Naughty words and Labour. (Worth a read).

[The chap]

Just as you clutch your head and weep when you realise that
hardline Muslim protestors are playing directly into the hands of
fascists, so you cringe when something occurs that will clearly
make the Daily Mail go into spasms of ecstasy. When it's
something over which you yourself will go into paroxysms of
exasperated crossness, thus forming a tacit link between you and
the organ of blackshirted doom, it's all the worse. This week
London's Metro - by lineage the Diet Evening Standard, itself the
Lo-Carb Mail - carried the front page headline 'I got £80 fine
for saying sweet FA'. Sure enough, a young man had been penalised
for using a common profanity, and suddenly even prim corseted
papers were instinctively embracing filth.

Not that anyone actually spelt out 18-year-old Kurt Walker's
crime in so many godforsaken letters - it was all 'f***' and 'the
F-word' as per. And to think that a year ago there were a flurry
of articles suggesting that John Lydon, swearing in the jungle to
the world at large, had single-handedly stripped 'cunt' of its
power to shock. Anyway, Kurt's crime was to quite literally say
fuck all. The conversation, held in a Kent street, went thus:

Walker (a student and therefore the bright-eyed future of our
great nation, whatever we might have scurrilously implied
about the feckless swine heretofore, who is wending his way to
the youth centre where he works as a volunteer... no, but
really, he sounds like a good kid, doesn't he?): Hello mate.

Mate: Hello mate. What have you been up to, mate?

Walker: Fuck all, mate.

This was Walker's fatal error. A nearby policewoman overheard the
expletive and, since applying soap to gob wasn't an option,
slapped an £80 on the spot fine over Walker's astonished
pottymouth. If only he had said 'Well, mate, I've mostly been
wanking myself into a stupor', he might only have incurred £30
for saying 'wank'. (£25 for 'I've been working all hours on this
essay, I'm buggered', £18 for 'I've been working my arse off on
this essay, I'm shagged', or a tenner for 'I've been watching
David Cameron's progress with interest'.) With impeccable blank-
eyed by-the-bookishness, the police have since quoth: 'The public
expect us to tackle anti-social behaviour. If Mr Walker is not
happy he can have his case decided by a court.' Walker does
intend to challenge the penalty, which is about what you get for
being drunk and disorderly or causing £500 of damage. Swearing,
though, comes under the heading of anti-social behaviour and as
such is an offence under the Public Order Act, the sort you think
can't really be one, like spitting. Although, unlike spitting,
swearing can't really be held partly responsible for the
resurgence of tuberculosis.

Of course, swearing can sound horrible. Even seasoned swearers
can feel intimidated or mildly violated or just sort of skin-
crawly discomfited, by swearing burly men or swearing tiny girls.
Everyone who swears does not commit graver offences, but everyone
who commits grave offences swears. Criminalising it, then,
exhibits the same pre-emptive, bass-ackwards thinking as
considering cannabis a 'gateway drug'; ask most junkies and
they'll shrug that yes, they started off using cannabis - thus it
must follow that cannabis + time = 'Trainspotting'. Either that,
or it's just that using certain words in public represents, to
the swooning Labour sensibilities, a basic lack of respect for
others that must be punished. But while spitting is vile and
offensive, and littering possibly even more so, swearing is...
swearing is self-expression. Swearing *at* someone is aggression,
incitement, abuse; swearing *to* someone is conversation. There
is a vast gulf between 'fuck all, mate' and 'fuck you, you cunt,
I'm gonna fuck you up'. Unfortunately, worryingly, such subtle
nuance is lost here.

The natural reaction of most of us - law-abiding in all the
important non-murdering, non-child-porn-accumulating ways - would
probably go something like this:


You: Fuck, it's cold.

Cop: Right, £80. And put your hood down.

You: What the fuck?

Cop (taking out notebook and small calculator): That's another
£80, sir.

You: Oh, come on, this is fucking ridicu....

Cop (prods calculator sternly): I'd advise you to calm down,
sir.

You: THIS FUCKING FUCKSTAIN OF A COUNTRY! (brandishes sawn-off
table-leg, is taken out by sniper)


It's staggering that someone figured fining people for being
profane would cow them into saying 'oh, beans' instead. All it
will do is aggravate, humiliate and upset. It has nothing to do
with respect and everything to do with being aggressively
patronising, literal-minded and mad. The only sensible
alternative is to impose an asterisk tax. Or just start fining
people for actually fucking. £80 for failing to use a condom; £50
for being either unimaginative or suspiciously enthusiastic;
£2000 for doing it with Mark Oaten.

[Lodestone]

Ghastly. Utterly ghastly.

What's this from, by the way?

[MrGreedy]

If The Chap subscribes to the same mailing list as I do then it's from http://www.thefridayproject.co.uk/tft/. Free articles are on that link, but it's well worth subscribing to the full email version for a lot more content.

[The chap]

He's right.

Quoting MrGreedy from 17:58, 26th Feb 2006
If The Chap subscribes to the same mailing list as I do then it's from http://www.thefridayproject.co.uk/tft/. Free articles are on that link, but it's well worth subscribing to the full email version for a lot more content.

[Jono]

And so the sawn-off table leg, scourge of grocery shops everywhere, returns to cause more descriptive havoc.

At least we can sleep soundly in our beds knowing Blairs headline-grabbing legeslation is working hard to put law abiding citizens in court.

[hr]

Don't mention the Nazi's!

[horace scope]

Oh Beans! That's ridiculous

[ShinyHappyPerson]

''Oh Beans! That's ridiculous ''

Main/thesinner/21884

not if this thread is anything to go by it isnt...

[hr]

"its the best thing since instant mashed potato"

[Cain]

Quoting Jono from 10:52, 27th Feb 2006
And so the sawn-off table leg, scourge of grocery shops everywhere, returns to cause more descriptive havoc.

yes, remember Harry Stanley

also, why is there an apostrophe in your sig for 'Nazi's'?

[hr]

I hold an element of surprise