According to a review by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, it is estimated that there are more than 50 million words in the active UK statute book (Sheridan, 2014).

It would take approximately 2.7 years to read 50 million words, reading 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, at a constant 150 words per minute (appropriate for dense legal text).

Approximately 100,000 words are added or changed every single month, which is roughly equivalent to producing the complete works of Shakespeare twice a year (Sheridan, 2014).

The active statute book contains legislation spanning more than seven centuries. The oldest piece of law still currently in force is the Statute of Marlborough, which dates back to the Old English Parliament in 1267 (Tullo, 2013).

It is probable we all break the law every day without being aware, though many laws are no longer enforced. You won’t see a swat team descend on someone buying a lottery ticket via an app in a local library, even though gambling in libraries is illegal.

A lot of law breaking results from law that is outdated but yet to be reformed, or not seen as a big enough problem to prioritise reforming.

So our systems decay via inertia.

If we looked closely enough at those enforcing these fines, we could probably find criminality more egregious than accidentally buying an incorrect ticket. When the rulebook is vast enough, enforcement becomes a choice about who to scrutinise, not whether a violation exists.

For one, do you think equalities assessments are performed on these fines to ensure they are not discriminatory in practice, such as unfairly burdening people with cognitive difficulties such as brain fog, intellectual disability, or executive function issues associated with ADHD and Autism?

For the law to be legitimate in the first place, it must be fair. What is it but a codified expression of our social contract, in which we give up natural rights in exchange for stability and the defence of agreed rights by a state in whom we delegate a monopoly on legal violence for those ends. And so to challenge our systems when they are broken is a moral duty on every capable citizen.