“Rob... We all know that some shoplifters are only given small fines from the courts, even if they are carrying knives and other weppons. Even then the fools are are so far on the bones of there a** they can not afford to pay, so the courts sould sling them in the nick a few weeks, not tourther them, that going a bit far mate.This case is very diffrent, this ol' swine stated to use a knive, he sould be locked up and for a very long time.”

“Let me see if I understand this correctly. The defence for this mans actions were I got away with it for a while so i thought that it was ok to carry on stealing! What does this tell us about this mans intellect and/or his moral values? Presumably then he also would have thought that stabbing 2 young men who were just doing their job, was also ok had he not been caught. This man is a moron with a long and miserable history of offending. 4 years is a joke, lets face it he has shown little sign of change or rehab this far and he's 41 years old! In 4 years time he'll be back out, still a menace to the public and probably still an addict. Let's be honest prison does not rehabilitate and drugs are easily obtained inside.I know the 1 of the young men assaulted by Mr Phillips and regard the light sentence meted out to be an insult to a brave young man who unlike Phillips actually understands tha difference between right and wrong!”

“To claim Job Seekers Allowance¿ The claimant must be available for and show proof of actively seeking full time employment.¿
Was he actively seeking employment when he was slashing security guards and stealing from Tesco¿s? I can get my head around nicking food, but what was he going to do with the remote control, eat it? Sorry but I do not do sympathy!”

“As a security guard my self i think that mr philips should be given a stricter punishment.However the punishment i have in mind would involve a public flogging.What i cant understand,knowing the tesco security setup and the way it works is how this man got away with it for this long?!?I work in many different aspects of security and it is my belief that there is no possible excuse the tesco staff can have for not knowing what was going on and the means in which mr philips was trusting.My final point is this....When a shoplifter gets caught they usually get an £80 fixed penalty notice,despite on several occasions the offenders having knives,bats,or needles on them at the time.They cannot in most circumstances afford to pay the fine and therefore is a none punishment.We should take an example from the countries of the middle east and publicly humiliate and torture the individual until punishment is seen as served!!!!”

“it does disappoint me that people aren't even reading the article before making judgement the article is slanted and rightly so. The actions of Mike are completely and utterly wrong. But by his own admission he had been going on there for some considerable time, if the security guards knew he was a repeat shoplifter why weren't the police called and why was key confronted a way from. the general public.And why did it take the police eight days to find him this was a very serious incident and and he was already known to the police. the answer is quite clear because the assault did not take place in view of CCTV therefore the police only had a verbal description of this man and had to do some investigating to come up with him so the question has to be what was going on when this man had to resort to slashing to a security . by no means do I condone what happened but the something not been stated in this story from my own conversations with the the offender the question to be raised as how many security guards attempted to challenge him and from his own point of view why did the letting go in their every day to take anything you wanted . This is a man with serious drug addiction than admit it to all the charges posed against him this is a man who could go into prison and seriously we rehabilitated everybody seems to be condemning this man without knowing the full case . Knowing the ascendant as well I know he's resorted to shoplifting as he had no money, and was waiting some considerable time for a payment from jobseekers allowance is unfortunate there such like payment resorted into such an unfortunate series of events were 2 men get stabbed and a third has a utility taken away from him. It's only fortunate that it wasn't much worse. I wish the guards a speedy recovery as clearly they are the only victims in all this.”