Britain First, Kleenex Last: The Porn Ban That Painted the Roundabouts Red
TetleysTLDR: The Summary
The Online Safety Bill’s age-verification porn clampdown has had a curious side effect: a surge in patriotic busywork from Britain’s far right. With tissues confiscated by bureaucracy, bored men across the land discovered new hobbies, painting roundabouts, heckling Premier Inns, and hanging flags upside down. It’s almost as if taking away a quick shuffle redirected all that pent-up energy into nationalism. This isn’t noble activism; it’s displacement. Denied their evening’s 'solitary pursuit' Keith from Grimsby is suddenly Banksy for Brexit. The Government, in trying to 'protect children' has instead unleashed a wave of municipal vandalism dressed up as patriotism. Who'd have thought it? Britain, once known for eccentric hobbies like cheese rolling, is now home to frustrated blokes with Dulux instead of Durex and too much time on their hands. The Devil doesn’t need to work hard these days. He just shuts down PornHub and hands out paintbrushes.
Tetleys TLDR: The article
There’s a very old saying, some credit it to the Bible, others to Morrissey (which frankly tells you everything you need to know about this country’s cultural decline) that the Devil will find work for idle hands to do. And lo, in the year of our Lord 2025, the Devil seems to have found plenty of spare labour in the ranks of the flag-daubers, roundabout decorators and the Travelodge Botherers of Middle England.
Coincidentally, and I’m sure it is just a coincidence, their curious outbreak of patriotism began around the just same time that the Online Safety Bill made it compulsory to prove you were over 18 with a credit card before you could access pornography. A bureaucratic cock-block of Biblical proportions.
In its infinite wisdom, the Government decided that nothing says 'protecting the nation’s youth' quite like forcing every teenager, sexless 30-something, and recently divorced man in Swindon to present his Visa card before having a quick shuffle. What could possibly go wrong?
Porn, Patriotism, and Paint
And so deprived of their usual digital diversion, thousands of suddenly time-rich men discovered new hobbies. Not the sort of hobbies that involve crochet, pottery, or finally learning how to cook something other than spaghetti hoops. No. Instead, they took up the ancient English pastime of yelling at foreigners in car parks while spray-painting St George’s flags on public infrastructure. Almost overnight, roundabouts became canvases, lampposts patriotic installations, and hotels temporary stages for the sort of cabaret no sane person would buy tickets for. You couldn’t move for inverted Union Jacks, which, let’s be honest, they probably meant as a sign of distress but ended up looking more like distressing signs. One imagines a frustrated fellow, once accustomed to the soothing glow of his laptop screen, now hunched in a layby with a pot of Dulux, muttering "This’ll show ‘em” as he ruins another council-maintained verge. Freud would’ve had a field day.
Of course, ask any of these self-appointed urban decorators what they’re doing, and you’ll get a speech about sovereignty, culture, and taking back Britain one B&B at a time. But scratch the surface and it’s obvious: this is displacement activity. Like the man who quits smoking only to develop an enthusiasm for stamp collecting, our newly pornless patriots simply needed something, anything, to do with their hands.
Only, instead of a stamp album, it’s half a gallon of Crown gloss and a badly thought-through slogan about boat people. It’s almost touching, in a tragicomic way. Take away their tissue boxes and broadband, and suddenly they’ve reinvented themselves as guerrilla decorators. Idle hands, indeed.
The Great Kleenex Conspiracy
You might say this is all too neat, too conspiratorial. But consider this: for decades, politicians have wrung their hands over the rise of the far right. Endless think-tank reports, stern condemnations, and documentaries where Louis Theroux follows a man called Barry who lives with his mum but believes he’s singlehandedly defending Albion. And yet, rather than tackling poverty, inequality, or lack of opportunity, the actual breeding grounds of fascism, the Government may have accidentally stumbled on a much simpler formula: ban the porn, wait for the nationalists to emerge blinking into the daylight, and let them exhaust themselves redecorating every dual carriageway island between Dover and Carlisle. It’s cheaper than policing them, after all.
