For Hod,for Harry,for England & St george

The Clapham Mob Didn't Appear By Accident The footage from Clapham this week showed something specific: not opportunistic theft, but organised invasion. Dozens of young men moving through shops in coordinated groups, staff powerless, shelves stripped. The Metropolitan Police expects more of it on Saturday. Intelligence suggests the organisers are already planning to move to Crystal Palace to stay ahead of patrols. Shabana Mahmood would like you to believe this is a policing problem. But she commissioned the sentencing review that dismantled deterrence, introduced the legislation as Justice Secretary, then moved to the Home Office in time to receive the consequences in her inbox. Last month, the Sentencing Act came into force. Under its terms, judges and magistrates must treat prison sentences of under one year as a last resort, available only in exceptional circumstances. Ministry of Justice data confirm what that means in practice: 98 per cent of shoplifters currently serving custodial sentences would qualify for community punishments instead. Up to 12,000 of Britain's most prolific retail thieves will avoid jail as a direct consequence. The Government will tell you the evidence supports this approach. Criminals jailed for six months or less reoffend at 59 per cent. Community orders produce a 24 per cent reoffending rate. The numbers are real. The argument is not dishonest. But applying it to prolific shoplifters with fifteen or more previous convictions, already cycling through courts on tags and community behaviour orders, requires a particular kind of wilful blindness. These are not first offenders awaiting rehabilitation. These are people for whom the existing system already had no effective answer, and the new one has even less. The police chiefs said so. Before the Bill passed, the National Police Chiefs Council modelled the consequences. Their projection: a 6 per cent spike in overall offences in year one, translating to 396,000 additional recorded crimes. Gavin Stephens, the NPCC head, was explicit. His own forces were planning for increased offending across every category. Neighbourhood policing and anti-social behaviour responses would suffer as resources shifted to manage the surge. The NPCC asked for an extra £400 million to cope. Parliament was told this. Mahmood's department was told this. The law passed anyway. That sequence matter. Labour did not stumble into the disorder on Clapham High Street. It walked in with its eyes open, accepted the short-term cost on behalf of communities that had no vote on the matter, and called it reform. Marks and Spencer wrote to both Mahmood and Sadiq Khan this week. The letter was not from a campaign group or a tabloid. M&S is Britain's most recognisable high street institution, and its retail director said publicly what every shop worker and security guard in the country already knows: crime is not falling. Criminals are becoming more brazen, more organised and more violent. Staff are frightened. The public is at risk. Khan's response was to call such claims lies. The Government's response was to cite the long-term benefits of rehabilitation. One senior police source described the operational reality with precision: prolific shoplifters act with near impunity because courts never remand them. Catch them, charge them, watch them walk out and do it again. The Sentencing Act has not changed that calculus. For the most persistent offenders, the practical effect is the abolition of consequences. Labour inherited a prison overcrowding crisis. They had choices about how to solve it. They chose this. They were told it would produce more crime. They passed it anyway. The communities absorbing the consequences were not their political problem. "Dozens of young men moving through shops in coordinated groups, staff powerless, shelves stripped. The Metropolitan Police expects more of it on Saturday."

Due to the club’s planned 3-year ticket-rise strategy that ignored the recommendations of the Supporters Board & sees annual increases for regular match goers, we’d encourage fans not to renew their season tickets until near to the deadline on 25 May- further announcements soon!

🚨BREAKING: Buckingham Palace has confirmed King Charles will not issue an Easter message this year

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First words from our new Head Coach 🗣️