Peterborough bloke warned over 'offensive' t-shirt A Peterborough forklift driver who threatened to undermine law and order in the former Roman city by wearing a t-shirt declaring "Don't piss me off! I am running out of places to hide the bodies" has been warned he'll cop an 80 quid fine if caught again wearing the offending apparel. The suitably-monikered David Pratt was …
How is this news, the police have been stopping people who have what they deem as "offensive" clothing for years. Many times when I lived in Newcastle I was told to take my t-shirt off by the police. Personally I think my pasty white chest is more offensive than anything I could possibly wear.
"In what was an amicable conversation, the street warden advised the gentleman concerned that his t-shirt could cause offence and if he was to wear it again he could run the risk of being issued an £80 on-the-spot fine from the police."
This is the kind of thing that sparked off the Brixton riots. Some officious, overzealous public servant pushing the public trust too far. The street wardens should be nervous and polite when they wander the streets. They should be humble. And the only way to make this happen is for T-shirt wearers to unite, and present a solid front, a solid brick wall of "funny" t-shirts, e.g. the Adolf Hitler European tour, Viz, something with beer on it, etc. Then the street wardens will think twice before stirring up a hornet's nest. A hornet's nest of t-shirts.
I'm no expert, but mens rea may be relevant:
"A person is guilty of an offence under section 4 only if he intends his words or behaviour, or the writing, sign or other visible representation, to be threatening, abusive or insulting, or is aware that it may be threatening, abusive or insulting."
So, if he neither intended offence, nor was aware of it, then presumably he's off the hook.
Of course, since he's now the subject of the complaint, from now on the t-shirt should only be revealed inside a dwelling :-)
John
Would I have bee asked to take my old T shirt off when I was a kid in the 80s ?
It had Adolf Hitler European tour 1939 - 1945 with details such as
September 1939 Poland
September 1940 England Cancelled
May 1940 Belgium
August 1942 Russia Cancelled
etc etc
Massively offensive but bloody funny for a fourteen year old kid.
Someone once refused to serve me in a shop and he demanded I leave his shop. It made my week !!!!
Anyone remember the first story of this nature from a few years ago? Black metal band Cradle of Filth printed a t-shirt with a masturbating nun and the slogan "Jesus is a C**t"... resulted in a "ban" on offensive t-shirts for a brief spell however the band cleverly tried to justify the slogan by saying that "devout Christians consider themself born through jesus, and as c**t is a slang word for something pretty obvious involving giving birth the slogan is technically correct... in a longwinded, somewhat pointless way.
Anyway, isn't "offensive" purely a matter of personal opinion? I personally would giggle at silly £2-off-the-market-doodled-by-a-two-year-old slogan t-shirts, but a single coloured branded t-shirt that cost over £100 would offend my wallet and cause emotional distress, i'd have to cross the road quickly to avoid being passively converted to a chav... possibly resulted in me getting run over through running away from sheer terror and blind panic at the offensive t-shirt being worn in my general presence. Should the wearer be made to remove the offending garment?
No, course not. (cue "only if its a woman with huge jugs" in the replies!)
"Personally I think my pasty white chest is more offensive than anything I could possibly wear."
Perhaps the street wardens are using this as a pretext to force public toplessness upon women. And no doubt there is a plan to make it illegal for women to be topless in public. I imagine the street wardens have wet dreams about topless women with offensive slogans written across their breasts, thus combining two illegal things.
... who wouldn't want their children to be reading stuff like that when out and about in town? It's long been an offence, like swearing in public can actually be deemed a public order offence as well from memory. Sure, it may only be a bit of humour, fine inside a pub etc. (I have a choice, don't take my children in there). There's a time and a place, we don't all want our children to be 4 year olds using mainly 4 letter words - leave that to the chavs.
They'll ban all of the FCUK t-shirts as someone might be offended by them as well? What about the Star Wars Lego t-shirts? Surely some fixated fan could find it extremely offensive to see a scene, formerly portrayed by their favourite actors, now portrayed by blocky lego characters instead?
