Spitting

Here's another snippet I've just come across. Fairfield council have now erected signs warning people if they're caught spitting on the street, they will face a fine.

Council enforcement officers will now be patrolling handing out the fines to anyone seen engaging in such a practice. (How they prove ownership of a given 'lugey' could be interesting - hands and knees with a cotton bud perhaps, to be produced in a court. 'This is the offending spit, your Honour, and it belongs to this man).

Is it such an enormous problem? I suppose if every single person on the street, ever, was to start spitting all over the place, it might be. But are they? Might this not just be (despite the councils protestations to the contrary) another form of bolstering the councils commonly-known stretched coffers? In fact, in the same paper, there is a report on how the said councils are spending bucketloads of ratepayers money sending representatives to a high-class hotel in the Blue Mountains. The subject of which, hilariously, is council finances.
So if spitting is now to be outlawed, what's next - breaking wind. Will the same officers patrol areas with smell detecting devices; where they follow individuals around like dogs sniffing each others' arses? How about belching, picking noses, adjusting ones tackle overtly? The list of humans' personal foiblles goes on and on. Hey, there's a business opportunity - rooms for hire where one can spit, pick, fart etc in private. (Don't fancy the cleaner's job much, though!
In the report, a councillor asks - what is wrong with the good old hankerchief? Well, if as many as is claimed to justify such an arbitrary law, are spitting willy-nilly, then, in this age of easily spread (and evermore immune to antibiotics) diseases, would the practice of all these people carrying infected rags in their pockets not introduce problems of its own?
A bacteria-soaked rag in a warm pocket is only going to culture more bacteria. It's where they thrive.

So what to do? Spit down a drain, I suppose, although with societies seeking a way of recycling water, that may also be a no-no. And fart downwind of any rangers.