Kingdom Services boss says retailers seeing ‘different sort of shoplifter’ with more theft by people ‘who just can’t afford food’
Food retailers have seen a “massive” increase in pensioner shoplifters over the last year, according to a leading store security firm, amid the rising cost of living.
John Nussbaum, director of service for retail at Kingdom Services Group, has said his staff were seeing a “different sort of shoplifter now” as the cost of living “pushes people to something they’ve never done before”.
Kingdom, which provides services for hundreds of stores across the country, including supermarkets, convenience stores and shopping malls, has received 20 to 30 reports of shoplifting a week from across the UK involving “people who just can’t afford to buy food”, Nussbaum said.
He told PA Media: “We’ve seen a massive increase in pensioners shoplifting, putting a jar of coffee in their bag and one in the trolley, that sort of thing.”
He estimated that 5% of all those caught shoplifting by Kingdom staff on a weekly basis were aged over 50.
“For us over the last 12 months, we’ve got this different level of crime now. We’re now experiencing something different – pensioners, people who don’t normally shoplift,” Nussbaum said, adding: “We’ve had instances of mothers caught shoplifting when they’re with their kids.
“We’re used to seeing the organised gangs, that’s the norm, but the types of people being caught now has changed.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper makes a speech at the Organised Immigration Crime Summit at Lancaster House in central London, March 31, 2025
Unions and campaigners condemn Home Secretary after government confirms scrapping of care worker visas
UNIONS and campaigners have condemned Labour’s immigration reforms after Home Secretary Yvette Cooper confirmed that the government will scrap the care worker visa for overseas recruitment.
Announcing the policy ahead of Monday’s Immigration White Paper, Ms Cooper said the visa route would be closed to “prevent” international recruitment for care jobs, though companies may continue to employ people already in Britain on care visas whose sponsorship has subsequently been cancelled.
The White Paper will also change skilled visa thresholds to graduate-level and includes tighter restrictions on recruitment for jobs with skills shortages.The legislation aims to bring down net migration — the number of foreign nationals who arrive in Britain, minus the number of people who leave — which stood at 728,000 in 2024.
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Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: “The NHS and the care sector would have collapsed long ago without the thousands of workers who’ve come to the UK from overseas.
“Migrant health and care staff already here will now be understandably anxious about what’s to happen to them. “The government must reassure these overseas workers they’ll be allowed to stay and continue with their indispensable work.”
Ms McAnea, whose union represents NHS and care workers, said that care workers from around the world “no longer want” to come to Britain due to “hostile” policies, bans on bringing family members, and widespread exploitation by unscrupulous employers.
dizzy: This appears a very stupid, short-sighted step but then that is this Fascist Labour party. What do they hope to achieve? To look tough on migration by stopping foreign workers willing to be paid a pittance for wiping UK asses and exploited by their UK employers in other ways? Migrant agricultural workers too?
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
U.S. President Donald Trump next to the Thames Water and KKR logos. DeSmog collage. Credit: Gage Skidmore / Thames Water / KKR
The U.S. private equity firm KKR, which has been selected as the ‘preferred bidder’ for the takeover of Thames Water, gave a seven-figure sum to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee, DeSmog can report.
Official records show that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Co LP (KKR) donated $1 million to the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee on 7 January. The committee is appointed by the president-elect to arrange the inauguration ceremony, when a U.S. president is formally sworn into office.
The embattled London-based utilities provider Thames Water, in debt to the tune of £20 billion, is attempting to secure new investment to save it from nationalisation. In March, KKR was granted preferred bidder status, giving it a 10-week period to raise the equity to buy the water company.
KKR is reported to have lodged an initial £4 billion bid in exchange for a majority stake in Thames Water, which serves 16 million customers.
However, campaigners have raised concerns about KKR’s suitability to own Thames Water, given its financial ties to Trump.
“KKR recently donated $1 million to the inauguration fund of President Trump, a man who has repeatedly called the climate crisis a hoax,” said Matthew Topham, lead campaigner at the pro-nationalisation campaign group We Own It. “Let’s not kid ourselves that this company will swoop in and clean up our rivers and lakes.
“The government has ducked the issue for too long – special administration to slash the rotten debt, then full public ownership, is the only way to reverse this catastrophe.”
The new Trump administration has initiated a bonfire of clean air and water regulations – rules that were set to save the lives of 200,000 people according to The Guardian. Gina McCarthy, chair of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under former U.S. President Barack Obama, said the announcement of the mass rollbacks was the “most disastrous day in EPA history”. During his first term, from 2017 to 2021, Trump repealed more than 100 environmental regulations.
