Did you know it is illegal to be cremated in Greece? You may not call a pig Napoleon in France? And you may not skateboard in a police station in Miami?
Every country, it seems, has its wacky laws. Some that simply don’t make sense, if you think about them. - After all, what exactly is the penalty for being reduced to a heap of ashes in Athens and would you care all that much? And others that make you wonder how big the problem was to make the law-givers go to the trouble of passing legislation. Were Miami Five- O’s overwhelmed by wheeled wonders? Was there a rasher of Bonapartisan porkers? And were stinkers in Kentucky so overpowering as to make it necessary to pass a law obliging them to take an annual bath?
But here at home we have our own loony laws. Stuff that at some time in our great historic past was evidently a source of angst to our ancestors and that somehow over the years has just never got repealed. So, watch out if you have done or are vaguely contemplating doing any of the following:
Hanging a bed out of a window
Eating chocolates in a public convenience
Standing within 100 yards of the reigning monarch without socks
Flagging down a London cab if you have the plague
Dying within the houses of Parliament
On the other hand, the law allows you to do some things which might generally be thought of as rather antisocial stuff. So, for those of you wanting to try something a little different this weekend you might like to try
Urinating in a policeman’s helmet (You must be pregnant to get away with this one)
Shooting a Welshman with a bow and arrow (You must be inside Chester city walls to try this and it must be after midnight) or shooting a Scotsman with a bow and arrow (You must be in York to try this one and don’t do it on a Sunday.) Of course shooting an Englishman with a bow and arrow at any time anywhere is Simply Not Done.
Presenting the bones of any dead whales you may find to the Queen to use in her corsets.
So with the world becoming ever more litigious, what are the chances of some whacko trying this stuff and getting away with it? Lawyer Alex Jennings explains,
“ A lot of these more bizarre laws are still on the statute books but could be over-turned quite easily by the Human Rights Act or by the Attorney General just squashing any legal action by saying that was not in the public interest.”
But what if someone with more money than sense wanted to try legislation on the back of this? Would any sensible lawyer take on the case?
“Any sensible lawyer would demand their fees up front in advance. After that, why not? Even lawyers like a good laugh.”