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Many pensioners are active members of their local neighbourhood watch and their diligence and enthusiasm has undoubtedly contributed to a significant and on-going reduction in the number of crimes committed against people and property.
The most effective neighbourhood watches are usually organised by retired police officers or ironmongers, both of whom have a proven insight into the mind and motivation of the petty criminal.
Neighbourhood watches can be of real value in controlling anti-social behaviour, particularly if you implement a few preventative measures such as setting fire to all skateboards in the area, visiting schools accompanied by a barely controlled Rottweiler and setting up your own off-license selling cheap cider laced with sleeping pills or laxatives.
To form your own neighbourhood watch, you can distribute a simple leaflet offering people the chance to “beat the crap out of some snotty little herbert” – and this is particularly persuasive if you dramatise the subject by breaking into your neighbours’ houses and leave the leaflet stapled to the occupant’s cat, goldfish or youngest child.
While placing a neighbourhood watch sticker in your window can have a measure of deterrence, having ready access to a baseball bat, double-barrelled shotgun or bag of scorpions is even more effective – especially since the current legal interpretation of ‘reasonable force’ includes anything short of beheading, burying alive or compulsory viewing of Waterloo Road.
Pensioners living in the country have set up their own version of neighbourhood watch to protect livestock such as horses, sheep and cattle, and this is known as neigh-baa-hoof watch.