For years, it seems, we have been looking for signs of the economy recovering. If temporary lights on the road hold up traffic and make us late for work, at least it might be a sign of building and investment. It made a pleasant change the other week to visit Steve Betts, who has safety and corporate social responsibility in his title, besides security, at TNT Post. You may well know TNT as a logistics company; indeed over the years they have featured in the magazine, for their approach to supply chain security for instance. TNT Post are going after door to door post that Royal Mail have had a monopoly on since the 1600s. It does make Steve busy (see from page 22), but in good ways – people to hire, new sites to check, equipment to buy.
Local government CCTV, on the other hand, has for some years been having to manage as budgets are trimmed or worse; and the prospect is of more years of cuts. For the next few months I propose to range over the subject, around the country, looking at how council CCTV set-ups are managing the cuts. The safest thing to say (page 32) is that councils are managing. Rather than switch off the control room lights altogether, they are going from double to single manning; or neighbours are merging control rooms (though a painful political decision for the council that gives up its control room); or out-sourcing. It might mean that councils are not doing all they did in the 2000s, or not as fully or as well. Businesses may feel that local government is learning about working in a lean way as the private sector has to all the time.
Rather than say any more about Mike Palmer’s book about Roy Saunders, ‘the world’s greatest safe cracker’, let me say simply that if you are to do with safes, or if you remember fondly the 1970s, (‘the pinnacle of British safe making’ writes Mike wistfully) the book, titled Peckham Boy, will be a treat. And reasonably priced. I have made quite a big deal of the book (page 41) because at its heart is a profound story, though Roy Saunders does not seem to see it that way. He was celebrated as an authority on safes. He travelled the continents. He turned his knowledge to crime, was caught, and punished. His employers and clients had put trust in him; trust that he kept for decades, but then betrayed. Why? He does not say. It may be that he cannot explain it even to himself. It matters, because we put trust in people all the time. That bridge over the river we trust was built and repaired with proper materials so that it will not crumble when we cross. The security officer on the gate will not wink to his mates from the warehouse as they leave with boxes they’ve pinched. CCTV and safes matter but so does something you cannot touch or smell, called trust.
