Britain has been passing the same law since before it had a Parliament

The government has promised a crackdown on subscription traps and misleading discounts. Worth doing. But nobody should call it new. This is a law Britain has been passing, and failing to make stick, since before it had a Parliament.

The oldest version that survives is a law of the Saxon king Edgar, made somewhere between 959 and 963. It ordered that "one measure and one weight pass" through the whole of the king's dominion: the same bushel in one town as in the next.

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