"Ring of steel" was the term used for the road blocks, barbed wire and railings around central Belfast in the 1970s, when bombings there were common [1]. In this case it was literally steel barriers encircling the city centre. It was not a continuous ring of steel, as buildings formed parts of the barriers.
It's also the term used for the covert ring of CCTV cameras and checkpoints erected in the City of London [2] in 1993 in response to bishopsgate bombing. It shares the property of encircling the centre of a city for security purposes, but is not literally a ring of steel. At one point people would have recognised this as a reference to Belfast's situation.
Royston seems to take the worst of both places and the good bits of neither.
(I grew up just South of Cambridge and went to school not far from Royston; and I now live in London. For a while I commuted between the two by motorbike, passing Royston every day.)
I seem to recall a story where a town put some traffic cameras on its roads, and a guy printed the mayor's license plate on a piece of cardboard and stuck it on the back of his car and proceeded to speed through the camera a few times.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 37.4 ms ] threadIt's also the term used for the covert ring of CCTV cameras and checkpoints erected in the City of London [2] in 1993 in response to bishopsgate bombing. It shares the property of encircling the centre of a city for security purposes, but is not literally a ring of steel. At one point people would have recognised this as a reference to Belfast's situation.
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/belfast-security-measur...
[2] http://henriwilliams.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/entering-panopti... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/londons-ring-of-steel-to-e...
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_steel_(London))
This has changed my mind instantly.
(I grew up just South of Cambridge and went to school not far from Royston; and I now live in London. For a while I commuted between the two by motorbike, passing Royston every day.)
Sounds pretty effective to me!