Every country and city has some pretty bizarre laws to its name.
Take Milan, for example, where it’s a legal requirement to smile in public at all times, unless you’re attending a funeral or in a hospital, or the Australian state of Victoria, were it’s illegal to change a light bulb unless you’re a registered electrician, and you can’t be going forgetting your wife’s birthday in Samoa, because that’s against the law too.
But did you know that there’s plenty of bizarre laws in England as well?
Of course, we wouldn’t manage to just fly under the radar when it comes to obscure and somewhat archaic laws, would we?
And there’s a good chance you could have broken on or two of them over your lifetime too, as the vast majority of the population aren’t even aware of their existence.
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So, believe it or not, here are eight laws that somehow still stand in England to this day.
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1. Walking Cows Down the Street in Daylight
Ever done this?
Let’s face it, this is a fairly niche law to break.
There’s a pretty good chance you haven’t tried walking a herd of cows down a public highway at any time of day, but just for future reference if you ever find yourself in this situation, it is actually against the law in England to do this during daylight hours.
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The Metropolitan Streets Act states that: “Cattle are not to be driven through streets within certain hours.”
As explained by Oxbridge, the law originated “back in 1867 [when] section seven of the act forbade cattle lovers and farmers alike to walk their prized livestock during the day. Unless given permission from the Commissioner of Police himself, if you were caught rallying your precious bovines down the street between 10am and 7pm, you would have been committing a crime.”
2. Using Your Phone to Pay at a Drive-Thru
Now, this is one that a good number of us will probably have to hold our hands up to.
You may not have walked cows down the street in daylight, but who’s remembering to turn off their car engine and engage the handbrake before paying for a Maccie’s with Apple Pay?
According to Oxbridge once again: “The law is incredibly strict about the using phones behind the wheel of a car. Even if you’re tapping a contactless pad with your phone at a drive-through to pay for a meal, if your engine is running and your handbrake is unlocked, you’re using your phone while managing a car and this is against the law.
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“The penalty for breaking this law is £200 and six points on your license.”
3. Entering the Houses of Parliament Wearing Armour
Yeah, if you were planning on doing this by any chance, don’t.
It’s illegal.
According to the 1313 Statute – which refers to forbidding bearing of armour – does in fact forbid Members of Parliament from entering the House of Commons while wearing a full suit of armour at any point.
This particular statute was put into place after a period of political turmoil.
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4. Misplacing a Postage Stamp is Treason
This is one many of us can admit to over our lifetimes and as harsh as it sounds, it’s true.
Placing a postage stamp which bears the monarch’s head upside down on an envelope is considered as act of treason.
Also, just to add to that, the defacing or destroying of anything that bears a likeness of the monarch is also illegal, so this means that burning paper money, bending coins or tearing a postage stamp could actually land you in big trouble if caught.
5. It’s Legal to Shoot a Scotsman
Now, we hope none of you have, or would have a reason to do this, but just in case you were wondering, it is actually legal to shoot a Scotsman under some circumstances.
Only in York though.
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According to The Fact Site, the law states that it is legal to shoot a Scotsman with a crossbow upon seeing one, except for on Sundays, however, any Scotsman caught drunk or with a weapon can still be shot on a Sunday, except with a bow and arrow.
Similarly, in Chester – a little bit closer to home – it is also legal to shoot a Welsh person with a crossbow, as long as it is within the city walls and is done after midnight.
6. You Can’t Shake Carpets in London
Another good reason not to live in London, right?
Not like us Mancunians are particularly well known for wanting to shake carpets, but if you ever find yourself needing to do so in the capital, you’ll have to find another way to dust it off, because it’s simply a criminal act.
Under the Metropolitan Police Act of 1839, it’s illegal to beat or shake a mat, carpet, or a rug in the streets of London.
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The only time you may beat them is before 8am.
7. Handling Salmon in Suspicious Circumstances
This really is an odd one.
To make matters even crazier too, it’s actually a fairly recent law, but under the Salmon Act of 1986 – yes, we’re really not making this up – it is an offence to receive or dispose of salmon under “suspicious circumstances”.
Now, what circumstances are considered suspicious, we couldn’t tell you.
But believe it or not, police officers in England actually have a right to investigate you if they have reason to believe that the salmon has been illegally fished.
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8. Beard Tax
Not good news for the hipsters among us.
King Henry VIII imposed a beard tax that every man must pay to wear facial hair.
He introduced a beard tax that lined his pockets and filled his dinner table, what’s more is that the higher your social standing, the more you had to cough up.
What if you cannot pay? Shave it away.
This simply meant that beards became a symbol of status and money under his reign.
