Dear LPG,

I recently read that the number of police operatives in our borough is dwindling and is at its lowest ever since 2010, while our newspapers and televised news reports offer us more and more accounts of crime in our borough; and indeed in the UK in general.

It seems to me that it all comes back to money and time.  The government’s most popular messages, apart from the Brexit ones, are nearly always about the funding, that they don’t have, to provide many of the facilities we pay them for, while our council tax continues to rise.

It is said that you can find anything on the internet if you look hard enough and I very quickly discovered that it was not hard to find evidence of the frightening, and depressing truth that surrounds this subject, and happens really close to where we live.

Times were, when what we read and saw showed these things happening in other places around the world and I think that so much of what is happening now can be blamed on the fact that, even though employment stats show more people in work than for a long time, there have to be too many who have too much time on their hands and not enough work to occupy that time,  which allows them to observe the terrible crimes, both factual and fictional, that are occurring today.

Having found just a little of the online evidence, I have asked LPG to share those findings with a view to getting us elders helping in the only way we can.  I feel that we can improve the situation by making this a topic of conversation, and highlighting this problem, with the younger members of our own families when the opportunity arises; after all, even though most of us are ready to feel secure in the knowledge that none of our loved ones could possibly be involved, I am willing to bet that those who know them, and those young thugs themselves, have grandparents.

JC. Brockley

JC  asked LPG to share the following links…

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