“There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” - Alfred Henry Lewis
Asking the government for funding for additional security measures is like sticking a plaster on the collapsing wall of the cost of living crisis.
So standard conservative policies.
Dont adress the social issues. Repress the symptoms until the system collapes, while your friends rob everything they can grab.
The fact that the article is mostly focused on stores selling food and essential items is telling (compared to things like USB cables, wrenches and succulent plants). Sure, there is a segment of young teens and pensioners that steal because nothing is as exhilarating. Decreased affordability, stagnant wages, more of the population left hungry or a paycheque away from being hungry encourages theft and illegal resale of essential goods.
If people were well-fed and prices were reasonable, there would be no need to steal these things and there’d be little demand for stolen food goods. To an extent, if jewelry cost £1 to buy then who would bother stealing it anyway?
Back to the main issue, what’s a hungry person on the street supposed to do, if begging for spare change barely gets you anything? Pick berries? Hunt squirrels, pigeons, raccoons and cook them over a rubbish fire? Food bank lines are getting longer, while other supports (like health and mental health support, employment resources, disability payments) are difficult to navigate and sometimes impossible without access to technology nowadays.
Our local big Sainsbury’s supermarket has installed airport-style barriers everywhere and you now have to queue and scan your receipt to get out.
As a kid, I always wanted to live in some science fiction futuristic society. I never thought that I’d actually grow up to live somewhere where I had to scan to get out a supermarket only to be under threat of attack by ravaging killer dogs.
Our local big Sainsbury’s supermarket has installed airport-style barriers everywhere and you now have to queue and scan your receipt to get out.
The store nearby installed that a while back, and someone just broke the gate down, and honestly I have never been more proud of my community.
Actually when they tried to install electronic locks on the carts so they’d lock up if you went too far away, and the next day someone had stolen all the carts was also a big moment of local pride.
And I bet that same community rails over the unfairness when the company does a blanket price rise to compensate for the equipment losses. Good job guys, stick it to the man!!
well, I would hope so. we shouldn’t be accepting this shit lying down.
Of course, but there’s taking action and there’s shooting yourself in the foot
The price will raise regardless, because thats’s how monoplies and price cartels work. They just blame their price gouging on the people trying to survive, same as always, and rubes with latent goosetepping instincts believe them, same as always.
If they had done that I would hope my community would immediately steal everything not nailed down.
Proud of someone for damaging property? What a shitty community, honestly. Guy sounds like a cunt.
Whoever did it saved the rest of us a huge amount of hassle. The only thing hurt was the bottom line of the shop that decided to annoy everyone for no good reason
you sound like a bootlicker
nooo my heckin private propertinoo, you’re supposed to allow yourself to be corralled into a police state without complaint noooBreak every gate, sensor and camera. Take back a tiny slice of your agency in this burning world.
Those gates are so fucking stupid. They barely work, usually one of the two actual gates doesn’t open, and the gates stay open long enough that multiple people can just walk through. I kinda really hate having to prove I’ve just paid for the things I’ve just overpaid for.
Plus if you decided not to get something you either have to ask someone to open them, or sneak out otherwise. They’re just very unpleasant.
sci fi is about the present. Atwood said that everything that happened in The Handmaids Tale happened in real life — just not to white people.
So too, cyberpunk dystopias were happening while being made. Yes Akira has people with magic powers — but delinquent kids, government experiments on children, a brutalist police force that murders without question: all modern day.
Our local big Sainsbury’s supermarket has installed airport-style barriers everywhere and you now have to queue and scan your receipt to get out.
what if you didn’t buy anything?
I’m not an expert on Sainsburys, really. We just used to shop there. Most of it is self-checkout but they do have 3 or 4 tills with checkout workers down at one end. I guess you could walk through there. Also there’s a security guard who I guess could let you out.
I only put up with it once - about 3 weeks ago - and haven’t been there since. We’ve done our family shopping there for 15+ years.
How does this work if you don’t get a receipt? Haven’t shops been pushing not to print paper receipts for a few years now
I don’t know. There’s always a queue because the scanner wasn’t reading the receipts properly and wlll only accept the receipt scanned once. We had to be helped through by a shopworker who checked we had paid. It was super-frustrating to wait and the gates were too strong to push through. We’ve just stopped going to Sainsbury’s now and just use our nearest Aldi.
I worked out last night that the points program in my local pub means I have to buy 33 drinks if I want a free drink of equivalent price. That’s daylight fuckin robbery mate
Not really a surprise when you consider just how bad the cost of living crisis is to some people.
Hey the guardian, you spelled “poverty” wrong.
