please empty your brain below
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...and I read this, just as I was about to tuck into a bowl of porridge. Bleugh!
Marc | 23.02.09 - 8:20 a.m. | #
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I think you mught be onto something with the 'cultural reasons'.
There was never a problem in Small Local Town until there was a huge influx of Eastern Europeans when the EU becamse borderless. Now it's not just them, but seemingly all the teenagers too.
Vile and unhygienic.
I'm sure there must already be some old by-laws against it that could be resurrected. But, make something illegal/ a fineable offence and it simply increases the incidence of the behaviour as people challenge the system to see what they can get away with.
So, a very difficult problem to solve.
Blue Witch | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 8:23 a.m. | #
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And of course there are the footballer role-models....
Blue Witch | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 8:26 a.m. | #
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Some of the worst offenders are football players who after spitting on the pitch then go on to slide and roll around in it for an hour and a half, as for people on the street I think that even if they walked to the edge of the footway and spat into the road way (after first looking out for approaching Cyclists) that it would be an improvement on the current situation, but the best solution by far is not to do it at all.
fishislandskin | 23.02.09 - 8:27 a.m. | #
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Nigel GOBBET.....you sure...
Colin in thailand | 23.02.09 - 8:48 a.m. | #
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And with TB on the rise again... the main reason, I was always told, that you used to see 'No Spitting' signs on buses etc.
This now seems like a recent phenonenon, but clearly it was also a problem in the past, hence the signs. The campaign to stop it was largely successful, and the practice all but died out, but is now re-emerging. I also think that the televise spitting of footballers - with it never being condemned or even mentioned by commentators - must have done a lot to make it seem acceptable again. That and people forgetting about TB.
Daily Mail be damned, it IS disgusting and there is NO excuse.
Sarah | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 9:45 a.m. | #
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In the heat of battle on a football pitch you don't normally have a tissue to hand although there are more discrete ways to deal with it than others. There's no excuse for spitting in the street not least because it can spread diseases such as TB which seems to be becoming common again.
Johnny Topaz | 23.02.09 - 9:46 a.m. | #
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Spitting has become more common for the reasons others have posted, - influx of Eastern Europeans who brought the habit with them, and our own teenagers following "footballer" role models who spit.
A very unpleasant and unhygienic practice. Add to it discarded chewing gum!.
John | 23.02.09 - 9:54 a.m. | #
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What a horrid topic - am I glad you dropped that lurid green colour you tried out on us not so long ago. (Same difference in my view - keep your gob to yourself).
Bina | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 10:16 a.m. | #
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What is wrong with swallowing? You never see the Queen spit. Even Mrs Thatcher didnt.
Debster | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 10:35 a.m. | #
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AFAIK it actually was illegal, a law was passed ages ago to reduce the spread of TB amongst other things.
And it is disgusting, there's no excuse for anyone, especially footballers who also do it for effect, but then they are nowadays just overgrown yobs.
It's usually the case in Britain that old laws never get repealed, they just sit around unused. So it probably is still illegal to spit.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comme...gy-of-
spit.html
Old git | 23.02.09 - 10:35 a.m. | #
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There have been many times, since the introduction of the ban on smoking in public places (about 18 months ago) when I've been amazed by some of the places where I've seen No Smoking signs. You name it - from churches to doctors' surgeries to primary schools, there they are.
Hmmm. Surely it's not like people are so dumb that they need a sign to tell them something as obvious as that? Er... is it?
Actually, it's a week ago today that I got an answer to my own question. I was standing in a queue in a branch of HSBC, with plenty of time to take in my surroundings. I made the mistake of looking down, and realised that what appeared to be a pattern in the carpet was in fact... made up from bits of spat out gum 
After that, I began to notice it was pretty much the same in every other shop I went in, as well; a case of look and ye shall find.
Hmmm. Has society gone into some kind of reverse evolution? Have people really become so dumb that they need a sign to tell them not to smoke at the doctor's, or not to spit on the floor?
I'm afraid to say the answer might well be yes.
RogerW | 23.02.09 - 11:14 a.m. | #
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Agree. What's worse is the increasingly seen trend of not using handkerchiefs to blow your nose. Technique now is to block one nostril by pressing it in from the outside, and then firing the snot from the other onto the pavement. Then block the other nostril and repeat, possibly aiming at a wall.
Revolting.
Quink | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 11:17 a.m. | #
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I HATE people that spit in the street, it is just foul. To think there was a public safety video back in the 1940s telling people to use handkerchiefs - can these little films come back again please? I'd like to see a remake of 'Apaches' but about the dangers of spitting. Terrfiy the kiddies when they are young and guaranteed they won't do it. I certainly never played on combine harvesters, climbed electricity pylons or went near lonely water - those videos were worse than horror films!
Jayne | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 11:28 a.m. | #
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There is no point putting up signs - those gobbing yobs can't read.
Bina | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 3:39 p.m. | #
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Brent Council have signs like this across my borough's "spitting hotspots"> Our problem is not so much the hoodie teenagers or Eastern Europeans (who'm I have never witnessed spitting by the way), no our problem is the local Indian population and the rising popularity of "paan". Quite often on certain "discreet" walls or around the base of tree trunks in the pavement you will see big red splodges where the spitting out of the mouthful of paan has left a permanent mark on the tree, wall or pavement. It's gross.
Jag | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 4:00 p.m. | #
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RogerW - those (non smoking) signs are compulsory, I understand, even in churches.
I spent a year in a school in America where the boys used to chew tobacco and spit out the juice into coke cans. Never felt quite the same about coke again, after that.
disgruntled | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 6:00 p.m. | #
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Quink, that vile practice is known in some parts as "The Farmer's Whistle".
That and horking and spitting are commonplace in much of China. Downtown Shanghai used to have bucket-like receptacles for those bodily fluids clamped to road signs adjacent to sidewalks. A truly repellent sight but it kept the germs off the sidewalks I guess. Shudder.
Tea Girl | 23.02.09 - 6:37 p.m. | #
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Spitting in the streets is extremely common in parts of south east and eastern Asia as well. And completely without taboo.
NFAH | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 9:13 p.m. | #
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Funny you mention it, I saw the chairman of the company I work for spitting in the street the other day. I will never view him in the same light again!
Deptford Dame | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 9:33 p.m. | #
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Trust the Daily Mail types to blame the Eastern Europeans.
Exit, pursued by a bear | Homepage | 23.02.09 - 10:58 p.m. | #
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Oh god, this is the number one thing that I absolutely loathe. I've never spit in my life - I don't even think I know how to. And I seem to have survived OK thus far.
I would gladly lead the campaign to make it illegal. Urgh.
Laurie | 23.02.09 - 11:34 p.m. | #
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Agreed. A green oyster on the pavement always makes me heave.
camel-Tee | 23.02.09 - 11:49 p.m. | #
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I wish you hadn't said 'not YET acceptable'
Mazz | 24.02.09 - 5:50 a.m. | #
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Yes, how depressingly Daily Mail-esque to go all xenophobic and blame it on immigrants. Spitting amongst teenagers has been prevalent in this country since at least the early 1970s from when I clearly remember it being part and parcel of every swaggering lad's 'attitude'. It also, of course, played a part at many punk gigs during the middle of that decade.
Steven | 24.02.09 - 8:08 a.m. | #
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Spitting in the street is already illegal, but it's one of those small laws with too much paperwork and to little consequence for it to be worth the effort of enforcing. Besides which, even if it was enforced, I'm pretty sure incidences of spitting would only fall significantly when a police officer was present.
Nickoli | Homepage | 25.02.09 - 9:42 a.m. | #
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