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There are a number of different types of thief, the person who takes home pens and other
small bits and pieces from the office, the thief who burgles people’s homes for the video
player to help finance a habit, the mugger who uses the threat of violence to steal a wallet or
the car thief who get’s his buzz from joyriding in someone else’s vehicle, usually at high
speeds, then there’s the professional thief who treats larceny as a career and usually has a
cavalier attitude towards the use of violence, there’s also the highly respected business man
who fiddles his tax returns, however these people endeavour to acquire that which doesn’t
belong to them and no matter how they justify their larceny, whether successful or not and
where-ever the thief fits into this hierarchy of larceny, he still remains a common thief.
I use the word common because these grasping parasites have a lot in common with each
other; they crave what belongs to someone else with an all-consuming passion.
Some Sociologists have explained this avarice as a direct effect of their socio-economic
upbringing, this translated into a language that the majority of us can understand means that if
you’ve got no money, you must be a thief, so can we project this inane excuse to all the poor
people, nonsense, some of the most honest people are poor, and does this excuse equate to all
the rich people being honest, again nonsense as our newspapers show us every day.
Sadly, from the romantic point of view in all of us, there are no Robin Hood’s out there,
robbing the rich to feed the poor has never been an option to a thief, unfortunately stealing to
feed the poor just doesn’t happen and I tend to suspect it never has, on the other side of the
coin stealing from the poor and weak has always been the prerogative of the strong and
greedy, from time to time the successful thief may be philanthropic towards his friends, this
philanthropy can often turn out to be a double edged sword.
The philosophy of every thief, without exception, is that charity begins at home and stays
there.
Possibly the single most identifiable common denominator that tie’s all these thieves into the
same package is the basest of all human vices, Greed, with a capital G. not to be confused
with the need of the starving or the want of a child, no, this is self taught greed.
In every case of robbery, no matter how small or large, the motive from its inception to it’s
execution, from first to last is unadulterated avarice.
The explosion was quite spectacular, a young fourteen year old boy testing his new video
camera happened to be on the right beach at the right time, the fishing boat with it’s lights
blazing in the gathering darkness was motoring across the bay, it was the obvious subject, the
failing light would be the ideal yardstick to tell him the camera’s capabilities, suddenly there
was a flash of intense light and the boat lifted out of the water and broke in half, a couple of
seconds later the boy felt the concussion and heard the bang of the explosion, having the
presence of mind to keep filming he watched as the two halves floated for a moment before
sliding below the surface leaving behind a pool of burning oil and fuel.
