The London Mayor’s policing blitz tackling town centre crime

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Superman, and he's back on our screens.

0:33but first it can happen in a fraction of a second a turned back the blink of an eye if you've ever had your phone snatched in london you'll have witnessed the city's theft epidemic firsthand last year the standard reported that a phone is stolen every six minutes but it's not the only criminal activity that is on the rise in the capital. The latest monthly figures from the Metropolitan Police show that 102 ,083 shoplifting offences were recorded in the year to May, which is an annual increase of 41.9%. It's why London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has today announced a policing blitz on the city's 20 most blighted town centres for shoplifting, robbery, knife crime and antisocial behaviour that were identified by Met Police data.

1:28Summer in the capital means peak tourism season, with 5 million additional visitors expected, as well as school summer holidays beginning soon. It's a time of high demand for policing in busy town centres. To find out more, I spoke to The Standards crime editor, Anthony France. Anthony, tell me more about this announcement from Sadiq Khan today. The announcement from Sadiq Khan today will come as good news to the majority of Londoners. He is vowing a police blitz to tackle the tide of crime in London's 20 most blighted town centres. And the Metropolitan Police have now put together some data which identifies those town centres.

2:11And they will, over the summer, see increased activity from the police, who will be dealing with not only shoplifting, but also violent crime and also robbery. And which town centres have been included? So in the list of top 20 town centres, which also includes antisocial behaviour, are Stratford, Woolwich, Fensbury Park, Croydon, Shepherds Bush Green, Seven Sisters, Elephant and Castle, and of course London's West End, which have all been named. These are areas that pretty much account for a fifth of blade offences, one in four thefts, and 6 % of all of the antisocial behaviour calls across all of London.

2:56So how much of a problem is shoplifting? We're seeing 102 ,000 shoplifting offences that have been recorded in London. And if you think that is only one in 10 of all offences, so you're talking about a huge amount. Now, I remember looking at this last year and the number of annual shoplifting offences was about 50 ,000. So if you can imagine, that's doubled in the space of a year. So it's a huge crime. Tadiq Khan was saying today that the Met have actually increased the number of these that they're solving. You know, they've solved 163 % more shoplifting offences in 2025. And how is this affecting the capital's businesses and retailers?

3:38The estimate of how much this shoplifting crime spree in London is costing has been put at£16.8 million every month. And that is a huge burden to the big shops and also particularly to little shops. Because if you think that each crime in a small shop is valued at£220 in terms of the loss and also crime prevention, You can see that if you're a little small shop, that could potentially put you out of business. It's really important that they clamp down on this. There are several reasons why the footfall in London increases over the summer, aren't there? We know about concerts and we know about the fact that schools will soon close and there'll be more people out and about in the streets.

4:25So it's kind of getting ahead of what we normally see a spike in certain crimes during the summer, getting ahead of that and trying their very best to prevent it. I think that we can obviously look at that data from the past and see what London, this global destination, an extra 5 million people expected to visit here during the peak tourism season. It will be a high demand time for the police. And what they're trying to do is make sure that the streets of London are safer. And finally, do you think this will have a big impact? Yes, any time you flood the streets with police officers, you manage to suppress crime.

5:04It's a very good initiative at this time and we'll have to wait and see in the autumn what the results were. But obviously flooding streets with police officers, something that the public often call for, is going to go down very well in London. Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, how the Superman genre has evolved as the new blockbuster movie is released. We'll see you back here in just a moment.

5:41Welcome back. Comic book fans won't have to wait much longer to watch the new, rebooted and ninth Superman movie of the modern era. as it's released in cinemas on July 11th. TV star David Correnswet plays the superhero, and the film is directed by James Gunn, who is in charge of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy movie series. But will this combination make Superman's cape fly high for new generations to enjoy? That's certainly the aim, as the director told the Press Association, This is really about presenting the Superman to the world that I love, and have loved since I was a kid. This time, when Superman gets drawn into conflicts at home and abroad, his actions are questioned, giving tech billionaire Lex Luthor the opportunity to get the Man of Steel out of the way for good.

6:36Will intrepid reporter Lois Lane and Superman's four-legged companion Crypto be able to help him before it's too late? Here's a clip from the Warner Brothers trailer. Superman. Miss Lane. Recently, you've come under a lot of fire. I know, it's a lot of fire. It's a lot.

7:00Today, the Secretary of Defense said he was going to look into your actions. That's funny. My actions? I stopped a war. Maybe. Not maybe. I did. In effect, you illegally entered a country. Let's find out what the Standard's head of culture, Martin Robinson, thought of the film. Martin, first of all, are you a fan of superheroes? I am a fan of superhero films. I have been since I was a kid. I grew up on, you know, the early Superman films. I loved Superman 3, was my big one when I was a child. Not one of the most loved ones these days, but I used to absolutely adore that one. so I've sort of followed the journey from when they were quite bad for quite some time up until the point where Marvel really really reinvented them in brilliant fashion with the Iron Man films and then the Avengers films so yeah and it's something that I watch my kids I saw the new film with my 13 year old so it's something that I'm engaged with and I have to say even my 13 year old wasn't very blown away by this new one.

