Friday funday

The lighter side of local government: art or vandalism?

Well, guerilla artist Banksy makes it back to Friday Funday. I posted about him before and his recent work in Bristol stencilled onto a wall opposite Bristol Town Hall and on a building owned by the council. Instead of instantly removing the graffitti, Bristol decided to ask residents what they thought about keeping it.

A Bristol City Council spokeswoman said: "Nearly 500 people logged into the site during the discussion period, and of those choosing to respond, 97% supported the work. "Common themes highlighted the fact that Banksy is a Bristolian, and that the city should be celebrating and embracing his internationally renowned
work."

Most people seemed in favor of keeping it - including the current tenants of the building - a sexual health clinic. But not everyone's so keen on the idea.

Cllr Spud Murphy said: "It's absolutely stupid. They will have them all over the city now. They have given a licence for everybody in Bristol to do it. These graffiti artists all think they are better than each other and try to out-do each other." He said the council spends thousands of pounds cleaning up graffiti and Banksy should be fined as an example to others.

Cllr Murphy said: "They know who did it - normally they say if they can find out who did it they would be prosecuted. Well, in this case, they know it was this Banksy so he should be fined. "It's ludicrous. The council have gone mad."

Perhaps Councillor Murphy might care to see the results of Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's proposed anti-graffitti policy before going down the fine route. Mayor Goodman wants to put taggers in the stocks.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman says he wants to put those who deface property in stocks where the public can "dab" paint on their faces as they sit with their heads and arms locked in place. The city attorney's office is researching whether this would pass constitutional muster, Goodman said last week.

The verbose mayor swears he's serious. "This would be a great deterrent," he said. "I want to see if it falls under cruel or unusual punishment. If not, great. Let's put it into effect."

And if that seems harsh, you should have seen his early blue skies policy thinking.

When asked to compare this to his other medieval proposal of lopping off taggers' thumbs, the mayor dismissed his earlier comment.

"We were not going to cut thumbs off," he said. "That was to begin discussions on the issue."

Yes, no doubt that did stimulate a policy debate.

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Still on the topic of graffitti - but on a more serious note, I just spotted this website today - Love Lewisham. Residents can post pictures of what's broken in Lewisham (e.g. graffitti, abandoned cars, broken street furniture) as a way of reporting it to the council to get it fixed. I think this is a fantastic idea. I would upload pictures to a similar website for my local council. It would also seem like this is a great way to help council services prioritise which jobs need to be done first - because public servants can see what's in the worst nick.

But the website isn't just about showing pictures of what's broken, but what's been done to fix them. Many of the pictures have additional details, including what action was taken and before and after shots

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And just for fun, here's some graffitti I spotted near the IDeA offices recently. It's not as fancy as a Banksy, but it makes me smile, so I don't think I'll be reporting it.




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