I was in Tesco this evening, bought unleaded at £1.239 per litre, had to visit shop as I had a 10p per litre voucher with me to redeem (£4.40 it saved me - thank you parents!). Whilst I was paying one of the cashiers noted someone was driving away without paying, lots of cameras in place, they will be caught.

Me - I'd like to see stingers at every exit, anyone stealing petrol will need 4 new tyres too. Instant justice.

Yes, shouldn't be too difficult. Customer has to go to cashier to pay; just do it first instead of afterwards. Need to have some idea of the quantity needed, pump cuts off when that amount is reached.

It works elsewhere by pre-authorisation of the card; stick the card in and key the PIN, and the pump gives you a limit of c. £100. Fill up and you get charged for what you have spent.

It's a faff but quicker than traipsing in to pay and queueing up behind the shoppers.

It could however result in stations closing even faster if they lose shop income.

Oh please, this is just more greasy pole climbing senior plod telling people what they want to hear to help further their own lucrative careers.

I didn't hear them complaining about officers being removed from the beat, about burglaries shoplifting etc being side lined whilst they waxed lyrical about hate crimes and put hundreds of front line officers behind computer screens monitoring thought and speech on social media.

The police have lost the support and faith of the general public and they only have themselves to blame, they should have stood up and said no when they were told they were institutionally racist and wrong to profile such things as stop and search, they should have said no i am not taking several hundred officers off the streets and sitting them behind screens to do your political bidding.

This latest wheeze, ignoring fuel drive offs, is just another brick holding the house up removed, soon enough the whole lot will fall down, and they the police leaders and their political and judicial (who fail to punish adequately when crims are randomly caught) chums will be the ones to blame.

The police are not alone of course, the whole leadership of the country and it's various Common Purpose infiltrated institutions have proved themselves unfit for their purpose.

The Frankfurt ideals are well on the way to their conclusion.

Seems entirely reasonable to me.

So do I, they do it in America so why not here, in fact I see no reason they can't use a tagging system linked to your account -drive in fill up, account details taken as you drive out- it would save waiting to pay with people in front shopping as well!

This post has a very misleading title - I see nothing in there which says that stealing petrol is not a crime. The DT headline is "Motorists should be forced to pre-pay for petrol so police can focus on violent crime"

Seems entirely reasonable to me.

More like so they can focus on 'hate crimes' like people being mean to eachother on Twitter or in the street. The pre-pay method seems to work fine at Asda's unattended filling stations, though I'd prefer it to be staffed with a shop, so anyone wanting to buy food, can just park up in dedicated spaces (paying separately) or fix problems with the pump and not take up filling points for 10 minutes as sometimes happens.

Edited by Engineer Andy on 05/11/2018 at 13:05

If we haven't enough police to deal with crime like drive offs because we can't afford the manpower why on earth do we give away so much money in foreign aid? What am I missing?

Do we really give much away in comparison to what is spent in the UK?

As one of the richest and most powerful countries giving aid is very important.

I'm assuming you give to charity yourself?