8:03So what's the original story of Superman? So in the new film, the origin story is pretty much the same as we would expect. He's an orphan from the planet Krypton sent away by his parents over to the planet Earth. He's landed in rural America. He's got human parents here. In this new film, we meet him three years into his kind of reveal that he's Superman. So three years into his duties sort of saving the planet. He's already in a relationship with Lois Lane. Lex Luthor is already his enemy and we kind of arrive slap bang into his journey. So we learn a few important new things about his origin story, which I won't give away here, but it kind of hinges a lot on them shifting the narrative.

8:46It was hoped this reboot would keep the thrill of Superman alive. Did it succeed? No, it's not great. Sad to say. What they've tried to do is they've brought in James Gunn, who had enormous success for Marvel with the Guardians of the Galaxy films, which were loads of fun, very subversive, lots of humor and wit and a little playfulness around sort of, you know, the superhero genre in general. Superman had reached a very dark point under Zack Snyder, the director, and Henry Cavill. It was a very dark and moody, sort of like grim version of Superman that they increasingly delved into in those films.

9:25So I can understand that DC wanted to reboot things and perhaps put a bit more life into it. James Gunn looked like the ideal guy, funny guy, track record with Guardians, and it needed a little bit of an injection of fun and humor. So they've clearly tried to do that a bit, but they've kind of thrown the baby out with the bathwater. So in removing a lot of the pretensions and the philosophy and the identity politics and actual politics of superhero films, they've just gone for something completely bubblegum, which would have been fine if it was genuinely funny and captivating and interesting and a bit of a ride, but it's just a bit flat.

10:06It doesn't quite work. Superman as a character is not that interesting he's kind of not very bright bit of a jock but mainly a bit clueless he always seems a little bit behind realizing what's going on at any one time he seems to be like a nice guy but he's not particularly a powerful Superman either he gets very badly hurt that's the opening of the film is him sort of on the floor wounded he doesn't really sort of saves people in a spectacular way there's not that much you know really Superman being Superman. It's sort of like a well-meaning, not Superman, just a man in a cape who can fly, certainly, but it lacks a little bit of the glamour and the sheer heroism of Superman.

10:48It kind of brings him back down to earth in a way that isn't particularly interesting. And in your review, you actually say that the best character is the dog, Crypto. Tell me more about that? So one of the major characters in it is Crypto, Superdog, who featured in the trailer when he was coming. He's actually in the film a lot more than I thought he would be. He's the best character. Lois Lane is a bit thinly written. Lex Luthor is a bit nonsensical, but Crypto is pretty good. He's a very convincing dog. He's very lovable, but also annoying. He's a bit sort of clueless as to what's going on at any one time, but very keen and kind of echoes Superman in that way.

11:30And what does it say about the Superman genre today? I've been dwelling on this a bit. There's no great solution that this film puts across to superhero films. It's become a genre that's been wildly successful over the last sort of 20 years. You know, at its peak, Marvel was doing incredible things, making a lot of money while also delivering something with quite a lot of weight and intelligence as well as wit and action. It was really satisfying and that's just why it did so well. This has sort of ended up in a place where it feels more like a reaction to a new idea. So it's just a reaction to sort of the previous DC films that were so dark.

12:16it's kind of just gone really really light and so it offers no great new route into something new which is the most disappointing thing it looked like it might you just thought this could be fun it could be proper comic book and be delivered with a bit of energy and loads of laughs and loads of incident whereas it just feels like a bit of a mess it's just not very well written or plotted and while it's a diverting watch for a couple of hours nobody's going to come away from this film with any kind of great revelations or talking points it's you know it's it's serviceable at best do you have anything else to add i'd say the character of lois lane is a particularly sort of disappointing one you've got rachel brosnan who's in mrs maisel and is a brilliant brilliant character actress and comedian and she seemed to be the perfect choice for lois lane who has always been a very witty character you know the relationship between her and Clark Kent and Superman has always had in all the films has had some kind of like screwball comedy witty repartee all of that stuff and she's kind of just a bit too much the girlfriend in this she's not particularly a whiz kid sort of reporter she doesn't really solve very much she's great and likable in it but she doesn't really do too much and notably the other female characters in the film are very very ditzy archetypes not seen since the 80s so it kind of feels again a bit like a retrogressive move it hasn't taken things anywhere which has almost taken us back 20 years

13:55and that's the standard for all the latest news head to standard.co.uk if you'd like to get in touch please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk we'll be back here tomorrow at 4pm we'll see you then