The fact that prostitutes advertise in phone boxes is a good thing for all concerned. Nobody is harmed by the adverts [1], while prostitutes can now legally work from their own rooms rather than on the streets, reducing the scope for abusive pimpery. Likewise, the streets are left less full of tarts and punters at night, and of condoms during the day.

Westminster Council, being silly, don’t understand this. Instead, they make phone box operator BT spend quarter of a million pounds a year removing hooker cards; and also ask BT to disconnect any of its customers whose phone numbers are advertised on the cards. BT, disgracefully, complies with the request.

Fortunately, the UK’s competitive telecoms market allows people to avoid losing out to this sharp practice. BT’s share of the hooker market has fallen to 10% since the policy came in, while landline rival Telewest has gained a 28% share. Mobiles are also popular, accounting for around half the numbers on the cards.

Westminister Council, who I may have already described as silly, don’t like this state of affairs – but when they tried to get the other phone companies to agree, they were told to get lost (it’s good to see private enterprise standing up to sad bureaucrats with no real power…)

This clearly wounded the council’s pride, leading it to print 20,000 of its own cards containing the personal details of the top UK executives at the relevant companies. The plan appears to be to stir up the local busybodies and/or Taxi Driver-style vigilante nutcases into complaining to and/or assassinating the businessmen responsible for this terrible outrage.

So to recap: Westminister Council not only wants to compel private businesses to obey its whims despite having no legal grounds to do so, it is also willing to spend taxpayers’ money on personal campaigns against individuals who refuse.

Hopefully it won’t work; still, if you live in Westminster and aren’t a raving lunatic, it’s fairly clear you should vote for anyone other than the ruling Tories next time.

[1] Except under the lunatic conception of ‘harm’ by which French Connection adverts are harmful. Anyone who believes that this is a relevant criteron can safely be ignored.