Not any more...

[Scrumpy]

Napolean Bonarparte was known to refer to us as  'A nation of shopkeepers'

Not any more.. Being a shopkeeper must be one of the most dangerous jobs one can have..
Thieves think nothing of jumping over shop counters... walking out with trolley loads of stolen goods.. regardless of time of day..
They carry weapons and will threaten anyone who gets in their way..
 Security cameras ..!!!  They show a person with a mask covering their face dressed in black..
 So, nothing to see here...
The public , quite wisely , usually choose not to get involved. They step back..

I wouldn't do the job.. I am not that brave..
Shops are closing all over the country.. High running costs and THEIVES play a big part..

Gone are the days when granny would hit a rogue with her handbag..  

[muddy]

Well if the police won't come out ( unless you make a nasty tweet ) what can you expect ? 

[JBR]

To make matters worse, the courts don't seem interested in handing down meaningful sentences, probably because the prisons are now full of people who have tweeted something the government doesn't like.

I've probably said it before, but I think we should go back to Victorian prison regimes, including hanging for murder.  Until that happens, the country is a free for all for all criminals.

[klondike]

The Amrricans do go for the sort if sentencing you suggest. The evidence is that that doesn"t work
 Unfortunately I can't come up with any working solution either.

[JBR]

The Amrricans do go for the sort if sentencing you suggest. The evidence is that that doesn"t work
 Unfortunately I can't come up with any working solution either.

I beg to differ.  If a murderer is hanged, he is quite unlikely to murder again!

I also believe that the sentence of hanging for murder did work in days gone by, and I have a graph which demonstrates that the number of murders did increase ever since we stopped hanging for murder.

Homicides in UK.jpg

I see that this file fails to load.  Can anyone advise?