I am very grateful to Paper Boy for alerting the sleeping world to this announcement from the BBC :

Police have issued a warning for Borderers to be on their guard following two purse thefts in the area. http://www.hunnymonster.org.uk/

Borders crime figures are actually not as low as you might think. In many instances (particularly motoring offences) we compare unfavourably with Berwick upon Tweed. This has made a slight nonsense of a campaign to get a TD16 post code for Eastern Berwickshire instead of being part of TD15 which is mostly Berwick itself in population terms. We had thought that Insurance Companies were passing on higher premiums to us country folk based on crime levels in town and we wanted our own crime free postcode. I am assured by my company that this would make no difference. However, crime or no, we are assumed, in TD15, to be part of Northumberland and it was a battle to persuade BT to remove us from the Northumberland phone book and insert us into the very slim Borders volume. A group of earnest Northumberland ladies once dropped in on Huttonian soliciting support for their Tory parliamentary candidate and were dismayed to find themselves in the wrong country. And I had two good reasons for declining to pledge my X .

But we do seem short on crime around these immediate parts. Not that I am complaining, mind you. Apart from the odd theft of fishing rods or agricultural equipment we seem left alone by the criminal fraternity. Well done the Neighbourhood Watch. We will now have to go to Warning Code Amber (see Home Office security alerts) and keep our purses at home. Under the mattress or somewhere similar where no burglar would dream of looking  ¶ 7:58 AM