A different view of grafitti

I was about to publish one of my periodic comments on the prevalence of graffiti in my part of North Oxford and at the failure by both Oxford City Council and the police to do anything either to prevent it or to clear it up.

My most recent post was in April (see Oxford graffiti gets worse) and concerned, as before, the track leading to Port Meadow and the bridge across the railway. I was then (and remained) angry that the dullards of Oxford City Council had boasted of a project to clear graffiti quickly but had in fact merely sprayed paint over some of, thus permanently ruining decent brickwork and providing the yobbos with a blank canvas. I suggested that they just left it alone until someone more active, caring and competent took over the job.

My update post has been pre-empted by a comment from a reader which to not be ignored even if I do not agree with what he says. His comment (published, unusually for me, in full) is as follows:

Oxford grafitti gets worse

I wrote a few weeks ago about Oxford City Council’s botched attempt to attend to the grafitti which plagues the city (Grafitti remedy worse than the grafitti). I suggested that if the best they could do was to splodge green paint over the mess, then all they were doing was providing a blank canvas for the next load of grafitti.

My post showed the brickwork at the Port Meadow end of Aristotle Lane railway bridge. Some new grafitti had already been added. This is what it looks like now.

Grafitti remedy worse than the grafitti

Slopping green paint over graffiti ruins the brickwork permanently. Leave the graffiti there until the day when we have competent people in charge who will address the real problem, not just paint over it to meet their targets.

The principle was a good one. Oxford City Council (presumably the dreaded and dreadful City Works) announced in October 2007 that it would tackle graffiti and similar visual eyesores. Residents were encouraged to send in photographs and the council committed to deal with obscene and racist graffiti within one working day and other graffiti within 14 working days.

The photographs go up on the council’s web site along with a statement as to when it was or will be fixed. This splendid commitment (I mean that – this is in theory how local government should work) was coupled with a statement that a major culprit in North Oxford had been apprehended by Mr Plod on one of his rare visits to the area.

Since then, the amount of graffiti near my house has doubled and the council’s remedy – splashing green paint over the mess – is not only a cure worse than the problem but provides a splendid canvas for the next spate.

Nude man joins the crowds in Aristotle Lane

At about 2:00 am on Saturday morning, a naked man strolled across the canal bridge in Aristotle Lane. He was middle-aged and on the large side. My reporter tells me that he appeared to show no concern either at the apparent incongruity of this or at the cold.

It is quite a busy place at night, Aristotle Lane. There are the young vandals who come and add a bit more graffiti every night. Down the end of the lane, near the railway line, are the drug dealers whose satisfied customers wander down to the southern end of Waterside for their relaxed smoke or sniff or whatever it is. Our nocturnal naturist was carrying neither spray can nor cash and was presumably not on his way to join either of Aristotle Lane’s regular visiting teams. It may be, of course, that his uninhibited state was due to an earlier visit to the dealers and that he was off to get a paint job from the graffiti artists.

Like the dealers and the vandals, he was quite safe from interruption by the police. Oxford’s finest have better things to do than worry about drugs, vandalism or sex perverts or any of the other things which local policing used to prevent. If anyone knows what it is which occupies their time, perhaps you would share it with us.

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Oxford graffiti gang rounded up

Rumour has it that Oxford police have rounded up the gang responsible for the graffiti which defaces North Oxford (see Rubbish and Graffiti by the Oxford Canal and Aristotle Lane Graffiti). It seems that one was caught in flagrante.

Stout work, constable. Next step, no doubt, will be the social worker’s report explaining why it is society’s fault. Society played him a terrible trick and, sociologically, he’s sick. Desperate need for self-expression,  blah, no opportunities, blah, no outlet for his creative powers, blah.

Then, if the CPS doesn’t screw it up before it get to court, the magistrates will give him a ticking off and some light community service. Aaaarrrggghh!

Why not make the perpetrators clean it all up? No courts, no prison, no record, no social workers. Just clean every piece of graffiti within a mile of Aristotle Lane.

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Rubbish and Graffiti by the Oxford Canal

The photograph below encapsulates quite a lot of Oxford’s neglect in one go.

We see a hideous bridge across the Oxford Canal. It is covered in graffiti. Next to it is an overflowing bin. On it are two traffic signs. All around are weeds. The bridge we are stuck with, this generation’s blight on the area for a century or more. The others could be fixed tomorrow with no great application of thought or money.

The story of the bridge, which lies at the end of old Frenchay Road and runs across to the Berkeley Homes Waterways estate, is told in a post called A bridge too big on the Oxford Canal. This post deals with the bin, the graffiti and the notices.

Aristotle Lane Graffiti

Aristotle Lane runs out westward from North Oxford. Once it has passed the new houses, the school and the Recreation Ground, it becomes a pleasant track up over the railway and down to Port Meadow. It is not yet manicured and suburbanised in standard local authority style, though that is creeping towards it.

It is marred by one thing – graffiti. The first picture shows the wall to the south of the track. The city council did come and clear the graffiti off it about 18 months or so ago.

They made a good job of it and it stayed clear for a long time. That was at the height of a concerted effort by the council and police to eradicate both the graffiti and the perpetrators.

There are two conflicting views on the removal of graffiti. One is that a clear wall is an invitation to the “artists” to start again on a conveniently blank canvas. The other is that if the authorities leave a place to decline it will decline.

Both are true up to a point. I favour the second view – if vandals see that no-one cares, then a spiral begins. A dropped can leads to a defaced wall and so on to a burnt-out car.

The missing link is policing. I have seen an unsolicited policeman here once or twice (“unsolicited” meaning that he was passing by rather than that he had come out in response to a call) but this sort of old-fashioned street policing wins no promotions compared with the assiduous filling-in of forms and other vital tasks undertaken by Oxford’s finest.

The yoofs know that the chance of being caught is minimal and that not much will happen to them if they are caught. Furthermore, they can see that their masterpieces will endure for ever since no-one will bother to remove them.

The second photograph is taken a few yards further west, on the footbridge over the railway line. It was taken in June 2006. It looks much the same now, but worse.

The black splodges were put there in the previous year. Two men from City Works turned up with paint and brushes and set to work. I speak figuratively – they did not work by any standard recognisable in the private sector but did the public sector equivalent – two part-days of unsupervised lethargy.

The result, as you can see, looks like a badly-decorated Q-Ship. This was not a job which needed much effort, money or skill. No one has bothered to come back and finish the job.

It is possible that there is a demarcation problem here – that the bridge actually belongs to Network Rail and that Oxford City Council is unwilling to shoulder either the expense of painting or the risk that they will thereby be taken to assume responsibility for the structure. Surely two lots of even the dimmest pen-pushers can sort this sort of thing out.

Meanwhile, the graffiti spreads – it goes on over the bridge and down underneath it. I walk here every day, and realised recently that I had stopped noticing it. I had come to accept that this is how it is in Oxford now.

Meanwhile, I have had a Council Tax demand for more than £2,000 and a sticker on my dustbin whining that I had put the wrong kind of rubbish in one of their little boxes.

This is part of an occasional series called Oxford Neglect which catalogues instances of casual neglect, mainly on the part of Oxford City Council, which lead to the general air of decline which pervades the place. This is distinct from the positive acts of institutional vandalism and contrasts with both the innate beauty of the inherited city and the grandiose plans for its future.