Re: Police would definitely use that information against them if they got the chance
@Psyx: "Key thing to remember: The police are not barristers. They have a *working* knowledge of the law, but are not experts and aren't supposed to be".
And yet it is their duty to arrest anyone whom they see (or hear about) breaking the law. How on earth can they do that if they don't know the law themselves?
Further. It is a well-known legal maxim that "ignorance of the law is no defence". In other words, if you unwittingly break the law you are just as guilty as if you had done it deliberately.
I recall being told by my accountant, a partner in a substantial firm and a specialist in company accounting law, that the relevant laws would fill an entire shelf of books and change so rapidly that even he cannot begin to keep up with them. Now consider how small a fraction of all the laws are concerned with accounting. No one - not the most dedicated, assiduous lawyer - can possibly have even a rough knowledge of them all.
Yet our legal system insists that every citizen must act as if he knew every law in detail.
Obviously, if policemen do not know the law they cannot enforce it. If they fail to enforce laws that are on the statute book, that's bad. But if they try to enforce laws that don't exist, that is catastrophic. In either case, contempt for the law will ensue.
There is one simply, glaringly obvious solution that our politicians will NOT try: drastically cutting down the number and complexity of the laws.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
