French mayor shows spitting red card

In a bid to halt the spread of swine flu, the mayor of a small French town banned spitting on Tuesday and wrote to football chiefs to demand that footballers who spit be sent off.

“On this day, I issue a decree that henceforth in my district spitting on a public thoroughfare will be banned,” declared Christophe Rouillon, mayor of the town of Coulaines, near Le Mans in northern France.

France had considered itself spared the worst of the A(H1N1) flu pandemic until this week, when an outbreak in French Polynesia and a change in the method of counting cases put the issue back on the front page.

Going beyond the ban on public expectoration by his own constituents, Rouillon also wrote a letter to Michel Platini, the French head of European football’s governing body UEFA, demanding that players set a better example.

“One spitting incident should be punished with a yellow card, and repeat offenders should be shown a red card,” he suggested.