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Has Liam Gallagher just casually confirmed that a new Oasis album is coming?
Danny Jones
Liam Gallagher is playing his usual social media mind games to perfection as it looks like he might have just revealed that a new Oasis album is on the way.
Keeping close watch on his social media needs to be someone’s full-time job, honestly.
The younger Gallagher sibling and his older brother Noel have finally patched things up after a decade and a half and barring a big bust-up on the first day of their upcoming reunion shows, the world will soon be able to see them back touring again next summer.
A comeback on its own was something we never thought we’d actually live to see come to fruition but now it looks like not only will be once again seeing the Burnage boys performing their many hits but they may or may not have been working on a new Oasis album. It all started back in September, actually.
Liam, 52, has been enjoying some playful back-and-forth with Oasis fans ever since the comeback was confirmed in August and the talk of new/unreleased music has been rumbling for a while.
Responding to a fan on 7 September, who asked point blank if it was true that a new album was on the way, “Yep it’s already finished.”
Then, as the days rolled into November, LG began swapping out the usual ‘RASTAS’ and ‘BUMBALCART’ tweets with two very random on-brand and what we presumed were merely innocuous words: “SPIRITUAL” and, most recently, “CELESTIAL”.
For a man who’s said the word ‘biblical’ more times than he’s had hot dinners, we didn’t make too much of it initially, but it was in his response to other fans on Saturday, 2 November and earlier this week that’s started to grab attention.
As always, take this stuff with a big ol’ pinch of salt.
All that being said, the last time he did this sort of stuff it was about the support acts for the Oasis reunion tour and he wasn’t lying then, so who knows? Maybe we really are going to get the long-awaited eighth album from Oasis for the first time since 2008.
Elsewhere, the frontman has been joking that he and Noel are practically the best of friends nowadays and almost pretending that there was never any bad blood, adding that he’ll be on his “best behaviour” when they head out on the road for their first tour date at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff in July.
Liam has also made it clear he’d much rather keep the Oasis reunion train rolling after the ‘Live ’25 World Tour’ ends than return to a solo career – as for Noel, he could always go back to his High Flying Birds project or maybe even switch industries…
Some of the very best memes about Gary Barlow’s MASSIVE son
Danny Jones
We don’t know why the internet does what it does sometimes, all we can tell you is that on occasions like this when seemingly the entire country is making jokes and some truly incredible memes about Gary Barlow’s massive son, we’re just glad.
In case you’ve been living under a rock – or in his case, a planet – Gary Barlow has gone viral after sharing what clearly thought was an unassuming family picture on social media.
Well, to be more accurate, his son Daniel has gone viral due to the seemingly enormous height difference between him and his dad which, naturally, has become the funniest thing in about a decade by UK standards.
The British sense of humour is elite, we all know that, but when we tell you we’ve been literally streaming tears reacting to the endless flood of memes about Gary Barlow’s gargantuan son, we’re doing so through uncontrollable fits of laughter. Here are some of the very best we’ve come across:
Honestly, typing this out has been more of a challenge than anything I’ve ever written, mainly due to the convulsive and all-consuming chuckles.
We were today years old when we learned that there’s a word for the giggles, by the way: the technical term is ‘gelastic seizures’, so feel free to enjoy that bonus fact.
Anyway, back to the nonsense.
There’s a somewhat small comfort in knowing that while the online landscape is full of very negative things going on right now, it can still be an escape for simple-minded folks like us to laugh at a colossal kid from Cheshire.
Not ready to deal with the hideous result just yet so will continue on my quest to find the best Gary Barlow’s massive son memes for a while… pic.twitter.com/fHI8k858XU
For context, the 24-year-old Barlow child isn’t anywhere near as big as you’re probably thinking; as far as we can tell, it’s more a case of he’s just taller than his below-average height popstar dad.
According to our very intense research (that definitely didn’t take us less than a minute before we started scrolling through the memes again), Daniel Barlow clocks in at around 6’2″ and Gary is 5’7″.
Sorry to spoil the party and shatter the illusion. We can all just forget that bit and keep carrying on like Gary Barlow’s wife Dawn Andrews gave birth to a towering man-child if you like?
Honestly, just go on Twitter (no, not X; this is peak old-school Twitter comedy at its best) and look on the ‘Gary Barlow’ trending feed and take a few minutes, or an hour, to p*ss yourself at the endless wave of ridiculous memes about a boy who is a bit taller than his dad.
As for the Take That star himself, the 53-year-old is yet to comment on the whole situation, probably because it’s utterly ridiculous but still, crack a joke would’ya, Gaz?
Brits are the funniest people in the universe. FACT.