A couple of weeks ago I blogged about graffiti on the bus shelter on the B1172 close to the New Road junction. This was subsequently cleaned off by the parish council with the bill obviously being met by local ratepayers.
Now more and even uglier graffiti has sprung up on various signposts and other places along the B1172.
Parish councillor Shane Hull sent me the images included on this blog and it really is time to "name and shame" the culprit. The graffiti is ugly. The artist seems to sign their "work" with the letter A within a circle. This could stand for anarchy. One of the signs has had the word "Amine" placed after a number of letters. This is the sign to Ketteringham so I will leave it to you to work out what word has been formed.
If you are reading this and know who the culprit is please contact Norfolk Police. This really isn't the kind of thing we want in our village.
It did get me thinking about publicity though. It is, at times, a difficult concept. My whole working life has surrounded publicity. For many years I was a working journalist gathering news, publicising events etc etc. Then I popped over the fence in what some people termed a "poacher turned gamekeeper" move to work for Norfolk Police where my function was to answer inquiries from the Media and to promote the police in a positive manner.
After leaving the police, I worked for an emergency media company where my role was similarly to work on behalf of the oil and gas companies to provide media back-up in times of emergency.
After retiring, I continued to write and now I'm back freelancing for Archant and covering Hethersett matters for the Eastern Daily Press and the Norwich Evening News and of course there's all my promotional stuff on Facebook and Social Media and my e-magazine Hethersett Herald.
You could say that over the years I have fed my family on publicity. At times I am aware, however, that publicity can be a double edged sword. It can be used for political advantage and it can be twisted. One day I will write a full blog on this as it's a fascinating subject.
But for today let's consider the Hethersett graffiti situation. We need to give it publicity to highlight what is going on. We need it to appeal to people to keep their eyes peeled and to "name and shame" the perpetrator. But at the same time we need to be careful that we aren't giving this person a level of notoriety that will encourage them to deface even more property.
Of course there is graffiti and graffiti. We all know about the artist Banksy and there are some wonderful examples of artistic and legal graffiti around our country. There are some good examples in Norwich. But these are works of art. I believe we should separate them from the term graffiti which should be used for anything that is ugly and illegal.
Interestingly the group looking into the possibility of having a new skateboard park in the village are also looking at having a graffiti wall where local artists can work. I think we should call this street art and not graffiti. The word graffiti conjures up slogans daubed onto areas with black paint - the kind of thing you see from a train.
There is absolutely nothing artistic about the latest spate of graffiti in Hethersett. It is ugly and needs to be stopped before it gets out of control. As we always used to say when I was working for the police: "Somebody, somewhere, knows who is doing this and it needs to be stopped."
One person on Facebook seemed to think that it didn't matter greatly on a dog bin. That's not the point. It's not just on a dog bin and we don't want this to turn into an epidemic.
* * *
On a brighter note, the Sandwich Super Heroes of Hethersett have been featured in the published version of both the Eastern Daily Press and the Norwich Evening News. You can see a copy of the cutting below.