Drowning in a Sea of Legislation

When Blairy Poppins first ascended the throne 1997, he famously pledged to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".

Nanny, as we all know, has some very imaginative ideas as to what constitutes crime.

Since 1997 Nanny has created a total of 1,018 extra criminal offences.

Some of these new "criminal" offences are at the very cutting edge of innovation, viz:

• Performing a concert in a church hall without a proper licence, will leave the organisers facing a potential jail sentence of six months



• Producing a tobacco advertisement, which is subsequently published, can result in two years imprisonment



• Assisting a woman in childbirth, when you are not a registered doctor or midwife, can give rise to a large fine

The problem with all these new "criminal" offences is that someone has to police them, and enforce them. The result is that the police are diverted away from the more mundane offences such as, assault and burglary.

In essence the creation of these spurious laws is nothing more than a neat diversionary tactic, designed to take people's attention away from the one irrefutable fact; namely that Nanny doesn't know how to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of law enforcement and, more importantly, crime prevention.

The bottom line is this, does anyone actually feel safer now that we have all of these new laws?