The Public Order act has much to answer for, including why people with no genuine training whatsoever (Street Wardens) are sent out to be cut-price coppers with nothing but an over-inflated sense of self-importance guiding their actions.
To call it farcical is to master the art of understatement.
There... I *think* that just about covers all the necessary elements to make it eligible for a Daily Mail editorial... Oh no, hang on, I've failed; I've made two basic errors: firstly I haven't mentioned the phrase "It's political correctness gone mad!" and secondly (and more importantly) I have managed to blame it on asylum seekers/imigrant workers/fundamentalist terrorists. Damn and I was doing so well!
I'm sad to say I live in Pete-bog-horror!
Over the past few years we've really lost the plot - we're fining people who 'overfill' their rubbish bins, we are not allowed Xmas lights - now winter lights, we have the 2nd highest immigration influx other than Slough - and now another ridiculous story like this.
I agree with the other poster - traffic wardens are a virulent strain of sadly repressed individuals - fair enough Police officers can and do actually make a difference - but traffic wardens fall into the same category as debt collectors - people that love to make others lives harder!
I for one shall be pioneering a new set of T-Shirts
"PISS ON TRAFFIC WARDENS (they love it!)"
I got warned back in the late Seventies, a policeman warned that he could arrest me for the t-shirt I was wearing.
I was dead proud of that shirt, it was blagged from the launch party for Stiff records and read 'If it aint Stiff it aint worth a fuck'
Didnt stop me wearing it and I never heard a complaint from anyone else.
"There's a time and a place, we don't all want our children to be 4 year olds using mainly 4 letter words - leave that to the chavs."
Would I be alone in finding some hypocrisy in being so upset by an innoccuous four-letter piece of slang whilst making pejorative generalisations about other people with another four-letter word?
Its hard to believe that this bloke is getting warned about wearing a T-shirt which is quite obviously less offensive than many, many others.
I will admit that people do get targeted when wearing offensive T-shirts as a traffic cop booked me for dangerous driving after "accellerating excessivly" to 30mph - on a scooter - however i was wearing a "US School Shooting Tour" T-shirt sporting a list of events and body-counts at the time. It did make me wonder if the cop really took offence to the shirt and booked me regardless. ((which reminds me, i really should get a new, up-to-date version of that))
Never mind. +1 to the dumbass cops this round!
Next week sees the annual Peterborough Beer Festival, thousands of drinkers converging on that busy little market town wearing their funny yet slightly offensive t-shirts as a tradition along with the drinking.
I wonder if the Street Wardens are going to try this when the t-shirt wearers number in their hundreds, and have imbibed of a few jars of ale?
Muzchap said, "I agree with the other poster - traffic wardens are a virulent strain of sadly repressed individuals - fair enough Police officers can and do actually make a difference - but traffic wardens fall into the same category as debt collectors - people that love to make others lives harder!..."
Surely the subject here is "street wardens", not "traffic wardens"...
Sadly the good burghers of Peterborough would not agree with you. The Queensgate Shopping Centre in Peterborough displays large signs making people aware that they will not even tolerate topless men!!
Re. the original T-shirt slogan, you have to appreciate that it is cutting edge wit by Peterborough standards. The ideal sophisticated night out would be a Jethro concert, followed by several pints and the obligatory curry! NOW I remember why I moved back to London!!
...that i am currently wearing to work has "ME = GOD, YOU = MINION" and no one has complained yet...
I live in Derby, and the local police have seen me wearing it, even asking where i had bought it as they wanted one... See, not all police are miserable gits with no sense of humour...
Maybe the coppers should show up to his flat and start digging up the grounds looking for the bodies. Probably too hot with all the global warming to do something like that.
The urge to wear a shirt which has words on it that you are too chicken to use in public, is just a sign that says look at me, I am a stupid adolescent potty mouth that wants to be arrested. So I say start making people take off offensive shirts and confiscate them. Either that or have the cops carry some kind of spray body paint and spray paint the shirt and give it back to the person. Either that or the cops can have a shirt that says:
"I am a potty mouth, so the cops took my shirt!"
