The new Tesco opened locally in a damp squib. One Sunday Jimmy donned his false beard and burqa and ventured in for ready meals and came back empty-handed. Milk is more expensive than in the local, Asian-run, convenience stores. Whenever he or I pass the shop seems deserted of customers. Not that we pass very often; even though we live closer than just about anyone else, it's not a sensible way to get home. Except from the doctors or Post Office. Footfall past is, by my observation of eleven years, minimal.
There is a cash machine, which I have noted, as a cheaper alternative to paying £1.50 in a convenience store or walking to the erstwhile nearest free one.
Turns out that the man who goes to refill the cash machine has been robbed more than once. The Crime Prevention officer has advised Tesco to install CCTV but they can't be bothered. There's a gang who watch the machine. Perhaps they'll also be mugging people who use the cash machine. Or get cash-back in-store. No CCTV, no crime prevention.
Soon, Carphone Warehouse will open. And their customers will be mugged for their brand new phones.
When the rich move into their £300k jerry-built box-size flats in 30 Streatham Place, they'll be easy targets for the scrotey scumbags who have been decanted into the nearby area in order to prey on the superrich residents of Thirty Streatham Place.
The Regeneration Project are furious at the mini crimewave that has been visited upon our area.
They won't install CCTV here for the amount of graffiti around Tesco either.
You'd have thought considering the investment Tesco must make, that a bit of CCTV would be a drop in the ocean and surely worth protecting their investment - wouldn't you?!
Posted by: Pewari Naan | Monday, 28 August 2006 at 20:03