Fly swatters

Every so often, councils dream up a plan to deal with illegal flyposting - Leeds, for a while, would slap black paint over gig posters in unapproved places, creating a scene which looked like the CIA was attempting to keep the street secret. The ever-popular waterjet solution is sometimes used; Camden went for the prosecution route for a while until it realised the deterrence effect wasn't worth the cost. Some years back, Liverpool tried offering a posterboard of tolerance, although putting it under the control of one of the local promoters created its own problems - not to mention that one single flyposting site was never going to replace the allure of all those streets.

Glasgow is currently adopting the tried-and-failed approach of slapping 'cancelled' stickers over gig posters. It doesn't work, of course, because to be a success the council needs to tell promoters what it's doing, and once its public knowledge, people know to ignore the cancelled signs as they've been put there by the council to try and discourage flyposting.

Still, the council is pleased with itself:

A council source said: "We can be a complete pain in the neck to the people doing this because the money and time they spend is completely wasted.
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"And there's no point getting in a designer to produce a fancy poster when it will soon be a mess that doesn't tell anyone anything."

But since flyposting teams have long lived with the competitiveness which often sees one team posting over the top of another's work, this might not be quite as smart a move as the council hopes. And, unless they want to pay teams overtime to go round out of hours, they might find they're fighting posters which have already been up twelve hours, talking to the night-time crowds they're aimed at. It's only a half-thought out idea, isn't it?