Mark Andrews: Trump's sour grapes, Storm Goretti, and when did shoplifting become socially acceptable?

This week West Midlands Police posted a photo of a man they wanted to speak to in connection with three shoplifting offences, stealing goods worth more than £200.

My first reaction was 'about time too'. How refreshing to see coppers going after real criminals, rather than scouring Twitter for politically incorrect jokes, finger-wagging about 'non-crime hate incidents'.

But it appears I may be in a minority. What followed the appeal was not an offer of useful information, but a social media pile-on from people angry that police were pursuing him at all. Hundreds of comments, almost entirely critical of the police for actually doing their job, and offers from the public to pay his fine. 'Leave him alone', 'Fair play to him, I'm sure Tesco won't go bankrupt' , 'our corrupt politicians are stealing a living at our expense' were fairly typical reactions. The general consensus seemed to be that he was a bit of a loveable rogue, a latter day Robin Hood, while the police were acting like the Sheriff of Nottingham. If anyone was the villain, it was Tesco for charging too much for its groceries.

I know social media isn't the real world, but doesn't all this say something rather dark about where society is heading? That stealing is ok as long as it is the right kind of stealing, like from one of those horrible big companies that actually makes a profit and provide jobs for people silly enough to work for a living.  

This is wrong on all counts. First of all, people who steal from Tesco steal from all of us. Bosses don't cover the losses out of their own largesse, they put it on the price of the groceries we all buy. Secondly, millions of us probably hold an indirect stake in Tesco through our pension funds, so the thieves are stealing our retirement too.

But most of all, there is the impact shoplifting has on the people who work in shops. A couple of years ago, I interviewed a shopworker about this very matter, and she told me how she would often go home and cry after spending a day being taunted by self-satisfied thieves who would smirk at her while they went about their business - secure in the knowledge that the police would do nothing whatsoever. 

What I would really love to know is what proportion of the people who think stealing £200 is such a jolly jape are also working themselves into a lather about the legality of Donald Trumps actions in Venezuela. 

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Not that they might not have a point about Trump, whose recent actions have been disconcerting to say the least. While no-one should shed any tears for the dreadful tyrant Maduro, it is odd indeed that he has installed the dictator's protege Delcy Rodriguez as interim leader. Why not go for the globally respected, dissident opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose courageous fight for democracy saw her presented with the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize?

Ok, I think I've just answered my own question. 

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You might have noticed that there are a few inches of snow outside. Not exactly the carnage forecast in the Daily Express, but enough to shut down the railways, schools, doctors' surgeries and, of course, council staff being told to work from home. And, of course, enough to give it the rather silly name Goretti. Do they declare these emergencies so often, that they're now running out of sensible names?

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Maybe I'm in a minority on this too, but I can't help but think the authorities have been a bit hasty in shutting everything down. The trains, the trams (well obviously), thousands of schools, even some doctors' surgeries.

How different from the record cold winter of 1963, when the schoolkids were told to wear their coats in the classroom, the trains continued to run, and life went on as normal. 

But today we live in the age of hyperbole. So a week of sunshine, and it's a 'climate emergency'. And a few days of snow means we have to give it a funny name, and shut everything down.