Banksy’s fish art was 200 yards from where I live in London. Walk up to Standard Life in Old Bailey and on for a cup of tea at Beppes in West Smithfield and you walk by the traffic box on Ludgate Hill that Banksy has redecorated as an aquarium. Well until yesterday that is

The City of London have done a quick nick on the box and it now sits at the entrance to the Guildhall. The joke was that the fish had taken over the police’s role.

The police put that box there to interrogate terrorists making their way up and down from St Paul’s with bags of Semtex in the back of their vans. The box has stood empty for years – now it is for the fishes, the terrorists have moved on and the fish have moved in.

I think the term for Banksy’s art is “situationalist”. It makes its point at a time for a time and it makes it locally.

The police have assumed that the value of this art is for all time and no doubt the box will find its way into one of the various mausoleums of culture housed in and around the City of London’s HQ.

But , despite the 627 likes that this post has got (presumably from those who consider the police’s vandalism an act of preservation, this is CAPTURE!

Banksy’s art is not for all time, it is for a time. It is created to get graffitied, smashed up, carted off by villains, it is not destined for a museum, a cultural appropriation by the City Fathers.

So my message to the #CityofLondonPolice, is put the box back at the bottom of Old Bailey and let the people who walk over from Ludgate Broadway, up from Ludgate Circus, round the corner to Farringdon Road and down to City Thameslink, marvel that their walk has been enriched by some fish who have taken over one of the outposts of project fear!

CITY COPS – PUT IT BACK!