Freeeeeeeeeedom!

What a bind it is, you spend four years slagging off pointless Government "engagement" websites that no sod bothers using but which cost the taxpayer money, the old lot get kicked out and the new lot come in and produce a Government "engagement" website that you really hope many sods will use.

And so it comes to pass we have a "Great Repeal Bill" engagement website that hopes to take advantage of "wiki-politics". Just pop along to Your Freedom and tell the buggers what stupid laws you think you should be repealed. If you can't think of some, here's a few of my choices (with explanation natch because some might seem controversial.

1: A really good place to start would be some of the wording and laws brought in by the Sexual Offences Act 2003 because they're either totally unnecessary; make the wrong people guilty or cause weird contradictions.

For example, the age of sexual consent remains 16, but child pornography is defined as images of anyone up to and including 17 years of age. Figure that one out? I can, legally speaking, have a 17 year old girlfriend but if we were to take pictures of ourselves getting jiggy then it would be child porn.

Next up we have necrophilia. A truly disturbing, worrying and warped act that is so rare there wasn't actually a specific law against until this Act made it so. Prior to the act, if you were caught playing doctors and nurses with a corpse it was covered by other things like public decency etc. Why did we need to get specific in 2003 after 600 years of legislation though?

I realise that last one is controversial, but seriously, fiddling with dead bodies is not exactly common and where it does happen I would imagine there's not likely to be any witnesses. I'm not sure how many people have actually been charged or convicted of the crime, but I reckon it's not going to be a high number.

2: Here's another controversial one possibly, but how about getting rid of the absurd section on knives in the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006. Don't misunderstand me here, people that carry what I believe are called "shanks" on the street these days should not get away with it, but we didn't need a piece of new legislation to do it.

We already had the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 which prohibits the "carrying of offensive weapons without lawful authority or reasonable excuse". Is anyone seriously suggesting that a dodgy 17 year old gang member carrying a kitchen knife on a night out in the park would not be covered by this?

3: Finally, my last one, although there are of course many more, would have to be amending the smoking ban and introducing licensed smoking bars, or at least rooms or sections of bars that can be used by smokers but which are ventilated in such a way that they cannot impact on non-smoking areas if a bar wished to offer both.

Of you run and make some suggestions.

P.S. Yes, it was a very good holiday thank you for asking.