When people steal the latest iPhone they should go to jail
When people steal a bread they should be given the help they need
What % of stolen iPhones do you think are sold for food money
just wondering aloud here (genuinely - i’m not trying to be an ass)
are iphones sold from local shops? or just apple stores.
i think a lot of small business owners sell bread.
can buy a lot of bread after stealing an iphone
And what about bottles of alcohol, toiletries and meat to be sold at the local pub?
Steal more
w crime
if shoplifting were really a problem, they would just shut the stores down. corpos always take fraud and theft into account before hand.
You’re right that they’ll take it into account, but there are other steps they’ll take before shutting: more stuff going behind the counter, etc.
I think the logical conclusion, if things get steadily more dystopian, are supermarkets that look like a giant off-licence: all staff and product behind barriers.Unfortunately that will come eventually. Shops that have too much loss just get closed
And then raise prices after because, “We have to account for that loss!”
Corporation bosses want to increase profits again:
“We’ve already used Covid.”
“We’ve already used war in Ukraine.”
“We’ve already used climate change.”
“How about increasing looting… to increase prices?”
No, organized looting is what the Tories and their corporate pals are doing to the NHS.
Shop thefts have more than doubled in the past three years
wow, what a crazy point in time for something like this to begin
I was actually in my local co op last week (edit - time flies, no, it was a few weeks back now!) When a group rushed in, literally ransacked the place - openly filling up their bags, then brazenly quickly walked out. Absolute cunts.
Staff couldn’t do anything. Said it’s happened numerous times before. In this case it was a lot who were parked up on the local field before being evicted and moved on.
Staff couldn’t do anything.
Neither should it. The wares are insured, there is no need for them to bring themselves in danger.
I used to work at a fuel station and I was told to back off if something remotely dangerous was happening. The station was insured and we had cameras all over. Let them rob, then report to the police.
Now, of course, this necessitates that the police does something, which I am aware, is a bit of a coin toss in the UK right now.
Well yes, of course they couldn’t do anything. I used to run a large convenience store before leaving retail for good around 15 years ago - I know the score. But it didn’t stop ruining their day, and making them feel helpless.
The issue is the knock on effects. One of my staff members back then had her ribs broken in one shoplifting attack, and that was unprovoked. Police never caught the guy.
Yeah, I am not saying that they’re not right to be afraid. I luckily was never robbed, but two of my co-workers were.
The British police are in an unacceptable state.
This is why people don’t want them parking up on the local field before being moved on. They want them to drive past without stopping at all. And they’ll fix their own driveways and gutters.
Most of the nicking I’ve seen has happened in co op as well.
From what I’ve noticed they seem to be the least likely shop to have a security guard, so maybe that’s why.
The onestop down the road from me locks the shop up after 9pm and individually lets people in, as they don’t have a security guard.
Our local co-op now sporadically has a security guard. Dude’s about 5ft and looks like the average 12 year old could beat him up though.
Being willing to catch a battery charge is different than being willing to shoplift. Any guard provides that new red line (zero consideration for the guards health though lol)
I’ve definitely seen a lot more shoplifting over the past few months. From what I’ve seen, they don’t go to the big shops they go to the Tesco Extras, Sainsburys local etc.
One time I was stood a metre away from some guy openly just heaving stuff off shelves into a backpack.
He ran out of the shops and called one of the workers a cunt when she got in his way. She was obviously quite autistic and very distressed by the situation.
I swear everything about this country is getting worse.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In recent months, David, the manager of a Leeds Co-op store, and his staff have been threatened with razors, knives, screwdrivers, needles and hammers by shoplifters who have become more brazen and aggressive.
Paul Gerrard, the chain’s director of public affairs and a former customs officer, described some of the shoplifting as “organised looting”, saying gangs would climb over kiosks and brazenly empty shelves into rucksacks, construction bags and even wheelie bins.
Earlier this week, Laurence Guinness, the chief executive of the Childhood Trust, told the Big Issue: “I have spoken to many children, some as young as seven, who have resorted to taking food from shops because they are hungry.”
In Cambridge, Ronnie, a convenience store owner, said in the last week alone shoplifters had stolen five £7.99 steaks, 15 packets of chicken and lamb, 25 chocolate bars and fruit chews, 15 cans of energy drink and six bottles of wine.
The company said it had been forced to spend more than £200m to counter criminal behaviour, with measures such as body-worn cameras and headsets for staff and “dummy” packaging for items such as £6 boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates and £6 jars of Kenco coffee to deter thieves from looting or “bulk-shoplifting”.
James Lowman, the chief executive of the ACS, described the levels of theft as “unprecedented” and said official crime figures “barely scratch the surface” due to underreporting.
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