Peter Jackson column

Nov 23 2006 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

Some time ago I wrote in mockery of certain eccentric state laws in the USA, such as that in Tennessee which makes it illegal for anyone "to import, possess, or cause to be imported into this state any type of live skunk".

Or how about this one - you may kill a bullfinch, or give it away, but it's illegal to sell or barter it.

Those Americans, they're crazy, right?

Yes, except whereas there might be a sensible reason for keeping live skunks out of your state, there can be no such logic behind the bullfinch law, which, in fact, is British and not US.

It is also in the UK that soldiers learning the bagpipes have been banned from playing more than 24 minutes a day in case they damage their ears and it was in Kent that fire inspectors have told landlords they can no longer, as is the tradition, decorate their pubs with bundles of hops because they are a hazard. It was also in this country that Tewkesbury Borough Council banned paper napkins from its meals on wheels service, in case elderly diners mistook them for part of their meals and choked to death on them.

These and many more examples are contained in a new book by journalist Ross Clark, which exposes the petty rules and regulations blighting the lives of the British people.

It is called How to Label a Goat - from the Welsh regulation: "The Sheep and Goats (Records, Identification and Movement (Wales) Order 2006", which, in more than 40 pages, tells you - you've guessed it - how to label your sheep, or goat.

Clark details how, in the year to May, the Government made 3,600 pieces of law, covering 98,000 pages, which is 70 times longer than War and Peace.

He attributes this descent into regulatory madness to a number of factors - the European Union, a culture of risk aversion and increasing use of statutory instruments. He omits to mention power-crazed politicians and an infantilised, craven public who rush, arms outstretched towards their leaders, pleading for the manacles to be clamped on.

I heartily recommend anyone to request this book as a Christmas present, if they want to be thoroughly entertained - and then left a little depressed.