INTERESTING news for Irish exports this week with a survey suggesting that Jameson whiskey is now the second most shop-lifted product in US stores. It edges out a combined “electrical tools” category, which is the third most stolen, and the new iPhone, which is fourth. Jameson also finishes well ahead of Nike trainers (10th). Only a prestige food item – filet mignon steak – is more popular with thieves, according to security experts interviewed by Adweek.com.
This is a back-handed compliment to Jameson’s marketing people, I suppose, although insofar as the list represents a hierarchy of consumer desirables, there are mitigating factors. iPhones are probably more difficult to steal than bottles of whiskey, for example. But in turn, filet mignon is less likely than whiskey to have security tags attached to it.
In any case, there is a bitter seasonal joke somewhere here for retailers, on the general theme of “lifting spirits”. I’ll leave readers to make it up themselves (maybe you could work in something about “hot whiskey”, while you’re at it. ) In the meantime, I was struck by two other findings of the survey. One was a big increase in stealing for what security experts call “need-based purposes” (not to be confused with “purpose-based needs”). The other is that seven out of 10 people caught shop-lifting say they didn’t enter the shop planning to steal: they just succumbed to temptation, spontaneously.
Funnily enough, I found myself pondering that very question only last weekend. I was standing at a crowded Luas stop in Dublin when a group of street urchins rounded a corner at high speed and shot up the tracks past us carrying a number of consumer goods for which – I fear – they had neglected to pay the shop they had just departed. Indeed, such was their hurry that one of them dropped an item in the street and didn’t dare return to collect it.
It was, ironically, a runner. A runner of a well-known and expensive brand: now rendered – unless reunited with its partner – as useless as the one the one that got away. But as the street urchins disappeared over the horizon, I couldn’t help wondering if they’d entered the shop planning to steal, or whether temptation had suddenly overwhelmed them. Was it possible, I asked myself, they had been entirely innocent until a little voice – perhaps a marketing slogan – told them: “Just do it”? No, probably not.
WITHthe year that's in it nearly out of it, mention of the above topic gives me an excuse to run one last extract from Cruiskeen Lawn, which failed to make the centenary series in October. Here is Myles from 1943, musing on the claim of a district justice that there was "far too much shop-lifting in Dublin" (and having already dealt with the issue of how much shop-lifting would be the right amount).
“God be good to the days when I was in business meself. I opted for a gratuity when I left the Black and Tans and bought two small shops. I think it was groceries I was selling. I did very well and in no time had bought five others. Soon I was a chain-store king (although I’m going to be honest and admit that chains was the one thing we never stocked). But I’ll tell you what happened. I ran into a frightful epidemic of shop-lifting. First my Stoneybatter house was lifted, then the Inchicore one. The loss of the shops was bad enough but as well as that I got into trouble with the Corporation over the gaping empty sites. PLEASE RE-INSTATE MISSING PREMISES WITHIN TEN DAYS FAILING WHICH. Red ink.
“Then in one week six other shops were lifted, including the head office, which contained a professional typist. One of the shop-lifters got qualms of (surely I needn’t say of what) and put the shop he had taken back, but of course on the wrong site. It looked like a small boy in man’s clothes – it didn’t fit anywhere. Thereafter, there was only one thing to do. We had to chain the chain-stores. People thought this was odd and custom declined. Worse, my enemies started to taunt me about my “tied houses”. The only customers who did not desert me were the chain-smokers, who came to my chain-stores in the hope of getting chains, despite the fact that we never stocked the things. Ineffective custom of this kind was no use to me and I sold out to a wealthy Stater the year of the split.”
BACK TO 2011, meanwhile, and a sharp-eyed London reader tells me that on Tuesday, this newspaper reported the concerns of Gerry Adams about Government plans to impose charges on "sceptic tanks" (sic). Along with cuts in services, Mr Adams said, these would devastate rural Ireland. To which I reply, maybe. Even so, I'm with the Government on this one.
Scepticism is rife everywhere now, but its uncontrolled growth is surely more of a problem in rural areas than in urban ones that have the infrastructure to deal with it. I’m thinking of cafes, literary salons, and anywhere else that groups of sceptics – “tanks” if you must – can safely congregate. The danger in more isolated areas is that a badly-constructed tank could leak ideas into the surrounding countryside, causing scepticemia among the impressionable. That’s why charges might not be a bad thing. If sceptic tanks are to be tolerated in rural Ireland, they need to be organised on a supervised, communal basis, like the group water schemes.