Since being inaugurated for a second time, Trump has pledged to once again withdraw the U.S. from the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement, which set an international target for limiting global warming, and has declared a “national energy emergency” to allow the U.S. to “drill, baby, drill” for new fossil fuels.
KKR’s prospective ownership of a vital public utility has also been questioned on the basis of the U.S. firm’s business model. Private equity firms – which buy and restructure companies – are known to cut costs, and increase prices for consumers, in order to maximise their profits.
KKR was infamously dubbed the “Barbarians at the Gate” in the late 1980s for its takeover of U.S. conglomerate RJR Nabisco.
“It beggars belief that anyone could seriously think this is a business model and owner who will truly fix the crisis at Thames Water,” said Mathew Lawrence, director of the think tank Common Wealth. “It is exactly the behaviour of loading Thames Water up with debt, extracting money, and underinvesting that has led us to this point. What is needed is long-term stewardship, patient investment, and putting the public and our water system first for once – not the interests of elite financial firms.”
These sentiments were reflected in Parliament this week, through a House of Lords address by Labour peer Prem Sikka. “Thames Water was put on the road to ruin by private equity,” he said. “Now its shareholders have designated KKR, another private equity group, as their preferred bidder. KKR’s business model is profiteering, high leverage, low investment, asset stripping and high cash extraction. That will inevitably multiply Thames’s problems.”
KKR and Thames Water were approached for comment.
Debt and Donations
Thames Water’s debt ballooned under the ownership of Australian private equity firm Macquarie, increasing from £3.4 billion in 2006 to £10.8 billion when the firm sold its stake in 2017.
During Macquarie’s ownership of Thames Water, the private equity firm extracted roughly £2.7 billion in dividends and a further £2.2 billion in loans. Despite this, Macquarie has recently said that it is “very proud” of its ownership record.
KKR’s preliminary bid proposed a mechanism that would allow the holders of Thames Water debt – including the U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management – to become Thames Water shareholders.
Elliott Management is an activist hedge fund that recently built up a large stake in BP and has urged the British fossil fuel major to ditch a number of its green commitments. BP’s profits recently dropped by 48 percent amid this pivot back to oil and gas. The hedge fund is run by Paul Singer, who also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee.
Turning around the performance of Thames Water will take considerable investment and business acumen. Thames Water reported a 40 percent increase in pollution incidents in the first half of 2024, while the firm has been allowed to raise customer bills by 35 percent on average over the upcoming years. Senior KKR Europe executive Johannes Huth said last year that water bills must rise to boost investment in ageing infrastructure.
KKR also has a 25 percent stake in Northumbrian Water, which it acquired in 2022.
KKR’s Connections
In addition to its donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, KKR has other ties to fossil fuels and those who oppose climate action.
Analysis by the investigative group Private Equity Climate Risks published in April 2024 reported that KKR has a large fossil fuel portfolio, with 188 assets in 21 countries.
KKR has also created a $50 billion fund with Energy Capital Partners to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) data centre energy infrastructure. Data centres are heavily energy intensive, and DeSmog recently revealed that AI executives have told major polluters that the nascent industry can keep fossil fuels alive.
KKR is also the co-owner of Marshall Wace, a hedge fund co-founded by UK media baron Paul Marshall, holding a 39.9 percent stake as of June 2023. The same month, Marshall Wace reported investments of at least £1.8 billion in fossil fuels companies, including in the oil and gas giants Shell, Chevron, and Equinor.
Marshall is the co-owner of GB News, a broadcaster that has frequently given a platform to climate falsehoods, and is an opponent of policies to reach net zero emissions.
Speaking at a conference in February hosted by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a group funded by Marshall, he said that the UK’s net zero plans are “leading the way in wrecking our industrial base”, “impoverishing people”, “sacrificing our energy security”, and “sacrificing our ancient rural landscape.”
The UK’s net zero sector is growing at three times the rate of the rest of the economy, according to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
DeSmog also revealed that Warren Stephens, Trump’s ambassador to the UK, donated $4 million to the president’s inauguration fund on the day that he was nominated for the diplomatic position.
The inauguration committee raised a record $239 million, including from fossil fuel giants Chevron ($2 million), ExxonMobil ($1 million), the U.S. branches of BP and Shell ($500,000 each), and Valero ($250,000).
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper makes a speech at the Organised Immigration Crime Summit at Lancaster House in central London, March 31, 2025