basingwerk wrote:
........... For the law to be respectable, it has to be in the general public interest, ....... The first case is where there is no general mutual interest. Issues like speed cameras, fox hunting and parking on the pavement come to mind.
But mutual interest doesn't mean shared curiosity or common fascination in the subject matter.
You can't sue a conman because you found a newspaper report about him of interest. You have to have a legal "interest" in his actions.
"Speeding" is a victimless crime. Neither you, nor anyone else, has an "interest" in what speed I pass a speed camera at. Neither does anyone have an "interest" in whether I ride after a pack of hounds to see it demonstrating nature red in tooth and claw. Anyone see the short programme last night about a camera team trying to film African wild dogs at the kill. Should that be illegal?
It is not illegal to break into a house. I can break into my house if I forget the key and lock myself our. I can ask someone else to break in and let me in. You can ask me to break into your house. It's only when I cause you harm by breaking into your house that it becomes a crime.
And if, say on environmental grounds, you object to people braking windows or doors:
That
doesn't give you any rights to have me punished.
If the fact that you, a councillor, a civil servant, a policeman, or a politician object to me, on principle, doing 35 on a particular road means that it becomes illegal then there is something seriously wrong with that law.
Similarly with
parking on the pavement. There is nothing any more intrinsically wrong with that than walking on the cracks in the pavement.
You might not do it. You might have been brought up not to do it. You might sincerely believe that people shouldn't do it.
But my walking on the cracks on the pavement does no harm to anyone. It in no way affects, never mind harms society. In fact avoiding walking on the cracks on the pavement harms society by obstructing the pavement, slowing pedestrians and making the thoroughfare inefficient.
Therefore you have no right to make stepping on the line illegal, though there might be some merit in making stepping over the line illegal in that particular case.
It is
NOT something that the law should concern itself with except where avoiding walking on the cracks in the pavement causes an obstruction.
Similarly,
parking on the pavement should be of no concern to the law.
Obstructing the pavement should fall within its remit.
Equally
NOT parking on the pavement and blocking the road should.
basingwerk wrote:
........... In these cases, half of the stakeholders will be happy, and the other half will be pissed off whatever the law says. Right now, foxhunters and speeders are miserable, while townies, pedestrians and non-speeding motorists are happy. It doesn’t have to be that way, but (in the balance, all things considered, voting patterns and so on) this is the result decided through due democratic process in one of the world’s "fairest" systems of government. In this case, is it unreasonable to expect the pissed-off stakeholders to get with the programme, obey the law and campaign for change through proper channels?
It is not the purpose of the law to to give legal status to the opinions of one group over another. And that is nothing to do with democracy either.
If a group are discussing what to eat and the majority vote to have an Indian that doesn't make it democratic. And it certainly doesn't make it fair.
No matter how much the Indian is outvoted by.
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) that tailgating another vehicle is dangerous and unecessary yet, if tailgating cameras were introduced tomorrow and fines starting plopping onto doormats a few days later, there would be another outcry.
