Leader: Lock up and keep your eyes peeled

The dark nights are here, Christmas is coming, and the crooks are out and about. Over the past few days and weeks there has been a surge of crime across Shropshire, some petty, some not so.

Across Shropshireburglaries have been running at six a day. Even poppy tins in churches are not sacrosanct. A wind turbine at a school at St Martins was a target, there was a jewellery raid in Oswestry. . . we could go on.

Farmers have been seeing expensive machinery go missing. Fuel oil is being drained off and taken away. Outbuildings, sheds, and garages are a one-stop shop for thieves if they are insecure.

The background is the toughest economic times since the early 1980s. There used to be haves, and have-nots, but nowadays nobody is happy to be a have-not and those of a criminal bent are not too fussy about how they join the ranks of the haves.

Rural crime is difficult for police to combat because the thieves know full well that they have a host of advantages – remote areas, relatively low police manpower, and so on.

While victims of crime are understandably irritated if it is implied that they are in some way responsible through their own carelessness, it is nonetheless both sensible and obvious that in the forefront of the fight against this rural crimewave should be some constructive self help.

It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking "it could not happen here". Those with that attitude are a soft target and are riding their luck.

So follow the police advice. Lock up outbuildings and sheds.

And keep an eye out for suspicious activity.

Stopping determined criminals is always difficult. But that is no reason to make things easy for them.

Use them or lose them:

The unique selling point for Shropshire's traditional town centres is those stores, often family owned, which have served the community for generations and offer that personal touch that the mega stores cannot match.

So with the closing of Owen's, Oakengates has lost another of its jewels.

Owen's first opened in the town in 1872 as a hay and seed merchant, and has changed with the times, ultimately dealing in radios and televisions, which is how modern generations will know it.

Alas, whereas once stores were only in competition with those in the same street or town, today the internet has created a global market. Janet Owen says the internet is largely the cause of Owen's demise.

You could say this is just the operation of market forces. But it hardly seems a fair battle.

Money is being spent on trying to regenerate Telford's district centres, including Oakengates. Yet the shops are still closing, which inevitably damages the shopping environment.

The solution is obvious. People must go out of their way to support their local shops.

And if they do not – well, the consequences are obvious as well.