Toby Neal on politics: A cost of living crisis or just plain stealing?

Those were not the exact words, which I forget, but it was the meaning.

Now, we have all heard of the trials of austerity Britain, but I suspect things are not yet so bad that the culprits are resorting to eating dahlias and petunias they have nicked from garden centres. And if they have gardens in which to put stolen garden ornaments, they are unlikely to be as hard up as all that.

So the explanation is likely to be much simpler, that they are not the economically downtrodden reacting in desperation to crushing deprivation – they are just thieves. It must be a tough time to be a shopkeeper.

Reading notices on doors and windows when out and about can be unexpectedly interesting.

The routine ones are those that say they have closed down, or have moved to a new location.

On a trip out to a local town a few weeks ago I stopped to read one in the window of a High Street premises. "Dear residents, and visitors to, xxxx," it began. For legal reasons it is prudent not to be too exact where.

It then went on to slag off the previous tenants, but thanked locals for their support. But it seems not everyone in the town stepped up to the plate.

"As far as the few, and KNOWN, local persons that consorted with the tenant, supported his attitude and his dealings... and thereby indirectly insulted the people of xxxx, you are BARRED FOR LIFE FROM THESE PREMISES. Do not enter ever again," it read.

With my journalistic head on I thought it would have made a good story, but the notice was quite old.

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Somebody popped up on the telly the other day extolling the virtues of Rwanda. Beautiful scenery, safe streets, and a warm welcome in a nice clean hostel for anyone packed off there from Britain.

This won't do at all. The whole point of Rishi Sunak's Rwanda policy, which will send a tiny proportion of asylum seekers to that country at astronomic expense, is that it is a place they won't want to go to.

The idea is that the knowledge they will end up there will discourage all those who are coming to Britain in large numbers on small boats.

Whatever the merits of modern Rwanda may or may not be, it is true that Rwanda is not a place the asylum seekers want to go to, because they evidently want to come to Britain rather than be transported to an unfamiliar country in Africa.

But it is also true that they don't want to be in France, otherwise they wouldn't be so keen to leave.

We know that an incoming Labour administration's policy on the small boats would be to scrap the Rwanda plan and "hold talks with France." Perhaps Sir Keir Starmer could have a friendly chat with that nice Monsieur Macron to get him to agree to have them. I wonder what he would say.

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A newly erected statue of the late Queen has created controversy. It depicts Her Majesty with corgis at her feet. Critics say it looks nothing like her. The corgis are good though.

I rather like it. I also seem to be in a minority of one in rather liking that controversial statue of the Duke of Edinburgh in Cambridge in which he looks like a gowned ghost, and which the local council has ordered to be removed.

This new appreciation or otherwise of statues is a double edged sword.

People used to wander in the shadows of statues in towns and cities often not knowing, or caring, who they depicted or anything about them.

All this modern trouble has come because people are taking notice of them. The statue topplers have a lot to answer for.