Brick Lane is defined by its touts, who stand outside every restaurant enticing passersby to try ‘the best curry in London’. Yet now this extravagant self-promotion is to be banned. I’ve just received an email from a Manifesto Club supporter, reporting that ‘Tower Hamlets council’s latest initiative is to ban restaurant owners from using touts outside their establishments to entice customers in. An anti-tout pledge will now be added to their licensing conditions. Are touts, with their old world manners and quaint turn of phrases, really a threat to anyone seeking a good curry?’ I don’t imagine anyone has complained about the…

British Legion collectors will be prevented from collecting in two of Birmingham’s main shopping streets, in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday. Birmingham – like many other towns and cities – has restrictions on the numbers of charities that can be collecting in a particular street at a particular time. And in this case Shelter and Oxfam have already ‘booked’ the street for key days, which means the British Legion can’t go there too. These rules are connected with controls on leafleting and other forms of public petitioning or appeal. Councils are starting to issue licenses – to charge fees, set certain terms,…

A Hull shop owner was fined £75, after a sticker advertising her shop was found on a lamppost. She denies putting it there. But still – it’s a sticker. The po-faced council announced gravely that she had ‘committed an offence of displaying an unlawful advertisement’. What this shows is: first, the increasingly free and easy use of on-the-spot-fines by councils, in a way that lacks all consistency and proportion. Cases that wouldn’t even see a judge – let alone result in a guilty verdict – are being dealt with in this casual and arbitrary manner, delivered in the same way as the…

An antiques trader has been banned by an exclusion order from areas of the Portobello road, for ‘persistent leafleting and agitation of market traders’. The pensioner, Marion Gettleson, takes a strong stand against planned changes to the market – basically, Kensington and Chelsea council and landlords’ policy to favour big brands over the ‘messy’ traders. One landlord obtained an exclusion order against Marion Gettleson, preventing her from visiting his arcades – showing the legal means available today for clamping down on leafleting and other activities in public space. Our Campaign Against Leafleting Bans focuses on no-leafleting zones, but we are discovering more…