can cause much more damage than they appreciate. They don’t have to be foreign to be cruelly fraudulent.

Worried mediums and spiritualists fear changes to laws regulating their industry could leave them open to malicious civil action by sceptics. Me too... I reckon that’s the only point of having new laws to name and shame fakes.

Just because you’re a malicious sceptic doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. But it does mean you don’t deserve to be ripped off by someone pretending to know your dead dog’s middle name and the age of your future husband.

They have a union, these mediums and spiritualists. Their union is lobbying the Government to change its mind over proposed changes to the regulation of their industry. They complain their special powers are being mistaken for consumer products, their faith as a business.

But the British Humanist Association sees it another way. Chief executive Hanne Stinson, said the current law was inadequate.

He said: "We hope the new regulations will make real changes to the current situation, where psychic practitioners are permitted to make completely unsubstantiated claims and take payment for their services, without fear of legal action.

"It is high time this industry was better regulated, with adequate protections for consumers."

Somehow, I reckon MPs will tend to agree. But at least disappointment will be softened for the poor mediums – who should, by now, be well aware of what’s coming.

Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk