Well, well, well. TfL Commissioner Andy Lord has been accused of lying about graffiti on the underground, after he made comments following a clean-up operation by Looking For Growth (LFG). After footage of volunteers wiping graffiti from tube carriage walls was published, Lord claimed at a Greater London Assembly meeting earlier this year, without mentioning LFG specifically, that there was ‘evidence of people creating graffiti and then removing it’. He then went on to claim that this evidence was being ‘investigated by the relevant authorities’. Crikey!
Only it transpires that TfL, er, don’t appear to have any evidence that people – whether LFG volunteers or otherwise – were vandalising public transport. A response to a Freedom of Information request asking for details of this evidence revealed that TfL staff couldn’t figure out what information Lord was referring to. A cache of emails shows panicked press officers asking colleagues: ‘Have we got any evidence of this at all?’ Another email read: ‘Do we have anything on the claim that the relevant authorities are investigating?’ Neither question received an answer – while the only explanation that was put forward to support Lord’s claims was rather flimsy:
As demonstrated in the media coverage headed by Richard and his team the graffiti damage on the Bakerloo line cannot be removed using ‘Graffiti Go’ (£12 from Wickes) or Scrubb G12 Graffiti-X (£12 Wickes and Screwfix) because of the materials used by vandals. These are the two products featured in the Looking For Growth clips.
It still doesn’t quite explain Lords’s insistence that there is proof of ‘people creating graffiti’ though, does it?
LFG director Lawrence Newport has called the accusations ‘absurd and wrong’, adding: ‘Volunteers improving London should not be smeared in the London Assembly.’ The co-founder of LFG, Joe Reeve, fumed:
These emails prove that TfL lied when they accused our campaigners of criminal behaviour. We got out early in the morning and put serious effort into cleaning up the tube where TfL had failed – Andy Lord should say sorry for lying.
For their part, a TfL spokesperson said: ‘The Commissioner was making reference to information that he had been made aware of verbally and of work being undertaken within TfL as part of our wider graffiti reduction strategy, which aims to prevent and tackle graffiti vandalism.’
LFG has gone even further – demanding not just an apology, but that Lord join the group on their next tube tidy. Talk about cleaning up your act, eh?
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