... When I overheard a copper in Fulham ask a young chap "What the f*ck he though he was doing unloading his car" in some location that said copper felt was an unreasonable location for such behaviour! For the record, it was a quiet early evening, and the lad was in a perfectly reasonable place and posed no threat to anyone at the time...
I am strongly for freedom of speech, I'm not adverse to swearing and don't have kids (who would probably know more obscenities than me anyway), but I can see the other side to this arguement.
Some people don't want to be subjected to certain things in public, nudity & obscenity being the two obvious things. The problem is balancing their wishes with peoples freedoms.
For example is a Shirt that reads "God Damn", "Bugger" or such ok? Is that not vulgar enough? Yet "Cunt" is? Topless woman? Man with a ruddy great hard-on? Two men having sex? Or do we really need to be able to do ANYTHING ANYWHERE to be a free society?
"Let's get drunk and screw"
"When in trouble I call 1911" with picture of a Colt 1911.
".308 holes make invisible souls" with a picture of a Remington 700
".50BMG, reach out and touch someone" with a picture of a Barrett
"I didn't climb to the top of the food chain to become a vegetarian" Salt Lick BBQ
"QQQQ"
"Will not hack for food" DEFCON 8
"I am Jack's overwritten stack pointer ..." DEFCON A
"This T shirt is a munition" with the encryption algorithm. This is a really old one.
"This T shirt is banned by DMCA" with a version of deCSS.
"Francis Uticus Cornelius Kirkland University" stacked vertically, with the first letter of each word in red and the rest in black.
"Eating out is fun" This was the advertising slogan of the Texas Restaurant Association in the 60s and 70s, only this one has a pair of shins splayed out.
Remember during the last football world cup, got stopped by "community warden patrol" (jobsworths) for wanting to go into a pub wearing an england shirt (in Dundee,Scotland).which would cause "a disturbance".
It wasn't an england shirt- it was a USA shirt- never mind it had US on the badge and "AMERICA 06" on the back- they still thought I was "inciting trouble" and would have to remove it before going in.
Shame the pub I was going in was full of Scots & Americians enjoying the game
"Some people don't want to be subjected to certain things in public, nudity & obscenity being the two obvious things."
May i just relate an experience i had recently. I had to walk off the pavement to make room for two of the most fattest 20 year olds i have ever seen in my life.
To me, they could hardly have been more obscene if they had indeed been naked. And no doubt if the t shirts they were wearing carried slogans you would not have been able to read them, buried as they were in massive rolls of fat.
What is obscene to one is not obscene to another.
Thank you to all of you for your responses. Was quite surprised at the amount of people posting on here who feel the same as we do.
This t-shirt when purchased in California was not bought with the idea to shock, be obscene or to incite violence. It was bought to get a smile reaction from the person reading it. I am sorry that there are certain folks in Peterborough who need to urgently book in for a "sense of humour health check!"
We are folks who mind our own business, we keep our noses clean so you can imagine our reaction to be faced with someone telling us we were breaking the "Public Order Act"......... The offending word in question P*SS is a slang word, so does this mean they are going to ban every t-shirt with slang imprinted upon it? The FCUK t-shirts, to a dyslexic this reads as a swear word, even to small kids it does as only the first and last letter has to be in the right place to form the word, the brain does the rest!
This issue the council has slapped in our faces is taking the extreme too far, will folks have to cover up tattoo's which contain swear/slang words in the future? Before you ask, neither my husband or myself have tattoos. But do you see where this is heading? Pretty soon Peterborough council will have us all dressed in the same clothes carrying around a little red book which resembles communist China. Now as much as I adore Chinese food...............I don't wanna live in a communist state!
I am pretty sure my husband will respond to all your comments when he gets in from work.........I will leave him to say the rest.
Thanks again for all your support.
