I got home from the office the other day to find two cows in the garden. How exactly does one shift a cow, let alone two cows? The answer to the mystery was revealed when the Mrs came home. The technique, it seems, is to stand on the doorstep and say 'boo', whereupon they turn round and bolt off back where they came from. It seems cows are not terribly clever. They are huge and very sturdy animals but the idea of just staying put, or even squashing the offending human by sitting on them, never seems to occur to them.

Anyway, early the following morning the cows sneaked back in under cover of darkness, and they brought a few of their mates this time too. So we awoke to a whole heard of them chewing the petunias, and they had got wise to the 'boo' business. So we had to go and fetch the farmer.

What's this got to do with law you say? Well the thing is, this got me thinking about the new regulations regarding high hedges and fences. The new rules cover the situation where a neighbour's hedge is too high. But our problem was that it was not high enough. In fact it was non existent. The cows had eaten it. They seem to have chomped their way through a section and then decided to pop through, wondering where that delicious hedge had gone (like I said, they are not very bright these cows).

But the regulations only cover high hedges. Not hedges that are missing, or hedges that have been cropped, and certainly not hedges that have been eaten. Some politician somewhere has obviously had a been in his bonnet about high hedges and thought it might be worth a few votes to come up with some exciting new regulations, but couldn't be bothered thinking it through.

We see this sort of thing all the time. The Party Walls Act was passed a few years ago as the answer to all our ills. The Protection from Harassment Act and Dangerous Dogs Act are two others that come readily to mind. It seems we never learn. But it certainly keeps life very interesting down here at Wilsons, cutting a swathe through it all for our clients.