Comments on: It’s not the knives, it’s the thugs we need to tackle

By: screwdriver cordless

screwdriver cordless — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:25:47 +0000

Is this gonna end someday??

By: car jacks

car jacks — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:45:44 +0000

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By: Mark Wadsworth

Mark Wadsworth — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:10:51 +0000

I agree with nearly all of that. Nothing more to add.

By: Atlas shrugged

Atlas shrugged — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:39:34 +0000

Completely agree John

Could you please indicate what percentage of Conservative MPs you would guess agree with you?

It is nice to read common sense from an opposition MP. But it would be much nicer to know that I will be hearing it from the next British government.

Reply: A majority

By: Elgrebo

Elgrebo — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:27:24 +0000

This Government will not see sense and will continue to be driven by the tabloid headlines into creating more unworkable and impractical laws. Banning all knives will not help matters, what's next – Screwdrivers, knitting needles… ?

By: Freeborn John

Freeborn John — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:33:17 +0000

I agree with pretty much everything you written here, including that the criminal law should not be used like a press release on current issues of the day. You address the need to tackle the deep-seated social problems that underlie knife-crime, issues such as dysfunctional families and schools. You are correct about that but I would add that kids in the areas where these problems are occurring seem to be taking up knives to protect themselves, which indicates a loss of faith in the state. It seems to me that a greater police presence is needed in these localities until such time as the longer-term measures to repair â€˜broken Britainâ€™ bear fruit.

By: Bazman

Bazman — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:57:33 +0000

Legislation is a waste of time. The reaction to the more widespread carrying of guns was a prison sentence of five years that none of the offenders got. Even if they where to have received five years. The drug dealers or people involved in drugs, who most often carry guns. Would weigh up the fact that they are often have on their possession enough heroin for twenty years and the rival dealer has a gun.
Until the public and the politicians grasp the drug problem, then for much of crime and petty crime it will be business as usual. The temperance drug movement has utterly and completely failed everyone and society.
Knife and gun crime can be linked directly to this easy money, respect etc. Telling these teenagers they should have nothing and be happy or study for a good job against all the odds in a tale of noble poverty is pure nonsense and they know it, so against all the odds and nothing to loose they get involved with drugs and then weapons.
Birching or locked up for the weekend? Pythonesque.

By: mikestallard

mikestallard — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:32:34 +0000

There are underlying things here which no NuLab politician can mention:
1. The decline of family life. (What about gays and single Mums and the women's movement?)
2. The decline of education. (Huge impersonal, uncontrolled, violent schools with fudged results, few teachers who can keep order, and tightly controlled governors).
3. The decline of religion. (What is the point of life? Why not just give up? Why not hurt other people if they deserve it?)
4. The decline of community life. (No villages, no street life, no knowledge of who other people are, no voluntary societies without a wealth of paperwork and suspicion (CRB?), constant moving about).
5. Uncontrolled Immigration (sentence left out)
6. Full up Prisons (Despite constant warnings, they are now full up. Criminals, even foreign ones, are now roaming the streets, having been let out of jail), (free free to commit more crimes -ed).

I think that accounts for the constant initiatives – why change it if everything is all right really?

By: Steven_L

Steven_L — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:01:22 +0000

I used to carry a pen-knife as a teenager. I grew up in a rural area, was a fisherman and a Boy-Scout. Lot's of people I knew carried them too.

In my view the problem with most of society is a small minority of psychopaths. Amongst the inner-sity lower classes teenage psychos stab other kids.

Where I grew up they attacked other children with their fists, vandalised peoples property and burgled cars and houses.

In the grown up middle-class world they run dodgy damp-proofing firms or persuade old ladies to part with their life savings for some other reason. They might try to feed their husbands ground up glass or something.

I once had an electronics teacher who went on a rant about 'psychopaths' during our first lesson and how they had no place in his classroom. He referred to a pupil he had watched spend all lesson bending a piece fo copper wire so that it would fit into the live and neutral holes of a plug socket. Sure enough, at the end of the lesson he inserted it and was stopped before he could switch on the mains.

We all thought the teacher to be a bit weird at the time, but now I think I know what he meant. They exist in all walks of life, the teenage knife crime is just a symptom of the fact that some people are inherently bad and need locking away.

By: Socrates

Socrates — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:15:10 +0000

It seems to me that young people in inner city areas are making a logical choice about their safety. If they feel that the chances of being wounded or killed by being unamed out weigh the chances of being caught by the police whilst carrying a knife, it's a no brainer.
It is an indictment of our police state that because it is difficult for them to distiguish between those who carry weapons offensively from those who merely seek to defend themselves both should be equally prosecuted. No doubt Gordon's socialist egalitarianism requires the treatment of victims the same as offenders but it isn't fair or British.