“These f**king idiots”, I say, firing off a link via WhatsApp to my husband sitting across the room (it’s the modern equivalent of rustling the newspaper at each other, if you can remember that far back). “How the f**k do they think this is going to help anything?”
The internet, you see, has delivered unto me a story about Thanet Council’s proposal to levy £100 fines against anyone swearing in public, in an attempt to crack down on aggressive and antisocial behaviour. In a world full of kneejerk reactions, misguided policies and batshit legislation I do consider this one to take the f**king biscuit.
Possibly I am biased. I come from a family of inveterate swearers. Not inventive (though I did recently reach new personal heights when our car tyre blew on the first day of our summer holiday, on a deserted and signalless country road, taking – as a sort of final “f**k you” – our nearside wing mirror with it), but passionate and committed. We use it as decoration and punctuation as well as, of course, in exasperation.
Verbal expression of the latter has saved many an adult from a stroke, burst aneurysm and/or property damage – especially my mother, who lives in a permanent state of enragement at PUS (“People’s utter stupidity!”). But even from childhood, before the need for such relief kicked in, we were allowed to swear for comic effect. If it added value to a tale you were telling, if you needed it for rhythmic purposes, to make dialogue swing or a punchline land, you would never get told off.
Naturally this upbringing occasionally led to trouble at school, when I slipped and forgot that teachers tended to take a dim – Thanet-esque, you might say – view of these things. The worst row there, however, was also the most wrongheaded one. Miss Shithead (not her real name) became absolutely outraged by my use of the phrase “You daft bugger” and went so far as to call my parents. Fortunately, my dad – the leading proponent of the “whatever makes an anecdote work” policy but the least sweary of us all and by far, far, far, far, far the less volatile of my parents – answered the phone.
He explained to my irate home economics teacher that our family was from Lancashire, where “bugger” was closer to a term of endearment than abuse, but that he would explain to me that things were different – wrong, but different – down south and that I would be expected to abide by the opinions of its soft shite inhabitants hereafter. (He didn’t say “soft shite” to her, only afterwards to me, and for the laugh. You see?)
Which is all by way of saying – swearing is complicated. Complicated by region, by context, by attitude, by class, by age and a million other factors. None of which, I’d hazard a guess, will be taken into account by a council’s penalty notices.
Most importantly, I suspect, for Thanet powers-that-municipally-be is the distinction between the two greatest purposes swearing serves. One is as a safety valve, the function that has, as noted above, kept my mother alive for so long. The other is as a prelude to the anti-social behaviour feared by the Kent council. There are many people who do not use swearing as a release but as a means of building up a head of steam, of encouraging their mounting aggression and seeking to incite it in others. The problem is that in neither case is it wise to outlaw turning the air blue.
In the former, it will probably lead to physical aggression. In the latter, it will probably lead to more physical aggression than the swearer was even planning on, with the further disadvantage that a lack of motherf**king aural warning has not given enough time for people to flee the immediate vicinity before the brawling begins.
I cannot count the number of times, especially in my younger days, my friends and I have been able to turn smartly on our heels at the opening phoneme of an infuriated “F**k you!” (qualitatively different from the low hiss of a “F******k you” as someone vents their personal animus safely and regains control of high emotions) and close the door of a pub or club behind us before the sound of breaking glass and thrown chairs disturbed the night air. It is a vital early warning system. Disturb it and you disturb an entire and very fragile sociocultural ecology.
On a more practical level it’s completely unenforceable. Imagine going up to someone in the middle of a massive, sweary rant and saying: “Excuse me, good sir, that will be £100 please. Will you be paying by card or cash?” Do you think this is likely to create more or less swearing? Increase or decrease the risk of imminent anti-social behaviour? Hmm, who can possibly say. What it will do is encourage jobsworths to pluck low-hanging fruit – to go after otherwise law-abiding, meek people having a really bad day but who are clearly not going to give the imposer of a fine any trouble.
It will become a cash cow at the expense of the very people who least deserve it and who least require training in the ways of civilised behaviour. And that is why councils should stick to sorting out bin collections and road repairs. Both of which, you bastards, would go a long way to making us all a lot better-tempered in the first f**king place, you know?