Cutting the Gordian knot?

It's often said that the difference between a bloke and a girl is that the bloke understands the offside rule. But it's most likely that neither the bloke nor the girl really have a clue about the intricacies of the LBW law. Once again, a simple concept - that the batsman can only protect his wicket with his bat, and not with his body - has been turned into a tortuous law depending on such things as where the ball pitched, whether the batsman was offering a stroke, how big a stride forward he had taken, and so on. I suggested some time ago that we should go back to the basic offside rule, and forget all this stupidity about active and non-active players, and perhaps the time has come to do the same thing with the LBW law - if the ball is prevented from hitting the stumps by anything other that the batsman's bat, then that's LBW, and if that's considered too draconian, then maybe give the batsman three lives - if it happens three times, he's out.