Modern Morals

This morning, as on most mornings, I was waiting with my granddaughter for the school door to open when my enjoyment of the early frost and sharp air was destroyed by the actions of a witless oaf of around two years in age.
It is the practise for parents and other adults delivering a child to the school to congregate in the playground a few minutes before the official start time. As the various people pass the time by inconsequential chatter amongst themselves the children, naturally, run around with their friends and generally have a good time. Many of the mothers have children below school age with them and quite obviously bring them along with their older siblings. This particular blight on the civilised world had been freed from his taxpayer funded pushchair and was wandering around the yard, totally unsupervised,  with the normal vacant expression adopted by the natives of this ex-mining village. Reaching a position about a yard behind his vacated conveyance he stopped, looked contemptuously around, hawked, and spat a massive globule of phlegm onto the playground surface. The mother of this object paused from her mobile phone conversation to utter the words,' good un, gerrit of yer chest then', and returned to her phone to tell her co-conversationalist that ' our Jockos just had a good gob in playground'.
The small creature then proceeded to put his right trainer into the phelgm  and having it adhered to the sole, tried speading the leavings of his diseased chest all over the school yard.
I know that spitting in public has become very prevelant of the last twenty years or so. I realise that it was probably started by professional footballers expectorating all over the pitch in some belief that it was healthy for them to do so. I accept that children will only follow the lead of the parents nad that at two years old they are not to blame. But, and I know that it is a big but, just let me loose with an automatic rifle make the council enforce the by-laws and I guarantee that within forty eight hours   a couple of months there will be no more phlegm on the streets, pavements and playgrounds of this village.