I dine at The Ivy with Brian Paddick. He'll never be one of the hang 'em, flog 'em brigade, but he is surprisingly hard-nosed about the need to clean up London
My week starts at The Ivy having dinner with Brian Paddick, the former police commander in Lambeth. We don't agree on everything but I think he's a remarkable man who has been misrepresented by critics, many of whom are more interested in striking glib poses than fighting crime. Brian will never be one of the hang 'em, flog 'em brigade but he is passionate and surprisingly hard-nosed about the need to clean up London.
People who enjoy living in a great metropolis tend to be comfortable with an edgy street culture but that doesn't mean they're willing to tolerate the avalanche of criminality that has engulfed the capital in recent years. Anyone who has lived in London for more than a few months has their own horror stories of muggings, burglaries, guns and knives. Brian finds it depressing that many people seem to regard this high level of crime as inevitable. He would like to see far more forensic tests carried out at the scenes of burglaries in order to ensnare the culprits. The definition of burglary as a crime against property conceals the awful and profound sense of violation that it causes. This trauma is compounded in less affluent areas - such as Lambeth, where Brian was, and still should be, in charge - by victims often not being able to afford house contents insurance. They end up losing everything of value.
I work with the Prince's Trust and in that capacity sometimes visit Feltham Young Offenders Institution. My impression is that the governor and staff do an impressive job of dealing with some of the most difficult young people in the country. However one can't help feeling that even the physical layout of the place - huge, disjointed, wide scary avenues - encourages a climate of bullying and drug-dealing.
Despite the valiant efforts of some of the most committed (and most underappreciated) professionals in the country, prisons, as they currently exist, are not always places where criminals learn to be better people. Too often they learn to be better criminals. Set against all that is the undeniable fact that every day a criminal is behind bars is a day when he can't mug, burgle, rape or shoot the rest of us. It's a sad indicator of how demoralised the public has become about crime that we're probably prepared to settle for that.
A more mundane downside of living in London is the money-making racket run by many councils - parking fines. As Brian and I leave the Ivy, we step on to a side road, wide enough for people to park in the evening without fear of impeding emergency vehicles or the like. But it's painted with double yellow lines. The scam is simple. Sign a contract with a company that employs cheap, often illegal, labour. Get the company to put its workforce into uniform and send them around the streets of the capital to extort money from motorists. This is at the forefront of my mind as I look at my latest parking ticket on my moped parked across the road.
No one objects to parking wardens per se. But I'm old enough to remember when they used to have yellow bands around their hats and were mainly interested in keeping roads clear and preventing blatant violations of parking regulations. The new breed - and there are literally thousands of them - care only about ensnaring the maximum number of cars in the minimum length of time. If they don't meet certain quotas they get fired. If they exceed them they get bonuses.
Park your car in London and you can witness the most infuriating injustices, such as wardens ignoring two lorries parked opposite each other on double yellow lines, blocking a busy road, instead preferring to run off down quiet side streets looking for cars with one wheel a couple of inches outside the white box. There are few sights more calculated to antagonise than returning to a meter with a minute left to find a warden hovering (or even scribbling) and then to see the look of disappointment as their prey escapes.
I'm sure that these characters are at the bottom of the heap financially but, given that most London parking wardens are of foreign origin, I can't help but wonder what the long-term effect on race relations might be, as they are forced into conflict with the public every day.
The real villains are the councillors who control the racket. Take Westminster City Council. Its annual haul from all the ticketing, clamping and towing away is more than £100m. The current system has become a vast revenue-raising exercise. It's high time that those who levy the fines lost the ability to benefit from them.
Nevertheless, whenever I get depressed about living in London and resolve to up sticks for Somerset - where I have a modest country place - something invariably happens to remind me why I'll always live in the capital. Returning to The Ivy, I see Patrick Cox and Sam Taylor-Wood sitting at a nearby table with Sam's husband, Jay Jopling - the impresario of Britart. This formidable Old Etonian disapproves of me and my views on contemporary art (which I outlined in this very magazine last year), but when he departs for the loo a waiter appears at my side with a message from Sam and Patrick: "We love you." I turn to wave but Jay has returned and the others don't even glance in my direction . . .
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