Trust Me to Open My Mouth

[catherinem]

I was going to write this post tomorrow, but it is tomorrow, so I’ll write it anyway. Whilst on Facebook earlier today, I came across a little news article that somebody had posted, I did I bit of fishing around and came across this bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-s... and had a bit of a think. This article may seem like a bit of a joke, and some people regard our condition as a bit of a joke but kid ye not, if you live in Barnsley and indulge in the odd expletive you could find yourself £80 worse off. Of course to keep the community spirit alive and well they encourage people to report such incidences! Whatever next?

My fear is that if this is happening in Barnsley, how long will it be until other councils follow their lead and decide to fine the potty-mouthed? When Barnsley council came up with this nanny-state attack did they think about other folk that maybe affected by this policy, I hope they did and if I find myself with an £80 fine would a flash of my Identic card let me off the heinous crime of displaying symptoms of my disability? Now some people I’ve met on my travels have come up with some hair-brained ideas about how people could differentiate between my coprolalia and a general potty-mouthed outburst, one lady suggested I wear a tabard clearly stating that I suffer from Tourette’s syndrome. No thanks. Maybe I should permanently wear my bright lime green Tourettes Action T-shirt. Nice idea, but not really a flattering colour for me I’m afraid.

In all seriousness, if this policy was adopted by say Nuneaton and Bedworth council this would in all purposes render me unable to go into Bedworth or Nuneaton town centres, you may think who’d miss going to Bedworth? But in all necessity one has to go to Bedworth, One needs to sign on at the Jobcentre Plus every fortnight, one needs to visit one’s psychiatrist once in a while and where would I be without Aldi and Home Bargains? No doubt there are ticcers up in Barnsley wondering how they are going to go about their business? Us people with coprolalia should be able to walk around the place safe in knowledge that they are not suddenly going to find themselves £80 worse off. This is surely a massive step backwards in the name of acceptance for us ticcers, already it takes a certain amount of bloody mindedness to be able to walk about the place comfortably ignoring the sniggers and stares, now our fellow ticcers in Barnsley live in the fear of being grassed-up by somebody who can’t cope with the odd bit of swearing and end up with a criminal record. BEEP BEEPBEE EEEP BBEEEEEP BEEEEEEP BEEEP BBEEEEEP BEEEP.

Well, those are my thoughts on the matter, and that was swearing in context, not my coprolalia!