Last week Newham Council announced a new ‘crackdown’ on slum landlords; today it announced a ‘war’ on guns and knives.
It seems barely a week goes by without some dramatic new initiative designed to tackle the latest menace, usually in the form of a ‘crackdown’ on whatever it is. This generates a few headlines in the local press before disappearing off the radar, to be replaced by the latest bee in the mayor’s bonnet.
I did a Google search on Newham and Crackdown, and it returned more than 85,000 results!
So, here are a few of the things Newham Council has ‘cracked down on’ in the past few years – and I didn’t get past page 3 of the Google results to compile it:
- Crime and anti-social behaviour in Plaistow
- Squatting
- Tenancy Fraud
- Illegal Cars
- Drugs
- Garden Waste
- Blue Badge Fraud
- Truancy
- Timeshare sales
- Boy racers
- Dangerous dogs
- Landlords flouting safety regulations
- Street gambling
- Illegal property conversions
- Unlicensed street trading
- Illegal skips
- Anti-social behaviour in Stratford
- Crime and Anti Social Behaviour in Romford Road
- Sale of crossbows
The thing is that with the exception of crossbows – an issue that lives solely in Sir Robin’s imagination – these are all important things that need to be dealt with. But by labelling every initiative a ‘crackdown’ you remove all meaning from the word. And you end up taking the same approach to everything – as the saying goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
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