It’s not often that TheEye quotes the Daily Make-It-Up but today is an exception, for we have the truly marvellous article: “Labour is dreaming up 33 new crimes a month… including barring you from swimming into the Titanic“.

Labour has created 4,300 new crimes since taking power – including a ban on swimming in the wreck of the Titanic and on the sale of game birds shot on a Sunday.

Gordon Brown has been the worst offender in this unprecedented ‘legislative splurge’, with his Government creating new offences at the rate of 33 a month. Under Tony Blair, Labour invented 27 new ways of criminalising the public every month.

The ‘crimes’ range from swimming in the hull of the Titanic without the permission of a Cabinet Minister to ‘disturbing a pack of eggs’ when instructed not to by an authorised officer.

In total, between 1997 and 2009, 4,289 new criminal offences were created – approximately one for every day ministers have been in office. It is twice the rate at which new crimes were created under the last Tory administration.

And then in splendid Daily Mail deadpan delivery:

They include offences – such as carrying out a nuclear explosion – which could easily be covered by existing laws.

…which is straight from the Department of Statin’ The Bleedin’ Obvious.

Others are simply bewildering, such as the ban on the sale of game birds shot on a Sunday – or Christmas Day. This stems from the fact it is illegal, for ancient religious reasons, to shoot the birds on a Sunday – so the Government felt the need to also make it illegal to sell birds shot on a Sunday, to reinforce the point.

How would you know?

There’s bound to be some Gordon Doomed…Titanic…iceberg phrase to be had out of this whole thing, so < insert your own pun here > and everybody will be happy. That doesn’t lessen the fact that this is a complete disgrace. Putting some of these ludicrous examples aside, it is the trivial ones which are the more insidious, for they make unintentional criminals out of law abiding folks. Nobody can possibly keep up with these laws, but it’s less effort for Plod to keep his arrest rate up by arresting you for hanging your pheasant for too long in your garden shed than it is to track down the gang who stole your tools from it the weekend before. To be fair, they aren’t asking for these extra reasons to arrest you and doubtless think that they are as ridiculous as the rest of us do.

Once more the refrain goes up….will anything change under the incoming administration? If Grieve gets the Attorney General position then almost certainly they will not.