Shoplifting scourge ringing alarm bells

MY CHAMPAGNE GLASS IS ALWAYS HALF FULL

- VIRGINIA BLACKBURN

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.