I CAMPAIGNED for and voted to remain in the EU referendum in 2016.

It is catastrophic we may crash out of the EU with no deal thanks to the incompetence of Mrs May and the Tory government.

I wish however to address the mock outrage being deployed by certain correspondents to this newspaper about alleged profane language on the side of a bus that pulled up outside the Town Hall recently.

The furore over a certain word has already been covered in a 1977 court case concerning one of the greatest music albums of all time.

I refer to this extract from Wikipedia and rest my case:

“The obscenity case was heard at Nottingham Magistrates' Court on November 24.

"Mortimer presented the case as a matter of police discrimination. During his cross-examination of the arresting officer, he asked why the Guardian and Evening Standard (which had referred to the album's name) had not been charged under the same act.

"When the overseeing magistrate inquired about his line of questioning, Mortimer stated a double standard was apparently at play, and that "b******s" was only considered obscene when it appeared on the cover of a Sex Pistols album. "The prosecutor conducted his cross-examination 'as if the album itself, and not its lurid visage, was on trial for indecency', according to Heylin.

"Mortimer produced an expert witness, Professor James Kinsley, head of the school of English at Nottingham University, who argued the word "b******s" was not obscene, and was actually a legitimate Old English term formerly used to refer to a priest, and which, in the context of the title, meant 'nonsense'.

"Lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who appeared with Mortimer, recalled the professor saying that early English translations of the Bible used "b******s" to refer to testicles, this being replaced by the word 'stones' in the King James version of the Bible, at which point Rotten handed Robertson a note saying: 'Don't worry. If we lose the case, we'll re-title the album Never Mind the Stones, Here's the Sex Pistols'.

"The chairman of the hearing concluded: 'Much as my colleagues and I wholeheartedly deplore the vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits by both you and your company, we must reluctantly find you not guilty of each of the four charges.”

Tim Young

Leader of the Labour Group on Colchester Council

A devotee of punk rock and the Sex Pistols

Hawkins Road, Colchester