Britons of a certain age will mourn the passing of the animator Oliver Postgate.

As a bootstrapping filmmaking entrepreneur, who worked from a shed and who smashed the established slow and costly ways of production, we at Mind Your Own Business particularly admired him.

Although there are hints of a Marxist subtext in his Bagpuss, possibly the most loved British children’s television show of all time, an elegant essay on his website gave an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences that entrepreneurs might appreciate...

Maternity rights granted to employees at the expense of employers by the French government result in less employment of women.

That is the consequence of the government’s action. It was obviously not the intention. Yet the government ought to have foreseen that consequence, intended or not.

Such “rights” usually end up harming the very people they are intended to benefit.

Newsreader Selina Scott – another figure beloved by male Britons of a certain age – is said to have received a £250,000 payout under new age discrimination laws.

The consequence of that, far from protecting older employees, is that employers will now be frightened of even talking to older people.