These scumbags on our streets are causing terror in Britain and now it's time for a change

About 20 years ago, I made my first visit to Cape Town, a lovely city in beautiful surroundings, to which I'd happily return in a nanosecond. But I was rather shocked to see that in its nicest shopping street, just about all the shop owners had locked their doors. You had to ring a bell to get in, which meant owners could see exactly who they were letting into their emporium, control numbers and turn shifty types away.

I had never encountered such a thing before: now it's the norm. In our leafy little corner of west London, much favoured by the thespian community, just about all the clothes shops do this. Many of the food shops employ security guards.

This is the kind of area in which a crisis constitutes the local deli running out of edamame beans, but so endemic has shoplifting now become, everyone is having to protect themselves.

The latest is that shop owners are being invited to "meet and greet" potential thieves on the grounds that said thief will feel he is being watched and behave accordingly.

As if that would deter some shaven-headed thug high on drugs who knows that even if he is apprehended absolutely nothing will be done. And this comes hot on the heels of the shopkeeper in Wrexham, Rob Davies, who was "spoken to" about a notice in his shop Run Ragged, in which he referred to "scumbags shoplifting".

He's another poor soul who's having to keep his wares under lock and key. This is absolutely not a rant at the police. We rightly wonder why they sometimes seem more keen on tracking disobliging comments on social media than to catch actual criminals, but that is totally because of the climate in which they have to operate.

Whenever I've had dealings with the police they have been charming and helpful and I have never forgotten the time, years ago, when some scumbags had broken into my flat and stolen jewellery that had belonged to my grandmother that one, seeing me in tears, made me a cup of tea. No, the blame lies, fair and square, with the people who have allowed this situation to develop and in London, that means Sadiq Khan.

And it is the same across the rest of the UK. It also applies to politicians who should take a zero-tolerance approach to any and all crime and making the streets safer places to walk. It also needs a new mindset.

My parents and grandparents would have been absolutely appalled by the current wave of shoplifting. They certainly would not have dismissed it as a minor crime. No one in their right mind expects Labour to get tough on anything today, with the possible exception of the wives of Tory councillors, jailed after a hastily deleted anti-migrant tweet, but if any political party makes it a total priority to restore British values and throw in clink anyone who abuses them, Number 10 may beckon yet.

Labour has been an even worse failure than some of us predicted. The opportunity for its two main rivals is there.

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The always ghastly Nicola Sturgeon has been doing the rounds to promote her new book. In one interview she said on the subject of Adam Graham/Isla Bryson and trans rights issues that her "communications skills" failed her. Yeah, right.

Ain't no amount of "communications skills" ever going to justify putting a rapist into a women's prison. Can't Nicola go back under whichever rock she crawled out from? Frankly, she has delighted us for long enough.

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Mariella Frostrup has complained that when she sat down at a dinner party and started to talk about the menopause, the man next to her recoiled. I don't blame him. I'd have done the same. They want me to talk about hanging out with Mick Jagger, she then added. Has she ever noticed Mick never talks about hanging out with Mariella Frostrup?

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There's a new memoir out by an ex-member of the royal household, which describes his first encounter with Prince Harry as being pelted by water balloons. What a little brat, I thought. No wonder people describe him as being spoiled I'd assumed Harry was about five when this happened. It turns out he was 19. Explains a lot.

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So farewell then, Terence Stamp, star of numerous 1960s flicks and lover of "The Shrimp", Julie Christie et al. Mind you, when I saw this picture, my first thought was that Julie Christie seemed to spend almost the entire decade looking sultry with various handsome men standing behind her. Nice work if you can get it!