Britain, remember, is a nation built on eccentric hobbies. We once prided ourselves on cheese-rolling, Morris dancing, and competitive gardening. But those were gentler times, before online verification killed the solitary pleasures of a large percentage of middle-aged men. Now, instead of a quiet evening with a laptop and incognito mode, Mark from Grimsby is out with a brush and a tin of red paint, insisting that his mis-spelled slogan on a Travelodge door is a vital blow for national pride. You can see the evolutionary line forming: medieval knights jousted for glory, Victorians built railways, and the 2020s gave us men in hi-vis jackets angrily chanting at Premier Inn receptionists. A proud heritage. Dulce et Decorum Est.
Danno used to have a simple evening routine: microwave curry, two cans of lager, and a leisurely browse of specialist websites involving women in PVC. But those halcyon days ended when the Government demanded proof of age at the digital door. Danno, who hasn’t had a credit card since 2008 (and refuses to 'give those bastards at Barclays another chance'), suddenly found himself twiddling his thumbs. Now Danno is captain of his local Patriotic Roundabout Resistance, a three-man outfit dedicated to painting St George’s flags on traffic furniture. His wife describes it as "The least erotic midlife crisis in history, when he was knocking one out like a circus chimp in the spare room at least I knew where he was".
Case Study Two: Dave, 43, Guerrilla Graffiti Artist
Dave works in a call centre, or rather, he did. He’s been signed off sick ever since he discovered his new calling: scrawling 'BRIAN FIST' in block capitals on motorway bridges. Never mind that it takes longer to reach the bridge than it ever did to reach satisfaction on his laptop; Dave insists this is “the real frontline.” The police, who’ve had to scrub off his spelling mistakes more than once, refer to him affectionately as 'Banksy for Brexit'. If only they knew the real reason - they could call him more appropriately 'Wanksy'.
Case Study three: Brenda, 61, Flag Seamstress
Not all the patriots are men. Brenda from accounts was roped in when her son’s friends needed someone who could use a sewing machine. She now produces Union Jacks from her conservatory, often stitched at peculiar angles after three chunky glasses of Vino Collapso. Half of them end up upside down, but as Brenda says, “That’s just the way I show it’s urgent.”
It would be funny if it weren’t so… no, actually, it really is funny. Because when you look closely, the whole thing has a farcical quality worthy of a Tom Sharpe novel if Irvine Walsh wrote the sleeve notes. Picture the scene: a group of burly blokes, denied their evening’s entertainment, now gathered in a village hall to plan their next operation. Whiteboards out, marker pens squeaking: “This week, we target the slip road by junction 12. Bring your own brushes. And sandwiches.”
A word of advise to the hard of thinking 'Patriots': You only put a flag at half mast when someone has died. Also the the correct way to fly a union jack isn't hard. Think of it like this: at the mast side the first band is thick and white, just like you. This should be closest to the Pole - The closest you have ever been to a Pole is when he fixed your sink.
One wonders how many would-be Führers of the Fenland would’ve stayed home had they only been able to enter three digits from the back of a card without the shame of Mr Visa knowing their kinks. And so the roundabout a Long Sutton takes the full fury of their now redundant wrist action
The irony, of course, is that the Online Safety Bill was sold as protecting the moral fabric of the nation, but in reality, it has led to a proliferation of public obscenities, only instead of dodgy videos, it’s half-baked political graffiti and pensioners being harassed in the foyer of a Holiday Inn. We’ve simply swapped one set of stains for another. Somewhere in Whitehall, a civil servant is patting themselves on the back. “At least we cleaned up the internet,” they say, while Britain’s roundabouts look like the world’s most depressing Tate Modern installation.
And that’s the point, really: this is quintessentially British farce. A nation so terrified of its own urges that it would rather criminalise private pleasure than face reality. A government so inept that its social engineering project accidentally created an army of half-cut decorators. And a far right so absurd that it mistakes vandalising municipal greenery for saving civilisation.
If Tom Sharpe were still with us, he couldn’t have plotted it better. And Ian Hislop, somewhere in Soho, is probably already drafting the cartoon: a man with trousers round his ankles, looking glumly at a computer screen that says “Insert Visa” while, in the background, his neighbours unfurl another wonky St George’s Cross. The Devil may have found work for idle hands, but it seems the Devil’s got a wicked sense of humour too.
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