Would you?

[Daggers]

I'm not sure if you're including me in this?

I thought you were a Torygraph boy, Phubey?

[Phube]

I thought you were a Torygraph boy, Phubey?

Nah... I'm not posh (big papers scare me!!) I just read the Metro!!

[Daggers]

I never said I'd have turned them in.

Probably get in the way of a good dose of mob retribution.

[Lovejoy]

Is it bad that when I used to work in a shop, I'd tell my my mates where there weren't cameras so they could nick some sweets etc? Nothing heavy like.

Mind you, I would have felt some loyalty had my boss not been a Wayne Kerr of the highest degree.

[James.]

I would.

The 35% extra for a loaf of bread represents the charge for convenience. People are more than capable of getting off their arses and going to a supermarket if they want to pay less. It doesn't make what they were doing acceptable.

[Finnegan]

I like you too Finners but you can be a little grumpy.

:laugh:

[Raj]

Popped into one of those Tesco overpriced minimarts on the way home. There was this crackhead with his crack whore wife, he was blatently filling his jacket while she tried to cleverly distract the staff with questions.

Wife#1 said she'd not have dobbed him in to the staff - a couple in the store did.

Would you have confronted him or pointed out his light-fingered nonsense to the security?

I think I might have done if it'd been a different store, a family store, but not in a place which charges 35% more than the main supermarket for a loaf of bread.

Should have chucked a can of beans in his fat ugly head...then ran off...quickly!!!

[Raj]

I'm actually in this situation, well sort of.

A mate of mine nicks about £2 worth of stuff every day from a co-op 'near my school'.

I know it's wrong like, but I'm not prepared to look like a tit by 'telling on him'.

That would be the one on DOWNING DRIVE then eh???

[Darkzzz_]

I steal everyday and enjoy it to be honest.

I probably have well over £1000 worth of games, music and movies on my external hard drive.

[Samilktray]

I steal everyday and enjoy it to be honest.

I probably have well over £1000 worth of games, music and movies on my external hard drive.

Darn tooting.

College can be a victim too...

[Asha]

That would be the one on DOWNING DRIVE then eh???

Yup. He's a lanky long haired emo freak. You do the honours .

[Nationwider]

As much as I detest thieving like that, I'd have ignored the situation on the basis that I didn't want to risk a 0.1% chance of getting run through with a blade, the scummers will be dead soon anyway and the directors of Tesco plc will most likely remain super-rich, with or without such devastating acts of grocery terrorism.

I'd love it if Mr Scum was trying to exit the store with a 20lb frozen turkey under his baseball cap. I'd have tripped the securiry guard up myself if he'd been that brazen.

[Thracian]

Sorry to say, I don't follow that feeling Thracian - I don't feel it's a black and white issue but maybe I'd feel differently if I spent my time running a stall which people could rob. I do think that someone (like this store) excessively profiteering opens themself up to a lack of sympathy.

Phube - amazingly, I am not "worried". It was a curious situation and you will note that I didn't report them. I was interested that my reaction considered family businesses seeing as I don't believe in intellectual property which (as you continue to steal images from the internet) neither do you?

We came across a thief today. Tall, aggressive, apparent druggie. I know him, the stallholders warn about him, the security guard probably knows him and nobody with any authority does anything about him.

He turns up most week, his distraction tactics are virtually always the same and the only time anyone would give a shit would be if one of us reacted and meted out our own justice.

I well know what it's like to be down. When I returned to this country from Switzerland with no house and needing a job I ended up living and sleeping in a small ridge tent for six of the wettest months on record with my wife and infant son. I didn't go stealing.

In my book there is no excuse for it.

As already mentioned, if you don't approve of a particular shop you don't have to use it. Who knows why a supermarket fixes the prices it does?

Morrisons, for instance, never strikes me as cheap. But it stocks bloody good food, provides a decent environment in which to buy it and certainly looks after my middle son as a member of its staff better than any other company he's worked for before.

Truth is the powers that be should either protect people properly from crime or let the people protect themselves. But they don't.

The thieves continue to take the piss - I've mentioned previously the adult/child thieving gang that has had free reign at Melton - yet the people who are paid to supposedly protect us kop out and seemingly with a good part of the nation's approval.

Because even now some say they'll probably vote for the same Government to continue allowing its appointed servants to provide more of the same sort of pathetic, ineffective and often non-existent protection.

This of course being the same Government that appoints armies of maroon-clad jobsworths to book a hardworking stallholder at the end of a bloody cold day for parking in a loading bay. The bloke mistakenly thought he had 15 minutes grace, a timely word would have sufficed to warn him, but no...

The government can appoint plenty of people to penalise and turn working folk into victims. But the druggies and idlers get free grace to get away with all sorts.

[Head Honcho]

We should bring back the stocks for shoplifters-fvcking scumbags the lot of em!

[Thracian]

Is it bad that when I used to work in a shop, I'd tell my my mates where there weren't cameras so they could nick some sweets etc? Nothing heavy like.

Mind you, I would have felt some loyalty had my boss not been a Wayne Kerr of the highest degree.

What an advert for employing people you must have been!

I wonder how you'd have felt had you been discovered.

