Bham bike theft?

In Birmingham I regularly see £2000 bikes with £1 cable locks, sometimes these cables are barely thicker than a brake cable.

But they never get pinched.

I think the lack of cycling culture in the city means people dont hold too great a value for bikes. Most thief types in Birmingham would much prefer to mug you for cash & phone rather than end up with a bike they cannot sell. Average street thugs cant really tell what a valuable bike looks like.

On the other hand there a select bunch of drug addicts who do steal bikes, but again they know little about value. They are opportunists and would steal anything really.

I had a bike stolen from outside aston uni Guild and saw the thief cutting my lock in the distance!

It was a very scraggy looking junkie with a pair of small boltcutters. The bike was a simple mtb commuter I built that'd be worth £120 to the right people but didnt look it.

I found it 2 weeks later at the city boot sale, put an extra lock around it and waited for the perp to come back. Turned out the guy had innocently bought it the week prior at the same sale for £15, he showed me and the market police the seller who was a bric & brac stall who bought it in turn from the junkie. Meaning he mustve sold it for like £5

All was retrieved and everyone sorted out.

But it just goes to show you the mindset of birmingham bike thieves. They know fuck all about bikes, are usually a confused desperate smackhead who will have no idea where to shift the bike once they stole it.

Very few theives in Birmingham would have the patience to cut a shackle lock, even a very cheap one.

I reckon the majority of bike thieving occurs with kids robbing each other, at least thats the way it was when I was a wee lad in this brummie town.