The conman had targeted a vulnerable elderly person, discovered a nonexistent damp problem in the loft, and claimed his product would solve it. So I tried to contact the county’s trading standards office, only to discover that it’s impossible. Trading standards would contact me only if they needed more information. In the meantime, I’d discovered that trading standards offices have been cut to the bone across the country. More often it’s death by a thousand cuts: incremental destruction of the public realm, leaving us with outsourced, inaccessible, dysfunctional services.

Source: The Guardian May 12, 2021 05:00 UTC