Further to the news from a couple of weeks ago about people in part of Southampton hiring their own security force to patrol their streets at a cost of £3.15 each pw, the Mail reports today that TJ Morris, which owns the Home Bargains shops, is now posting pictures of alleged shoplifters in their shop windows. Their website also shows a selection of CCTV pictures of ‘customers’ the company would like information about. Know any of them? You could earn £1,000 reward. The Mail reports:

But a human rights expert warned that the company was breaking the law by branding the suspects as guilty without having had a fair trial.

They need to be caught first!

The naming and shaming aspect also contravenes Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial.

I should have known. European blah, blah, blah.

Maybe shoplifting isn’t important enough for the police, even if it does cost the company £6 million pounds a year. There are obviously more important things like this story in the Mail, which I find hard to believe it is so ridiculous: Film maker is taken to court for stealing 0.003p – at a cost of over £5,000 to the taxpayer.

The amount – one three hundred and thirty-third of one penny – was the estimated cost of the electricity Mark Guard used when he momentarily switched on the light in a disused house to turn off the burglar alarm that squatters had set off.

He was arrested on suspicion of theft of electricity and locked in a cell for hours.  The irony is that he is a documentary filmmaker who was staking the house waiting for the squatters. The Mail says:

Mr Guard has been following and filming criminals and homeless people on the streets of London for two years.

Using hidden cameras he has been able to capture drug deals and shop thefts as they actually happen.

Perhaps the police are jealous that he captures more criminals on film than they can only dream about in reality.

Mr Guard entered the record books in 2006 for buying a half-acre plot of land for £1,000 and selling it for £0.5million 11 years later – making him a 350,000per cent profit.

Jealousy it is then.