TalkTV presenter Alex Phillips has claimed a ‘little s**t on a bike’ tried to steal her bag today in ‘broad daylight’.
The 40-year-old journalist and former politician was walking down Oxford Street in central London when the boy grabbed her bag and ‘karate chopped’ her arm while she was holding her phone.
She said the boy sped off after realising he would have to get off his bike to pick up the bag which had fallen onto the floor.
TalkTV presenter Alex Phillips has claimed a ‘little s**t on a bike’ tried to steal her bag today in ‘broad daylight’
The 40-year-old journalist and former politician was walking down Oxford Street in central London when the boy grabbed her bag and ‘karate chopped’ her arm
Taking to social media this afternoon Alex said: ‘A little sh**t on a bike just tried to mug me on Oxford St in broad daylight.
‘He grabbed at my bag and karate chopped my arm as I was holding my phone.
‘It fell to the floor meaning he’d have to get off his bike to snatch it, so he sped off. Nobody blinked an eye. London is grim.’
It comes after the Retail Sector Council, which is made up of members including the bosses of Boots, Sainsbury’s and Primark, warned ministers that British high streets risked turning into ‘wastelands’ unless there were major regeneration efforts.
Former Co-op chief Richard Pennycook said: ‘If we don’t incentivise regeneration, then these places are getting hollowed out.
‘What are we collectively going to do about that? The last five years in Chester, Northampton, pretty much any large town in the UK, this has been going on.’
A Marks & Spencer executive also warned that crime rates on Oxford Street were surging as London’s famous shopping district falls into disrepair.
Police and large groups of young people were seen in Oxford Circus on August 9 after calls for looting spread on TikTok.
Shocking video from the time showed police wielding batons clashing with dozens of youths in Oxford Street after chaos erupted when a social media-fuelled campaign to ‘rob JD Sports’ and shoplift went viral.
Large groups of young people seen running away from police amid the clashes on Oxford Street on August 9, 2023
Police officers try to stop youths as they run out of a McDonald’s restaurant on Oxford Street on August 9
Nine people were arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of offences including assaulting a police officer, going equipped to steal and breaching a dispersal order at the shopping hotspot.
Footage from the scene shows officers chasing after youths outside the Microsoft store in Europe’s busiest shopping street with their batons raised, with some being wrestled away by police and put in handcuffs.
Sacha Berendji, operations director of M&S said the area had once been ‘the jewel in London’s shopping crown’ but was now little more than ’empty shops, littered streets and fewer visitors’.
He said shocking scenes of social media-fuelled carnage as thugs attempted to loot stores in August were ‘another reminder of how bad things are’.
Mr Berendji told the Daily Telegraph: ‘The street was practically locked down by police to prevent major unrest planned on social media. Londoners know that something must be done to save Oxford Street.’
The chaos in central London echoes robberies and flashmob looting across the US in recent years, which has been organised through TikTok – while major cities such as San Francisco and New York are becoming crime-ravaged and drug-infested.
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