LEGAL LUNACY: Brits Vote on Most Absurd Laws

[Hudson Boy]

LEGAL LUNACY
Brits Vote on Most Absurd Laws

Mince pie and postage stamps don't sound like particularly nefarious items. But use them improperly and you could be considered an outlaw in the United Kingdom.

The history of law and order includes a stack of legal decrees that might have served the greater good at one time, but sound quite wacky in hindsight.

For instance, in France it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon, while in the US state of Massachusetts, a colonial-era code allows one to carry a rifle or shotgun across the Boston Common -- as long as the weapon is intended to ward off bears.


The United Kingdom, with almost a millennium of common law tradition, is particularly rife with such penal absurdities. Now the British public has been given the chance to choose the most ludicrous laws in a poll conducted by British television station UKTV Gold. According to those surveyed, these are the top 10 most ridiculous pieces of legislation:

1. Dying in the Houses of Parliament is illegal.
2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the reigning monarch's face upside down on a piece of mail.
3. In Liverpool it is illegal for a woman to be topless -- unless she works in a store selling tropical fish.
4. Eating mince pies is banned on Christmas Day. (Nearly half of those polled confessed to breaking this rule.)
5. If a person desperately in need of a bathroom in Scotland knocks on the door of a private home, the resident is legally bound to let them use their privy.
6. A pregnant woman in the United Kingdom may relieve herself anywhere she pleases, including in a policeman's helmet.
7. The head of a dead whale beached on the British coast is automatically the property of the king, while the tail goes to the queen.
8. It is illegal not to tell the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing.
9. Entering the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armor is verboten.
10. It is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls of York -- as long as he is carrying a bow and arrow.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - November 7, 2007, 01:08 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,515905,00.html

[tippy]

8. It is illegal not to tell the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing.
9. Entering the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armor is verboten.
10. It is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls of York -- as long as he is carrying a bow and arrow.

These make sense to me. Coming into Parliament in armor could mean a military action or coup. Killing an armed Scotsman is just good sense.

But I would like to know what's up with no minced pies on Christmas. Interesting.

[Noj]

[*]In Liverpool it is illegal for a woman to be topless -- unless she works in a store selling tropical fish.

The gal selling tropical fish not only had a great set of, um, marketing tools but she also had some serious pull with the Liverpool lawmakers!

[GoodSpeak]

The gal selling tropical fish not only had a great set of, um, marketing tools but she also had some serious pull with the Liverpool lawmakers!

Yer killin' me here, Noj.

[Gary Sisco]

I have a book I've been reading off and on that traces the evolution of the right to keep and bear arms as it evolved in Britain and later the US. The armor ban in Parliament is probably a holdover from centuries ago, when there were serious armed clashes with kings and kings with parliament, and people with both, and so forth. A law evolved that no one could be armed in parliament or its vicinity, including MPs.

Or so I'd guess. One thing I noticed in various English manorhouses and such I visited was the smallness of the suits of armor. Ain't any fat asses around today that would fit in one. People were smaller then than now, on the whole. Might as well can the law for that reason alone.

[Douglas]

.... Killing an armed Scotsman is just good sense.
.

[speechless] .[/speechless]

[tippy]

within the ancient city of York. It was a joke but I guess another one bites the dust...par for the course.

[tippy]

and now I lose my friend Doug without even finding about the FUCKING mince pies.

[Douglas]

without even finding about the FUCKING mince pies.

Cromwell's fault.

btw mince pies on christmas day are legal in Scotland; the land where laws won't last long if they get in the way of cholesterol hitting bloodstream.

[Nim Chimpsky]

[*]Dying in the Houses of Parliament is illegal.

But being brain dead is par for the course

[*]In Liverpool it is illegal for a woman to be topless -- unless she works in a store selling tropical fish.

Strange that, because if you go out in Liverpool on a Friday or Saturday night, regardless of what the weather is like, you'd assume that the wearing of anything but the most minimal of clothes was illegal.

[*]If a person desperately in need of a bathroom in Scotland knocks on the door of a private home, the resident is legally bound to let them use their privy.

Yeah, but you try enforcing that law in Glasgow! Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle tells a great story about driving through a Scottish town late at night and seeing a very drunk guy leaning up against someone's front door, having a piss ... and then reaching into his pocket, taking out a set of keys, opening the door and going in.

[*]A pregnant woman in the United Kingdom may relieve herself anywhere she pleases, including in a policeman's helmet.

She should very careful about asking any man, even an officer of the law, if she can use his helmet. B-boom!

[Alastair]

Sorry to be a killjoy, but the only reason these are still laws is because no-one could be bothered to repeal them. They're all either related to a certain period in time or certain circumstances that no longer pertain. It'd be more effort to repeal them than it's worth as no-one's ever going to enforce them.

The mince pie one is surely made-up though, unless it's a Cromwellian thing. Had mince pies been invented (and linked to Christmas) in 1649?

[tippy]

That's a good point, Alastair. Christmas as we know it was more a 19th cent. invention wasn't it? Anyway maybe it was something like "Honey, I'm not making these damn mince pies for your relatives at Yuletide anymore. There oughta be a law." Or more likely some powerful dud "Mince pie? I don't want no stinkin' mince pie and disallow them at my Christmas table from now on."

How about tropical fish stores? Were there really tropical fish stores before electricity?