I guess the street warden was just relaying the orders of the council (his masters) to the masses. Good thing we don't allow religious hatred any more, well not since the time of King James 1 at least:
From the King James bible, Isiah 36:12:
"Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?"
http://www.godrules.net/library/kjv/kjvisa36.htm
And as for the good folks of Hartlepool offending people: if they don't look British enough . . .
http://www.thisishartlepool.co.uk/history/thehartlepoolmonkey.asp
P.S. I did emigrate from the UK to get away from the nanny state. Australia unfortunately has more stupid little rules than Britain :-(
Don't piss me off, Im running out of places to hide the bodies
is from the sopranos it's a US saying so to speak the person
that spoke it might have meant it strange I would have been incited
to kick the shit out of anyone bothering me about it, that the
kind of violence they are talking about. You want violence here
it is we have another saying don't start shit there won't be any.
BTW that T-shirt lies still plenty of places to stow bodies around
This is just stupid.
I'd love to see this happen to me while wearing one of my 400+ collection of little black t-shirts, all of which have something on the front that i'm sure someone could find offensive (I have a plain one but i never wear it. What's the point??).
Recently the Brighton Police told a shop owner to remove a baby t-shirt from his window display because it sported the slogan 'Winner of sperm and egg race'.
This is beyond stupid, especially for anyone who has ever been in Brighton city center on a Saturday lunchtime. If that offends you, you'd best keep your eyes shut.
People just generally need to get over themselves these days.
Its only encouraging idiotic civil servants and politicians.
On a final note, i'd just like to say that anyone who actively wants to be a politician should immediately be prohibited from ever holding office. They must be quite mad to begin with.
...next time I am in the US, I'm buying the T Shirt I saw in San Francisco worn by a very cute lady..
Front "Jesus Loves me..."
Back "But he f*cking hates you!"
Public Odrer Act AND Incitement to Religious Hatred!!!! Sadly there's been quite a few cases of abuses of the Public Order Act in recent years. Top 3 being...
1) Guys selling "Bollocks to Blair" T Shirts at Norfolk Flower Show (or it's ilk) - fined and ordered to remove t-shirts from display.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/5135150.stm
2) Young lad done for saying "f*ck all" in earshot of the SS, I mean Police. Fined.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/4734350.stm
3) Bloke done for referring to a knife detector as "f*cking crap" to his g/f, again, in earshot of the SS. Fined but at last count, fighting it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/06/accursed_metal_detector/
It's interesting that the SS and employed wannabes don't actually need any evidence that offense has been caused....
Some people really need to grow up! I personally know David n Elly and know them to be very good people.
The shirt in question isnt offensive its HUMOR!!!! Ive read alot of comments on several sites where this has become a topic, people say they dont want their 4yr olds to read this, well I wonder how many 4 yr olds can read it or do their parents tell them that that P word is *Piss*. Or do they read the shirt to them to say isnt that just so bad of him!. This is truely unbelieveable and so ridiculous its unreal. People are so quick to say wear it at home, it offends me, I dont want my kids reading this, etc..... Well for one if its on a woman then dosent it appear that your NOT just reading her shirt your lookin at her boobs? How rude is that to begin with, should the lady in question walk up and lift your chin to point out where her eyes are or her beautiful smile? or you just gonna say well I was drawn to read it, hmmmmmm. I havent seen the FCUK shirts but wouldnt mind owning one lol.
So many fingers pointed negatively yet if you read what they wrote you will most likely see some sort of ignorance and insults against someone else for something else, such as the one bout the 2 20yr old people of size.
Seems alot just want something to complain bout and put others down to make themselves feel so much bigger.
For pete's sake its a T-SHIRT its not an offer to fight, its not a slam, its not offensive, and he didnt put in on with thoughts of *well today imma wear this shirt to see how many I can *piss* off*. ITS HUMOR TRY SOME LAUGHING OR SMILING JUST MIGHT LIGHTEN YOU UP A BIT.
Like ive said before Ebay an other funny t-shirt or logo t-shirt sites are gonna be getting alot of business now just to find these kind of shirts.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
