Tacitus put his ancient finger on it

With all these honest mistakes, genuine oversights, accounting errors and misunderstandings that our MPs seem to be making - usually the day after they are caught with fingers in the till as they search for a chequebook - it does explain why, with such incompetents in charge, so much of the legislation which churns out of Westminster is such a dog's dinner.

Significantly New Labour has pumped out close on 4,000 new laws, more than one a day, since it came in promising to stamp out sleaze - stamping out apparently being a euphemism for legitimise.

I missed out on a Classical education. After just one Latin lesson my teachers suggested I might be better employed doing metalwork but those who did embrace the ancients might well remember the Roman historian Tacitus and a couple of his quotes from two thousand years ago which say much the same thing and still seem to fit the bill

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."

"When the state is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied."

Seems the lad knew what he was talking about.