ABOUT six weeks ago, a megaprannet called Arthur Clifton announced that his organisation, Take Back Power, was organising a mass nationwide shoplifting event.
Arthur, who I suspect has the IQ of a spider crab, was kind enough to announce exactly when this event would take place.
He said: “We’re going to do a massive takeback. Just picture 50-100 people going into M&S or whatever and just clearing out a Waitrose.”
They were going to be doing this in March, he told his supporters.
This was no secret, then. Most of the newspapers reported what the perpetual adolescent had to say. I wrote about it at the time.
I suggested it would be a good idea if the boss of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, took a bit of an interest in these plans.
Looks like he didn’t. Because on Saturday, the middle-class Take Back Power dingbats did exactly what they said they were going to do.
Moronic lefties
They staged mass shoplifting events in Exeter, Truro, London and Manchester. At branches of supermarkets including Sainsbury’s and Morrisons.
The food, they said, would be distributed to “the poor”. But here’s the interesting thing. The police turned up at these various stores. But not a single arrest was made.
None of the food was returned to the stores. It was instead spirited away by pink-haired tossers.
In other words, the police, and security staff, watched on as this criminal act was carried out — and did nothing.
They let them get away with it. Worse still, they knew it was going to happen.
Back at the start of the month, the Met Police arrested 15 members of Take Back Power. This was in response to that boast of going on a shoplifting spree.
But it seems nobody got done. And no action whatsoever was taken to actually stop the shoplifting.
What sort of message do you think this sends out?
Shoplifting costs British businesses a staggering £4.2BILLION per year.
And, of course, that gets channelled back into the prices of the food we buy. So the first lesson for the moronic lefties in Take Back Power is that the people they are hurting are the very poorest in the country.
The ones who see their grocery bills rise as a consequence of grandstanding shoplifting.
Faced with the shoplifters, the rozzers simply smiled. And let them get away with it
Rod Liddle
You think the supermarkets will just swallow the costs, you cretins? Grow up.
Shoplifting is also increasing on an almost weekly basis. Store owners say the police don’t take complaints seriously.
They report a theft, but the Old Bill don’t seem terribly interested. And here you have the truth of that assertion borne out.
Faced with the shoplifters, the rozzers simply smiled. And let them get away with it.
A quick word on Arthur Clifton, before I move on. He is 25, going on 12. He is, of course, a former public schoolboy. He attended one of the most expensive private schools in the country.
And then he went to Exeter University — the traditional refuge for dim toffs.
The message is: Private property? We don’t give a damn. Think yourself lucky you own anything
Rod Liddle
His mega-rich daddy works for an insurance company with a turnover of billions of quid. A firm that insures rich people’s yachts.
Yes, I know. This stuff beggars belief.
But don’t you wonder what the hell is happening to our criminal justice system?
The Take Back Power event shows pretty clearly that theft has been decriminalised.
This is reflected in the lack of interest the coppers show in burglary cases — fewer than four per cent of burglaries result in criminal convictions. It’s even worse for street crime. In 2024, only one in 170 “theft from person” crimes in London were solved.
The message is: Private property? We don’t give a damn. Think yourself lucky you own anything.
So if the rozzers aren’t arresting shoplifters, just who are they arresting?
Well, they’re arresting people like Harman Singh Kapoor, the Sikh owner of a curry house in Hammersmith, West London.
He doesn’t agree with halal methods of slaughter. That’s the method demanded by Muslims. And Harman is brave enough to say so, publicly.
For this crime, he has been subjected to a series of threats from Muslims.
On Saturday, a mob turned up at his restaurant and intimidated people. Allegedly, threats were made to Harman’s family.
And guess what? The police arrived — and arrested Harman!
The Metropolitan Police confirmed to me that he had been arrested on a charge of “malicious communications”. None of the Muslims were arrested.
Harman said: “All I did was protect my family, yet I was the one arrested.
Posh protesters
“Instead of protecting us, the police targeted my religion — my Sikh faith and my beliefs. This is deeply troubling.”
He is now closing his restaurant, which is a great shame because I’m always on the lookout for places where the meat is not halal.
The treatment of Harman and the indulgence granted to the posh protesters of Take Back Power tell you all you need to know about our police.
The force has become politicised. It has swallowed the lefty propaganda that private property is basically theft.
It no longer feels terribly bothered when people have stuff nicked.
Whatever happens, we mustn’t nark the Muslims. That means turning a blind eye — as we saw with the hideous rape gangs — or arresting anybody who stands up to them
Rod Liddle
And it will turn cartwheels to avoid upsetting the country’s Muslim population.
Whatever happens, we mustn’t nark the Muslims. That means turning a blind eye — as we saw with the hideous rape gangs — or arresting anybody who stands up to them.
We’ve got a decent Home Secretary in Shabana Mahmood.
She could earn a lot of support for her party if she set the police on a different track. Where theft is taken seriously.
Where private property is respected and the people who thieve are punished.
And where one section of the community is not given preferential treatment over the rest.
I KNOW we have to look after the future. I know that some time soon, we are going to have to give up our fossil fuels. But only, surely, when we have a dependable energy source to replace them.
By which I don’t mean acres of hideous wind farms which don’t work when it’s too windy, or when it’s not windy enough.
So, in the meantime, maybe we should live in the present. Because the present is just as scary as the future. What with Iran destabilising the world by blocking oil transports. And my answer to that – and to Ed Miliband – is drill, baby, drill.
HERE’S the deal with Iran. You can take a moral and principled decision to have nothing to do with the American/Israeli bombardment.
That means no access for US planes from our bases. No support at all.
Or you can take a moral and principled decision that the war is just – and support it fully. That means sending ships (what few we have), weapons, men etc.
What you can’t do is argue that the war is wrong. And then send loads of drones and a warship and allow the Yanks to use our bases. That is the way out of a moral coward.