I say that because a friend of mine saw a thief rob a stallholder at Stafford Showground many years back. He pointed it out to the stallholder and together they followed the thief to his car.

The thief opened his car and put the clock he'd stolen onto the back seat.

As he emerged my friend confronted him and asked why he'd stolen the clock? The thief blabbed something about just having the compulsion to take it, about "not meaning anything" and then he broke down in tears when told the police would be called.

He pleaded for forgiveness and was told to get the jack from the boot of his car.

After some limp protesting and a final warning that the police would definitely be called if he didn't get on with it he got the jack out. My friend told him to loosen his wheel nuts, to jack the car right up and then told him to remove the wheel and let the jack down.

He told the thief he was only going to borrow the wheel, together with his spare, and leave them a bus shelter five miles down the road.

When he groaned my friend explained to him that he was only doing the sort of thing he'd done, making him as miserable as the owner of the stolen clock and that he was lucky cos the wheels were only being borrowed, not permanently stolen like the £800 clock.

My pal asked again if he'd rather the police were called? Or if perhaps he'd prefer that his own example were followed and my friend should steal a few things from him, like his car radio, his wing mirrors, a few bits from his engine compartment, the air in all his tyres?.

I've no idea if the message got through. But I had to chuckle at the time.

[JakeShingler]

You, honest to God, annoy me more than anyone else on this forum - AshLcfc, Milky Joe, JakeShingler, DB11 and Jack included.

/rantfortheday,offtowalkdog.

wahey

[Thracian]

"Sorry to say, I don't follow that feeling Thracian - I don't feel it's a black and white issue but maybe I'd feel differently if I spent my time running a stall which people could rob."

======

It's certainly a subject that riles all stallholders even my wife who is normally stability personified. It disturbs her equilibrium for days. She feels personally violated by any thief because thieving goes against all her own values and her basic belief in the goodness of people I suppose.

[Thracian]

... there's so much wrong with that I don't even know where to start.

Start where you like.

[Finnegan]

Start where you like.

I'm not even going to. There's such a vast array of crimes that come under larceny and such a broad array of motives or reasons a person might steal any quantity or quality of things.

To say they should all have body parts removed in a manner we don't even enforce on sexual offenders, murderers or genocidal war criminals is just stupidity of the most obvious kind.

[Thracian]

I'm not even going to. There's such a vast array of crimes that come under larceny and such a broad array of motives or reasons a person might steal any quantity or quality of things.

To say they should all have body parts removed in a manner we don't even enforce on sexual offenders, murderers or genocidal war criminals is just stupidity of the most obvious kind.

I didn't say there were no reasons for people stealing, I said there were no excuses for stealing anything. But while people continue making excuses the thieves will certainly continue stealing.

You talk about thieving as if it is fairly inconsequential but I have already referred to the fact that people can feel personally violated by theft and the effect of that can last for ages. In fact my neighbour never got over being burgled.

As for the sharia approach to the punishment of thieves, the severe sentences serve to act as a deterrent first and foremost where we have none of any consequence.

In Saudi Arabia, body parts might be removed but, and to quote:

"Under the sharia, repeated theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand, administered under anesthetic. Because of its severity, a number of qualifications have been introduced to mitigate the punishment.

If the thief repents and makes restitution before the case is brought before a judge, the punishment can be reduced; furthermore, the victim can demand recompense rather than punishment or can grant a pardon.

Highway crime was considered a crime against public safety and thus subject to more severe punishment. Aggravated theft can be punished by cross-amputation of a hand and a foot. Such cases have been unusual, but Amnesty International reported four of them in 1986.

In 1990 fewer than ten hand amputations took place, at least five of which were administered to foreigners."

The figures hardly suggest a bloodbath but they do seem to indicate how great a deterrent the potential sentences are.

Indeed the low levels of theft are further indicated by the following comparison of crime levels in various countries whiuch show robberies in Saudi Arabia are way down the list.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rob-crime-robberies

Our approach simply doesn't work. Human Rights without human responsibility is a busted flush.

Just look too at Singapore, where there is still capital punishment and where there is rigorous anti-drug law:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Singapore

[Trav Le Bleu]

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" - Attributed to Edmund Burke, Irish Political Philosopher, 1729 to 1797.

Daggers, you allowed evil to triumph!

I once shopped a guy in Oadby Co-op, who was blatantly pilferring bottles of whisky into his long coat, to a shop assistant who replied, "what do you want me to do about it?"

[Sods]

Citizen arrest!

Would love to do it.

[Milky]

You, honest to God, annoy me more than anyone else on this forum - AshLcfc, Milky Joe, JakeShingler, DB11 and Jack included.

Damn! Must try harder

[Finnegan]

Damn! Must try harder

You're like the student loans handbook for idiots, you're back in with the good guys for being useful.

I guess it's not your fault you know fook all about rygbi.

[Monk]

Clearly it is different if you are involved in the company/stall, and you lot don't half argue pointlessly sometimes. I disagree with shoplifting, and have never taken part of it, but would not intervene.

For me, shoplifting is a petty crime and it is the responsibility of the store to spot and resolve it, not the innocent bystander. I really couldn't give a damn if a supermarket has a few cans of beans go walkies. And don't try telling me it is the same as stealing games online, that is a completely different kettle of fish.