…well, in Sweden at least. A court in Malmö in southern Sweden has ruled that traffic wardens must be prepared to take abuse as part of their daily work. Although the court handed down a fine and a suspended sentence to a man convicted for assaulting a female traffic warden in the city, no damages were awarded as compensation for the verbal abuse the man unleashed during the attack.

“It’s simply part of their job description that they can make people indignant,” said district court judge, Ann-Louise Roos.

The statement has sparked outrage from the traffic wardens’ trade union and from crime prevention organisations but widespread cheering from all of their many victims. Anecodotal reports say that cosh salesmen are currently doing a roaring trade.

To be fair, though, residents of  Malmö have received more than their fair share of oddness in the past week, with a proposal to Anglicise the name of their city… to Mothvirgin.

Two months on from Gothenburg’s decision to ditch its efforts to market the city internationally as Göteborg, a man in Tumba, near Stockholm, has petitioned Malmö council to explore the possibilities of similarly rebranding the southern city. The would-be Malmö moderniser cites translations of the Swedish words mal (moth) and mö (maiden, damsel or virgin) as ample evidence of the suitability of Mothvirgin. Focussing on another meaning for mal, the submitter also throws Catfishvirgin into the pot as an alternative suggestion.

Luckily we’re all grown up here, and no-one would ever be as childish as to ever smirk if they went ahead…would we?