On Saturday 7 July a number of volunteers answered Mo Parker and councillor Lizzie Deane’s call in the last edition of The Whistler to help reclaim Clifton Street Passage from the taggers and graffiti vandals. Not all the volunteers live in the Terminus area but all live in West Hill and are keen to show that positive action can be taken in the face of vandals and the lack of action by the Council, which no longer paints over graffiti on private property.

Despite assurances from Damian Marmura, Head of Operations at B&H City Council Cityclean to Lizzie Deane that he would organise paint and equipment and pre-clean and weed the passage, he let the residents down badly by not doing any of these. With the volunteers expected at 10am, Mo and husband Chris had little choice but to go and buy paint and rollers themselves. DM later gave the lame excuse that there had been a mix-up in dates, although the email correspondence that The Whistler editor has seen clearly states the date.

We hope that Mr Marmura lives up to his subsequent promise to ensure the passage is cleaned weekly. He’s also been promising WHCA for over a year to organise the replacement of the broken communal rubbish bin near Bright News. We’ll believe it when we see it.

In the meantime, vigilance is the watchword. If, like one resident who walked on by but thanked the painters for removing the eyesore she saw everyday from her window, you see the now gleaming walls tagged again, please do something about it! The sooner graffiti is removed, the less incentive there is to do it again as the perpetrator does not get kudos if it can’t be seen.

CW