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Tourist-baiting ban enforced by EU

The popular London sport of tourist baiting has been made the subject of a ban by European Court of Human Rights today.

In a landmark ruling, the court passed a resolution that tourists may be baited only "in season", and then only in a humane "come back, I was only kidding" sort of way.

The ruling has caused outrage amongst the long-established baiting clans of London's St James and Green Park districts. If enacted in UK law, the popular and time-honoured practice of directing fat and ugly Americans from the front of Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square via Constitution Hill, Hyde Park Corner, Piccadilly, St James, and Pall Mall will be outlawed.

Proponents of tourist baiting have long argued that the tourist actually enjoys the sport, and indeed relishes the challenge of being made to haul fifty pounds of excess fat, two large cameras bags, and their whining no-neck offspring through some of the more beautiful — if rather out of the way — areas of this great City.

But opponents, primarily country dwelling out-of-towners unfamiliar with the finer pleasures of the sport, have long argued that this "cruelty to dumb beasts is unnecessary, and that far kinder ways of encouraging tourists not to be quite so irritating can easily be found".

Unfortunately for baiting supporters, it seems likely that the law will have an easy passage through Parliament. Prime Minister Blair is known to have a particular fondness for fawning over Americans, and his puppy-enthusiasm for assisting them when in need will no doubt lead him to support this radical measure wholeheartedly.

But in his own very special way President Blair has suggested the promotion of less extreme forms of the sport, including the mild "I'm sorry, I've never heard of the National Potrait Gallery"; "Are you sure you mean Trafalgar Square?"; and "Buckingham what!?" in a bid to make everyone love him as much as he loves himself.

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