It is not merely demonstrative, showing by example what styles of protest are tolerated (ineffectual ones, largely), but practical in the sense that it drastically foreshortens democratic possibilities.
As history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it.
Some critics called the general managers' proposals ineffectual, but one player who fights often, Georges Laraque of the Montreal Canadiens, called them "the stupidest thing ever," but for a different reason.
3D printing farragoes have all the hallmarks of the absolute worst kind of ineffectual ban: one which encourages overly draconian laws that carry huge side effects, and that ultimately to have little to no effect.
After one ineffectual cross-examination, he told me, "This is not like 'Matlock' or 'L.A. Law,' where the witness is going to break down and say, 'Yes, I lied about everything.' " As the trial progressed, Bout increasingly flipped through binders and whispered in Dayan's and Kaplan's ears.
On one hand, first lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, which targets the burgeoning phenomenon of childhood obesity in the US, is commendable, if ineffectual.
Mozambique would be poorer if its people could not work and trade in South Africa.One of Mr Mbeki's closest aides, Essop Pahad, predicts that the current ineffectual restrictions on the free movement of labour will eventually fall away.
The history of international efforts on climate change has so far been one of ineffectual and ignored treaties, unseemly wranglings over which nations should bear the greatest "burden" – as if saving the only planet we have can be so described – and political grandstanding laced with vicious recriminations.
A small and ineffectual gesture, perhaps, but one that will give me some satisfaction while I wait and work for a government that takes a stand.
