There was much talk this week of how one district council in the county has opted to ‘ban swearing’.
The headline takeaway from that is, of course, terribly misleading. Uttering a profanity as you stub your toe while walking down Margate High Street is not, for example, going to get you pinned to the ground by armed police – however amusing that might be to witness.
Which, I must say, is good news for me, for whom effing and jeffing comes with remarkable ease – although, rarely loudly.
No, Thanet District Council’s move is to intervene and take action if people are cursing in a way which “is loud and can be heard by others and cause either alarm or distress to any other person in any public place” within Public Spaces Protection Orders in key, busy areas.
In other words, if there are a group of yobs in Margate town centre shouting the odds or generally being rather intimidating, then they may find themselves facing a £100 fine.
I, with my clearly limited vocabulary, exclaiming with an expletive at the cost of a pint in the Old Town, will be excluded.
Which is good news for my bank balance.
Certainly, in principle, it’s not a daft idea as part of an overall scheme to clamp down on antisocial behaviour. Especially in the likes of Margate, Broadstairs and Ramsgate, where the combination of sunshine, beaches and bars in every direction is, while for most people a blessing, often a recipe for trouble too.
No one wants to be intimidated, and Thanet doesn’t want its image as a welcoming, family-friendly tourist hotspot marred by the actions of a few idiots. Not to mention that loud swearing isn’t big, nor is it clever.
But the whole issue is one which has triggered accusations of ‘free speech’ being infringed. Now, let’s be clear, ‘free speech’ is not the right to swear at someone in an intimidating fashion. No. That’s just good old-fashioned threatening behaviour.
Free speech, fundamentally, allows you to voice an opinion – however often unpleasant, short-sighted, inflammatory or questionable – that may be.
It is, unsurprisingly, leapt upon those who hate what we once used to call political correctness and has now morphed into being ‘woke’.
If, indeed, TDC was looking to ban anyone from uttering a swear word that, I would argue, would be far more than a ‘free speech’ infringement – more the act of some sort of dictatorship. And, whatever your views on the local authority, that’s clearly not what it is – or has ever veered towards.
To be fair, anyone giving this story even the smallest amount of time and attention, would have probably have realised that. But in an era where we have the attention span of a gnat, many don’t bother reading the full story.
No, the plan here is for council enforcement officers – rather than police who already have various legislation they can use to intervene – to be able to nip this sort of thing in the bud on the spot.
All of which makes sense to the vast majority of us who don’t want to feel intimidated while strolling through one of Thanet’s vibrant towns.
Will it make a difference? I suspect not, but there’s no harm in trying is there for ****’s sake?
