US Woman Charged Swearing Fee By Towing Company Would Have Gone Free In Britain
WHEN Mahogony Grandison , of Huntsville, Alabama had her car towed away, insults was added to injury. Instead of the $200 fee levied at her freind, wgo also had her car remove, Grandidon was $350. Her bill included a $150 charge for swearing at the towers.
She says: “I explained multiple times it was not me. I even apologized for the person who did curse them out. They were not hearing it.”
Is wearing an offence. It’s all about the style of swearing, rather than the substance. Ever since Brendan Behan swore on Panorama in 1956, the objection to swearing in public has been eroded, although not in Alabama. In Joe Moran’s book Armchair Nation, the author recalls another magic moment on the telly:
A few years later, just after Ulster Television had begun in 1959, the man with the Sisyphean task of painting the railings on Stranmillis Embankment alongside the River Lagan in Belfast appeared live on its teatime magazine programme Roundabout. The interviewer, Ivor Mills, asked if it was ever boring painting the same railings all year round. “Of course it’s fu*king boring,” the man replied.
The channel’s managing director, Brum Henderson, waited anxiously for the inescapable tsunami of complaint to arrive at the studios. In the event, not a single viewer, even in this deeply religious region in which play swings were padlocked on Sundays, rang or wrote in.
Mrs Grandison should, of course, contest the bill, which seems hard to enforce. In 2001, Britain’s Metropolitan Police sent out a memo to staff: “The courts do not accept that police officers are caused harassment, alarm or distress by words such as ‘f**k, c***, b****cks, w****er.”
You’ll have noticed that Anorak uses little stars in place of the full words. This is because the internet is run by American companies like Google and Facebook, for whom hardcore smut and beheadings are fine but swearing is not.
‘Wood [sic] you bloody believe it?’ as Mahogony might say…
Posted: 10th, November 2013 | In: Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
