Well may we scoff at Victoria’s $13 million machete bins, already dumped at the scrap yard, but Jacinta Allan doesn’t hold a candle to London’s Sadiq Khan when it comes to absolute clueless idiocy in the face of a crime wave. Faced with official figures showing a doubling in shoplifting offences in London, Khan had a brilliant explanation.
Too many shops.
Yes, you read that right: London is a hellhole of rampant crime because there are shops. I mean, look at them, brazenly flaunting their wares, the whores… oops, that’s Khan’s excuse for Islamic rape gangs, allegedly.
Official figures revealed that 80,041 shoplifting offences were recorded in the year to September, up from 53,202 the year before.
And those are just the ones anyone bothers reporting.
The 50 per cent rise is more than double the 22 per cent rise across England and Wales as a whole, and comes at a time when the number of shops is falling.
Challenged on why London is bearing the brunt he said: ‘Because we have a lot of shops here, and because the cost-of-living crisis is more acute in the capital city.’
The city that you’re mayor of.
In any case, his excuse is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds, when you actually analyse the numbers. Particularly because, rather than proliferating, shops are actually fleeing London in droves.
The city has around 40,000 retail outlets but the surge cannot be explained by a 50 per cent rise in the number of shops as the number actually fell by nearly 400 in the year to June, according to analysts at PwC […]
More than 13,000 shops shut for the last time across the UK last year.
But, yeah, whoever heard of a capital city with lots of shops? Well, they soon won’t in London, the way things are going.
The wave of shoplifting has driven many to the wall and the Centre for Retail Research predicts the trend will accelerate this year.
Pandora, Swarovski, Bershka, Urban Outfitters and River Island have all announced plans to close their flagship stores in London’s Oxford Street amid warnings that official crime figures dramatically underestimate the scale of the problem.
An average of 55,000 thefts a day now take place in Britain’s shops according to a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC), up by a quarter in the last 12 months.
Violent thefts involving a weapon take place 70 times a day with retailers blaming a surge in organised gangs stealing to order.
London should have snapped up Melbourne’s machete bins before they got scrapped.
The crimewave has produced a flood of chilling videos filmed by despairing traders and customers and uploaded to social media.
Swathes of London’s Oxford Street lie boarded up and deserted amid the capital’s retail exodus.
Many of the shoplifters appear to have no fear of the staff, or of the cameras, as they brazenly load up with their goods and saunter out of the stores.
Last month a gang of at least of eight hooded youths raided an Apple store in north London in a shocking daytime heist one Sunday afternoon.
A sea of shoppers, including parents with young children, could be seen dramatically fleeing the store as the mob ripped out expensive devices around them in a raid that took just 24 seconds.
Last year another pair of thieves were filmed calmly clearing the shelves in a north London Boots store just 200 yards from Chingford Police Station.
The men carried on impassively as a woman dialled 999 within earshot and pleaded for a police response, before both sauntered out.
Because they knew perfectly well the coppers weren’t going to show up. They’re too occupied with real crimes, like people posting funny memes on social media.
And even if they do, crims know they’re untouchable, thanks to ‘racial equity’ police policies.
Retailers have despaired since a 2014 change in the law meant shoplifters have to have stolen at least £200 worth of goods before they can be given a jail term […]
The current laws mean that theft has been ‘decriminalised’, according to Lord Stuart Rose, the former boss of Asda and Marks & Spencer.
But, hey, at least all those poor brown people aren’t getting harassed for something as trivial as breaking the law.
Police harassment in Britain these days is reserved for real criminals: people who brazenly say they like bacon.
