Channel 4’s George Clarke robbed at knifepoint for his watch in Oxford Circus

23 comments

1. Farage said this a while ago in one of the debates and got laughed at for it, but I’ve found it to be true with the people I know: if they have two brain cells, most well-off people are simply no longer wearing their nice watches in London anymore.

   It’s now just a norm amongst London circles, a shared understanding that you simply *will* be inevitably mugged if you have a nice watch. There was even an article this year about wealthy Indians raising the alarm and saying London was worse than Delhi – https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/07/indias-wealthy-fear-london-is-worse-than-delhi-for-muggings

2. It’s a shame, but I hope this doesn’t get the amount of attention I’m sure it will, happens to so many people and phone snatching but because they are not famous no one will pay attention

3. Let’s be honest you should be able to walk around wearing what you want without fear of it being stolen. Same with open shop lifting we’ve almost become accepting of crime it’s quite scary.

4. I have a nice watch left to me by a relative. It’s beautiful and worth quite a lot now. There is no way I would ever wear it out in London (I live in Dalston). It’s just not worth the anxiety let alone if something were to happen. I can’t see how or why it’s going to get any better tbh.

5. Clearly they were asking for it, dirty timekeepers walking around openly, with a watch. Serves them right.

6. Generally people don’t get killed/kidnapped for a phone. Unlike watches.

7. Not one mention of the watch brand or value, journalism in this country is at an all time low.

8. An unfortunate consequence of living in a society that pushes the mindset that having money and expensive possessions is what is required to be happy and fulfilled whilst maintaining a structure in which everyone is not able to achieve that through legitimate means. Something like that anyway.

   And before anyone blames immigrants or some other contemporary gripe that we are told is the issue – we’ve been doing this for a long time, it’s just easier to mug someone for their watch now than to do a blag on a post office.

9. Well the London Mayor says it all part of living in a big city so??

10. The way i look at it is would i walk around with several 1000s of £ around my neck? What might possibly happen? I’d be a target for sure. It would be great to be in a society where personal theft was unheard of, punishment extreme, chances of getting caught almost certain. But thats not here, nor has it ever been. I think it only fair that if someone wealthy wants to display oppulance they can do so, but it puts an extra burden on the police. They wont catch anyone, even with cctv footage and their role is to hand out crime reference numbers

11. The guy who is head of corporate security where I work came on an all-staff call the other day and basically said, if you’re coming to the London office don’t wear or carry expensive stuff or walk round with your phone out because it probably will get taken if you keep doing it. Oh and watch out for people hanging round on the street outside the door after dark.

    Tbh I work in Birmingham and it is getting just as bad especially at night, we’ve had a few incidents. Mostly car crime.

12. Honestly, I’m in my 40’s and have lived in London my whole life. I’m not convinced the number of thieves has changed very much, but the nature of crime changes.

    I grew up in a shit area where thieves went from corner shop to off licence to bookie to bank. Or from car stereo to car to houses. The reality now is, if you’re a thief, taking things straight from a person is the best risk to reward you’re going to get these days.

13. I wonder if this sub will ever have anything positive on it?

    I don’t even think people are being characteristically gloomy. I just think our country, culture, social fabric and sense of community has been all but eroded.

14. Always get a nice watch engraved, makes it much less valuable and harder to sale on the black market. It’s a small win against a big loss and larger society problem.

15. Sad that London is like this now.
    I grew up here. Nowadays I feel like I’m taking the same precautions with my stuff that I do in developing nations.

16. It’s only people who live in London who think London is a good place to live.

17. No wonder this country has the highest millionaire exits in the world. If I was well off I’d fuck off too!

18. Let’s hope he can visit the thief in a few years time and see what he’s done with it

19. If London didn’t have insane crime I would definitely buy an iPhone and probably an Apple watch too, but instead I have a cheap android phone and no watch at all, because there’s a good chance of getting mugged

    This is not normal, we have been failed by multiple political parties who have overseen the failed experiment of soft sentencing, it obviously doesn’t fucking work, criminals operate with impunity. This sort of crime just doesn’t happen in Dubai or Singapore because the authorities would come down on the criminal like a tonne of bricks

20. When people think someone deserves to be robbed is when society lost. Nobody deserves to be robbed if you agree with the showmanship or not.

21. Not trying to pin the blame on Clarke here, but I’ve always found the idea of dressing flash to be an open invite for thieves. Why advertise, especially in cities.

22. never understood the watch obsession.

    They don’t even do anything.

23. The sole purpose of a flashy watch in 2024 is to signal affluence to people in your perimeter.

    If you’re not affluent enough to also exert control over the types of people in your perimeter, you’re risking being robbed.

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