14 The Sunday Times May 22, 2022COMMENT
Rod Liddle
I
was on hold to Andy Cooke’s office
when the news came through that
the government did not agree with
his analysis — and I was thus left in
something of a quandary. Mr Cooke
is the new chief inspector of
constabulary for England and Wales
and had made the helpful remark
that, in these times of rising prices and
economic hardship, the police should
“use their discretion” when considering
whether to prosecute people who had
stolen simply to eat.
And so there I was in Waitrose, with
two Gressingham duck legs shoved
down my trousers, Brussels pâté in my
overcoat pocket and the phone in one
hand, ready to ask Andy how much he
thought I could get away with without
being banged up. I reckoned I was OK
with the duck leg, which I intended to
confit and eat with the puy lentils
concealed underneath my jumper, and
probably the pâté too. But I wondered if
the nduja paste was pushing it a bit, not
to mention the pinot noir.
I am a newcomer to shoplifting, you
see, and am not yet wholly au fait with
the rules. An important part of Andy’s
job is adjudicating exactly how much
can be shoplifted by a single person,
depending upon what comestibles have
been chosen and the poverty of the
supposed miscreant. I am in huge
poverty, having recently blown my
wages on vast amounts of alcohol and a
large, ill-advised wager concerning
Angela Rayner, and so had no money left
for food.
You might well argue that my poverty
was wholly self-inflicted, the
consequence of “poor life choices”, as
they say — and so, in normal
circumstances, would I. But I might
point out that my drinking and betting
are actually the consequences of terrible
addictions and therefore I am no more to
blame for my penurious position than is
someone earning six quid an hour as a
pox doctor’s clerk. Poor life choices all
round, innit.
In the liberal paradise of SanFrancisco shoplifting has been
effectively decriminalised by the
wretched Democrats who run the place.
You don’t even need to hide the stuff
you’re nicking. Steal less than $950-
worth and there will be no prosecution.
What has happened as a result? A sunlit
upland where the poor are no longer
poor? Nope, it means in the chemist
chain Walgreens shoplifting has soared
by 500 per cent and security costs have
increased 46-fold. Further down the
line, higher prices are paid by the mugs
who abide by the awfully démodé
tradition of paying for stuff.But the liberals will not resile from
this stance, even though it involves, as
usual, a philosophical paradox, a
contradiction. They will argue,
simultaneously, that the poor are not
more inclined to criminality than the
rich and that the poor are driven to
crime as a consequence of the
predations of the rich. It is a very stupid
analysis and makes me wonder if liberals
go out shoplifting too — because one fact
we know from the stats is that
criminality is in inverse proportion to IQ.
Crime is largely committed by the very
thick, and most of the time it is not very
lucrative. Or at least it isn’t when the
police do their jobs properly.
Increasingly, though, the Old Bill
swallows the leftie propaganda. Not just
the woke absurdities — rainbow-painted
patrol cars, coppers going down on one
knee and an infatuation with largely
non-existent hate crimes — but the
rejection of the bourgeois notion that
property is something that ought to be
protected by the state.
In some areas the Old Bill warns that it
probably won’t investigate your
burglary, and so we are now in a position
where only 5 per cent of such crimes
nationally result in a conviction. (The
conviction rate for those hate crimes, by
the way, is 85 per cent.) Had your car
nicked? Don’t expect to get it back, still
less to see anyone charged for the theft.
Last year the proportion of stolen
vehicles that were not recovered
reached a new record of 72 per cent.
And then there is shoplifting. It has
risen enormously since the beginning of
the century, and the official figures (the
reality is much higher) suggest that there
were 374,395 incidences in the year
2018-19, costing the shops almost two
billion quid. Which is passed on to
consumers. Including the poor
consumers. The ones who, as a
consequence of whatever archaic and
misbegotten belief system, still hold on
to the notion that it is wrong to steal, a
notion that seemingly no longer
commends itself to our police.lAn important breakthrough in
philosophy was made in the erudite
journal Think last week, with “The
Metaphysics of Farts” by Bill Capra.
Mr Capra considers the question of
whether a fart is the act of breaking
wind (which he calls the “essential-
bum-origin view”) or the unpleasant
odour that is then experienced by
others (the “phenomenological
view”). The conclusive considerationin favour of the latter view turns out to
be the existence of the silent fart.
Mr Capra’s previous papers include
one explaining that everything in the
world is a goat, including cats, which
he believes are “almost certainly”
goats dressed up as cats.
It is comforting to know that, in
these turbulent times, philosophers
are still trying to make the world more
comprehensible for the rest of us.Doctors fear new pandemic
PHOTOBUBBLE: NICK NEWMANIf your food bill was a bit cheap last week, don’t
worry: the Old Bill’s adding a shoplifting levy
If you think
you’ve got
monkeypox
you’d better
swing byA new controversy has emerged over
Crossrail, the very expensive railway line
built to serve the millions who, for years,
have longed to travel with moderate
rapidity from Reading to Shenfield.
The route has been renamed
Elizabeth, in honour of Her Maj. But it
will be signposted throughout as
“Elizabeth Line” — unlike all the rest,
which are simply “Bakerloo”, “Circle”
and so on. Perhaps this is to avoid
confusing people called Elizabeth who
may think the signs are meant for them
and will dutifully follow them,
wondering why there isn’t a similar
service for people called Chloe or Bob.
But what if there is a woman called
Elizabeth Line? And are people called
Victoria forever travelling, mistakenly, to
Walthamstow?The cost is
paid by those
who hold on
to the archaic
notion that
it is wrong
to stealWe built a Tube
line for you, LizAnother example of grammar that
betrays a deep and abiding evil at the
heart of our society: the unnecessary
insertion of “today” into a question
asked by anyone in the service industry.
As in, “How can I help you today?”
They all do it. It must be in some
training manual. “Always use ‘today’
when talking to a customer because it
shows you are sufficiently alert to know
that it is today, rather than yesterday.”
I was the recipient of a particularly
fine example last week. For a treat we
had gone out for breakfast, and at the
end of the meal the waitress said: “Can I
bring the card machine for you today?”
No, no, bring it next Thursday
afternoon. I suppose it’s a small mercy
she didn’t say: “Can myself bring
yourself the card machine today?”Today’s the day for
grotty grammar