Janice Turner, an influential and distinguished journalist writing in The Times recently, declared in that paper that “Graffiti isn’t art, it’s an ugly string of threats”. I have some sympathy with that point of view.

Talented and genuinely creative artists such as Banksy, use their art to make public statements that often do resonate or entertain. Janice wrote, “sometimes in a nothing place, like a grim underpass or a railway arch, a piece of street art makes the city feel vividly alive.” The other side of this coin is an area where “every business is defaced. Graffiti on walls, over windows, across shop signs.”