..to think that the London Marathon water theives should be named and shamed?

[Jaimx86]

I'm horrified at the news of looters (small group) stealing from the London Marathon water station at Deptford! Some adults are using their child's pram to carry all of the bottles they're taking.
What will people do next year if this goes unpunished? Steal the runners' phones and trainers as they go past?!
The London Marathon Event Manager has said it will be investigated.

Deptford has a market sparkingbrook. I've shopped there. But I guess those bottles of water are intended to be sold to corner shops, who'll negotiate a price with the seller.

It doesn't matter what the seller gets for it, because it was free. So any amount of money is a 100 per cent profit. Seems a very good business proposition to me, if you are prepared to put the work in. And these people obviously were.

That seems a lot more sensible than the idea of selling it on eBay. Who would do that?

I wouldn't buy bottled water from anywhere but a shop personally

Well, there you are. That's why I would sell my looted Buxton Spring in sealed plastic packs, to a corner shop. Not so daft, these people, are they?

southeastastra first mentioned them selling it on ebay, I have no idea who would actually do it.

I don't understand why anyone would eBay water instead of flogging it to a corner shop either. But different people have different business strategies. Some are more successful than others.

I dunno, have you tasted the water in london?

I used to get with my Pizza Hut takeaway deal a 2ltr bottle of Coke or Fanta. Sealed and dated. I didn't want them. So I used to trade them with my corner shop for money off my newspaper bill. Nothing wrong with that.

We don't have a corner shop.

korma I agree.

They were helping with the clean-up operation? Taking some without permission with the intention of selling on for profit is "free enterprise"?

Ingenious. What an interesting stance from the morally enlightened. I guess it's this kind of logic that our wonderful high trust society is founded on. I suppose what we need is to see more of this type of free enterprise. I think I'll bring up my children with this as a great example of how to behave, and with these people as role models.

Thank you MNers for helping me feel optimistic about this.

Grabbing as much as you can carry and filling trollers and pushchairs etc as quickly as possible - it is just vile

I didn't see any grabbing going on there. Today I deliberately took a wheely case to Sainsbury's because cat food was on special offer and I wouldn't be able to carry it. I thought that was good planning, but would it be vile by your standards? I didn't shove anyone out of the way in order to get it.

No one was shown to be behaving vilely, grabbing, pushing or shoving or even verbally abusing anyone. That must have been very distressing to the Metro and their sister paper The Daily Mail. But never mind, because you seem to have imagined it anyway.

I saw the clip on FB and it made me feel extremely uneasy on all sorts of fronts, not least: if the public had been invited to take unwanted water, then why the fuck was someone filming it to put up on Facebook?

But also there is something a bit desperate about wanting to take water! Water of all things . The tap water in London is excellent - an awful lot nicer than the cloudy stuff that tastes of chlorine that comes out of the tap at my inlaw's house in Suffolk.

100% they were taking it for resale, not personal use. Whether to corner shops, down the market, or whatever. The general free for all seemed pretty scummy to me - you'd see more decorum in 3rd world countries where they're actually in need of clean, safe, drinking water!

In the UK it seems people will steal anything that isn't nailed down. I've done bootsales where if you don't have your wits about you, people will nick stuff out the back of your car while you're not looking.

I don't think you can compare cat food shopping in Sainsburys to grabbing loads of bottles of free water.

I have always found London water to be fine. Here in Worcestershire we have to put it through a filter jug.

Surely the organisation should be reselling it back into the supply chain. Unless the water is horribly short dated and they wanted shot.

Not sure selling a load of water to the corner shop is legal - unless the sellers are a business and pay tax on the 100% profit.

scatteroflight what would you seriously think if you were the organisers of the London Marathon. You already have an enormous clean up bill for all the Portaloos, discarded clothes and water bottles that runners leave, plus the rubbish generated by the spectators.

It has to be cleared up in a very short space of time and the roads reopened. That's your deal for staging the race through the hosting London boroughs of Greenwich, Tower Hamlets, City of London and Westminster.

I'd guess that the London Borough of Greenwich, which includes Deptford, probably insists on having the mess cleaned in two hours from the start. Which is about 11am. I don't know how they work it. It may be a joint operation between the borough and the organisers - who are a highly organised company - but it gets done.

So if I were organising the clean up, whether I was from the council or the company, I'd be delighted if people took as much rubbish with them. That's what people at public events are encouraged to do, isn't it?

That includes the thousands of bottles of water provided. So long as they didn't cause a public disturbance. These people didn't. I'd also also ask my operatives to let them do it. Yet someone took it upon himself to film people and whine to the Metro. I wouldn't be particularly happy with him if I was from the organisers. They weren't doing any harm and him making an issue of it reflected badly on the London Marathon brand.

Limitedperiodonly - I feel there is quite a simple proposition here. Having watched the video does our society need more of this kind of behaviour or less?

We live in glos and years ago had floods and no electrick or running water.
I had 4 dc and worked in a children's home so spent my days carrying pots of water from the emergency bowsers and collecting the free bottled water we were given at designated stations.
Dh is a copper and so was also busy and had all his days off cancelled so that they could stop people stealing the bottled water and pissing in the bowsers so nothing surprises me no.

"Electric"

Surely the organisation should be reselling it back into the supply chain. Unless the water is horribly short dated and they wanted shot. Not sure selling a load of water to the corner shop is legal - unless the sellers are a business and pay tax on the 100% profit.

It might cost the organisation too much money to collect it, store it and resell it. Maybe they should factor that into the costs of running their highly profitable event. Maybe they do, by allowing people to take unused water. Maybe we should be told. Or maybe we should just forget it.

I don't see why it is illegal for anyone to sell sealed, date stamped bottles of water. Where do you think retailers get it from?

Of course we should declare all income on our tax returns. I imagine hardly any of these people will. However, in the scheme of things, they trouble me less than the likes of Amazon.

I feel there is quite a simple proposition here. Having watched the video does our society need more of this kind of behaviour or less?

scatterolight what's the behaviour? It looks less lively than the first day of the Harrods sale.

Dh is a copper and so was also busy and had all his days off cancelled so that they could stop people stealing the bottled water and pissing in the bowsers angry so nothing surprises me no.

Ledkr I'm going to take a forensically close look at the film again but I'm confident that no one was pissing in the water. Why do you think that is a useful contribution?

Yes when free stuff is up for grabs people get greedy. It could have happened anywhere there was a marathon.

I remember when that happened in Edinburgh, weren't there a few people who fainted/collapsed because so much was nicked and (for once) it was really very hot here that day? And they'd nicked it from a place towards the end of the course as well.

limited because my point was that nothing surprises me when it comes to unattended free stuff, the water was nicked often particularly of it was branded.
I'm sorry if my post was not up to your approval though,