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We realize "molest" means "to bother or annoy". I really wasn't aiming for a sexual connotation when I added the law - it just seems strange to me to have a law expressly forbidding bothering butterflies. Now I do realize the purpose of the law, and there is quite an interesting story behind it (as is the case with many laws).

Thanks,

Andy (Webmaster - http://www.dumblaws.com)

Not all the laws mentioned are stupid:

It is illegal to leave baggage unattended.

Rememeber that England has suffered from a prolonged civil war (known as "our little problem with Northern Ireland") with frequent bomb attacks on civilians. These bombs were often left in luggage on stations, airports, department stores and other corwded places.

This law therefore makes perfect sense. I rememeber when I first came to England, I was wodering why there were no luggage boxes on the stations. Such youthful innocence...

God (and the IRA et. al.) willing, this particular war should now be over. Now the poor English can concentrate on the ALF, the anti-capitalism terrorists, and whatever today's new violent fringe group is.

I would have liked the web site to have contained references to the law texts. That would have made it much more trustworthy. How many of the laws mentioned, I woder, are nothing more than urban legends?

As we all know (by now), lawyers live in a completely different mindspace.

They don't think in terms of bits and bytes. They think in terms of intellectual property and rules.

You've probably never looked at dumblaws.com.

Then you might know a little bit more about their (narrow) mindspace.