High Streets for All

Throughout London, BT telephone kiosks are disfigured by lurid advertisements that are glued to the insides of the kiosk windows. Often the kiosk doors are jammed shut by folded cardboard. If you pull hard on the chrome door handle, it will tear loose because it is secured by wood-screws into the wooden door structure. If you lever the door open with a metal instrument, you damage the edge of wooden door. If one simply removes the prostitutes' cards, the residue of glue remains - defacing the kiosks' appearance.

The Mayor's office could go after a.) the prostitutes whose numbers are advertised; b.) the agents (Tom Carders) who go from kiosk to kiosk, posting the adverts; c.) BT for not blocking the (mobile) telephone numbers that are advertising prostitution; d.) BT for not maintaining the cleanliness, repair and hygiene of their iconic red telephone kiosks.

By all means, rid our streets of the ugly dirty modern square-sided aluminium phone boxes that serve no purpose other than to act to provide legitimate advertising and revenue for BT.

Encourage Londoners to 'adopt' their local phone box as I have: Daily I, and several of my neighbours, reopen the doors; remove all the tom cards and scrape off the glue and paste residue from the windows. Every couple of weeks I brush the floors; wash all the windows inside and out; and disinfect the floors. These are tasks that BT should perform but don't. I'm in regular contact with BT to report damaged kiosks. Occasionally, BT will send an engineer to replace broken window panes and repair interior lighting, however, many of the kiosks that have been converted to 5G (those with a 'nipple' on the roof) have no interior lighting - rendering them discreet but disgusting temporary urinals.