Just for a change I am not going to write about the shops in the High Street, though the title of this blog could be appropriate to some of the local businesses such as Sainsbury's. It was while on the way to this store that I recently passed not one, not two, but three shell-game scams going on openly in the middle of the High Street, one outside Bar Rendezvous, one outside Quicksilver and another opposite Paddy Power. Their spotters could easily be identified.

A shell game scam, for those who don't know, is where a guy pretends to be moving cards or cups or something around on a flat surface (table or box) while another man guesses where a particular card or a pea under the cup is. In fact, they are both working together, along with a number of others who pretend to be interested passers-by who are watching this game of chance. There is, of course, 'betting'.

The man moving the cards is, of course, an expert at manipulation and knows exactly where the hidden object is at all times. The man or men pretending to look for the hidden card will be allowed to win a bet or two, to encourage a sucker to join in and bet too.

The open operations of these professional criminal gangs are bad for business in an area where traders are already unhappy with the service we are offered by the Met. They indicate to everyone that the rule of law does not run on our streets, that the police are not being vigilant or effective enough and do not have the manpower needed to stamp this out, or indeed, any organized crime. It is particularly annoying when one realizes that these activities have been taking place in a street in broad daylight for several days now, right under the CCTV cameras which the ratepayers have spent considerable sums of money on.

When a member of the public joins in and bets he can find the card, you can be sure he has absolutely no chance of finding it unless the manipulator wants him to. There is also a chance that any other members of the on-looking crowd will be being sized up for pocket picking by other members of the gang.

It seems these gangs have sized up the police in Walthamstow and, like the personable Chinese pirate DVD sellers who have operated in the same stretch of the street for some months with impunity, see them as easy marks too.