I blame politics

The law is a fascinating subject made even more so by the simple fact that those who interpret it and in many cases understand it (law lords, judges etc) are not the same people who create it (elected politicians) who in turn are not the same people who enforce it (police) who are generally not the same people who chatter about it and sometimes suffer under it (the public).

The above is a very good reason why the law must be crafted very carefully, enforced equally and fairly and why it is in constant danger of being seen as an ass. Carefully crafted law is beyond the capability of our politicians in many instances and equal and fair enforcement seems, from the perspective of the pubic, sometimes to be beyond the capabilities of the police force.

Ask a man in the street what he thinks about the arrest of a young woman for reading out a list of dead soldiers at a war memorial and what he thinks about a police escort for marchers who call for the beheading of people who insult a religion and you will get a perfectly reasonable answer. Namely, that the law is an ass.

He has no interest in politically motivated demonstration exclusion zones and no interest in the finer points of legislative acts of parliament. All he is interested in is whether things seem fair. Reasonable. Right.

Increasingly they don’t seem to be and there is great danger in that because bad law, seemingly unfair law and seemingly inconsistently enforced law serves only to weaken the respect that people have for the law in general.

Those who are responsible for law in the United Kingdom used to know that, but they seem to have forgotten it somewhere along the line.