ASBO

Anti-social Behaviour Orders seem to be in the news a lot at the moment.

Must be an election or something.

Some of the news coverage has been about the kind of B that's considered AS, such as the horrific crimes of hanging out your washing in your underwear. Whereas I can understand the need for protection against the kind of terrorist youngsters with which the press insists the world is filled, we enter dangerous waters when the legislation is used by councils to impose an expected behaviour on those with a different way of life from the mainstream. In a world that is led more and more by market forces, with lowest-common-denominator economics pushing on in its endless spiral of diminishing returns, we now find that the powers exist to propogate the same kind of cultural narrowing through legislation.

The point is, ASBO is an artefact of intolerance, which is itself a contradiction. To be antisocial is to be antisocietal. Society should be based on a level of mutual respect for disparate beliefs and different ways of living, that has to be a two-way street. The tolerance of others should not be something that we can merely do away with as soon as a petition to the council has been arranged.