Law Piled High Upon Law

While looking up the chapter and verse for the fake-fruit rules I stumbled across a wonderful list of Statutory Instruments, those lesser laws that regulate our lives in minute detail, often with the threat of criminal sanctions. Here is just a handful, from just one year, but there are thousands of them, and I do feel for the legions of civil servants who slave over their keyboards dreaming them all up.

That’s why I could never be a lawyer, I fear. Rather than getting on with the job I would dreamily thumb through lists such as this one, my imagination taking flight at the sheer number of things that we must and must not do:-

The Sludge (Use in Agriculture) Regulations 1989
The Undersized Bass Order 1989
The Cereals Marketing Act (Application to Oilseeds) Order 1989
Act of Sederunt (Fees of Messengers-at-Arms) 1989
The Outer Space Act 1986 (Commencement) Order 1989


Beyond satire, my friends, quite beyond satire.