Another question for for Englanders - Ban on kitchen knifes?

[SUBMAN1]

Reading up on Jeff Commentaries, and he makes this statement:

Now it appears that some curious group in England has decided that too many people are getting stabbed, and that therefore long, pointy kitchen knives should be banned. Apparently they think that kitchen knives with blunt points would lessen the incidents of stabbing. Hoplophobes being what they are, it does not occur to them that they might reduce their problems by making armed assault illegal. Of course if they did that, they would find it necessary to do something about unarmed assault, and presently we would be called upon to eradicate boxing, wrestling and kendo.

Is that true?

-S

[SUBMAN1]

hahaha! It is true!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm

-S

[SUBMAN1]

I can't quit laughing about that one. Oh my gosh! I have seen it all! :rotfl: Its a classic! Next, they are going to want people to chop their arms off because they could be used to punch someone! After that, chop their legs off becuase they could be used to kick someone!!! :dead:

-S

[Letum]

I can't quit laughing about that one. Oh my gosh! I have seen it all! :rotfl: Its a classic! Next, they are going to want people to chop their arms off because they could be used to punch someone! After that, chop their legs off becuase they could be used to kick someone!!! :dead:

-S

I wouldnt be quite so quick to laugh.
Its not so long ago that it would be laughable that one could not carry a sword in public.
Society has become progressivly tougher on violence since there has been some form of society. There is no reason to think that this trend will not continue. People allways think that societys attitudes are the most advanced at the present and so they will not chance muchin the future. The fact is that societys attitude towards personal weapons has been becomeing tougher for a very long time and whilst a ban on pointed kitchen knives may not come with in the next 50 years, looking at current trends it seams enevitable.

(hope Im dead by then or society takes a U-turn!)

[Kapitan]

oh well bang goes my nicely sliced bread

[bradclark1]

Is the United Kingdom becoming a Big Brother state?

[XabbaRus]

No, I wouldn't say so.

OK so we have some people proposing things that are daft, Happens everywhere.

One thing I have noticed about the difference between Press in the UK and other countires is that the press here pick up on a lot more stuff than other countries. IE I think UK press is more free than other countries. Means more **** gets flung about in public, and more daft things like this get publicity.

However think about it does a kitchen knife need to be 12" in length?

OK might as well ban knives altogether. As if someone can't stab with a long knife they'll just do it with a short knife.

But back to my point I don't think the UK is a big brother state, not yet anyway. and no more so than in other countries.

Hopefully we won't get the ID cards king tony the poodle seems intent on bringing in even though it has been voted down twice.

If that comes then I'll worry. Until then I won't worry.

[August]

However think about it does a kitchen knife need to be 12" in length?

Depends on what you're trying to cut i'd expect. A 12" knife is handy if one is trying to carve a turkey or a large roast for example.

[DAB]

Its not as if they are banning kitchen knives par say, rather its the possession of them in public. You have to admit, you would wonder why someone would carry a carving knife in public.

This is actually an old debate, I remember simular discussions as a kid.

[DAB]

Oh and its Britishers actually. Calling everyone from the UK Englanders is like suggesting that all Americans are Texan

[jumpy]

It's already an offense to carry a knife with a blade that exceeds 2.5 or 3 inches (I forget which) in a public place, without good reason. 'Self defense' doesn't qualify.
So I don't think the law really needs changing. It will only curtail the lawabiding many over the actions of the few. A perfect example of this was the recent (ish) bann on handgun ownership in the UK. After a number of tragic and high profile killings (Hungerford & Dunblain) the lawabiding members of many sport shooting clubs were required to surrender their weapons to the bann. This of course had a massive effect upon the criminals involved in the much publicised 'gun crime', who all obtained their guns illegaly and continued to use them. :shifty: :x
The same thing will happen eventually where airguns are concerned. Once again a tragic death of a little boy, brought about by one tosser and the irresponsible use of an air rifle and there's the classic media driven politically moral knee-jerk. Now there's talk of banning them too.
I agree that perhaps more licencing should be part of the sale of airguns and of ownership, perhaps. But as I own a couple myself, I'm not too keen on the man telling me what I can and can't do; infering that I am not able to handle the responsibility of not deciding it might be a fun, good idea to take pot shots at toddlers. Were it not so laughably pedestrian and reactive in its thinking, this kind of attitude toward perceived threats public safety would be almost insulting.

There is a better way of dealing with the problem of keeping the public safe from the dregs of society and their inherrant ability to frighten people with sharp and pointy things and do greivous mischief to them. Better policing, better education and living standards, better opportunities for work, better housing, social and local community relations, better morality (in as much as my parents tought me the difference between right and wrong from an early age)- all these things are long term and wil cost huge amounts of money, but at least they will actually address the underlying causes and ingrained attitudes toward crime and disorder, which is so essential imo to prevent rather than cure the symptoms of social and moral poverty which many cities in the UK have today.
But these days you have to be seen to be taking action and a tough stance on those elements declared 'unsavoury'. What better way to look good and spend relatively little money, than issuing a sweeping prohibition, all hard and diamond shiney, upon the offending element? Proving for all to see, that you are tackling the problem head on with no compromise. In reality it is quite the opposite. Since when have those who should be brought to task for their irresponsible and offending actions ever cared about the law or its consequences? I'd say that's a good place to start.

[Scion]

Oh and its Britishers actually. Calling everyone from the UK Englanders is like suggesting that all Americans are Texan

I was taught that the word was Britons... Along with Welsh, Scots, and Irish...

[Mustang]

In America it has been deemed safe that one be allowed to have any weapon they wish so long as they never take that weapon out into the public.

I disagree with America's methods but I diagree with Britain's more considering its stand point on the issue is equivelant to that of the Chinease when they thought SARS came from Cats. To simply say "All guns are Banished!" does not make them dissapear and because guns are no longer a viable option to the public the averages joes are forced into using Knives. It may sound like a just decision to ban guns but tell me, if a man at the age of o lets say 50 his house is burglarised, he hears the comotion, investigates the noises and finds an young and vigerous intruder in his home. The intruder has a knife and lunges for him. the only weapon the home owner has is a knife but the average 50 year old is at a disadvantage in speed and power. Or worse still if the home owner is a single woman with very little self-defense training.

[TteFAboB]

One thing I have noticed about the difference between Press in the UK and other countires is that the press here pick up on a lot more stuff than other countries. IE I think UK press is more free than other countries. Means more poo poo gets flung about in public, and more daft things like this get publicity.

Did your press told you Tony Blair donated 3 million pounds to the Brazilian referendum campaign to ban firearm factories? British weapons are technically fine, but it would be a crime to import British weapons, paying in pounds, if the weapons can be built nationally for much cheaper.

However think about it does a kitchen knife need to be 12" in length?

OK might as well ban knives altogether. As if someone can't stab with a long knife they'll just do it with a short knife.

What about swords? Are the British MAD to still allow the forging of sharp swords? MADNESS I TELL YOU! Arrest those blacksmiths! They might have saved England, they might have forged the British Empire, but now society has "progressed" and we should forget about our past and concentrate on the present. But anybody can forge a sword with relative ease, given enough practice and enough room for an oven, you just have to disguise the smoke and the noise and Big Brother will never know what you're doing, we need to install cameras inside every house, every building, to make sure nobody has an illegal blacksmith workshop!

Proving for all to see, that you are tackling the problem head on with no compromise

Exactly, it doesn't matter what inanimate object is used in a murder, if you had removed every single object and got down to bare fists it would still be possible for murderers to kill people as long as they are more physically fit or skilled than their victims, as Skybird can tell, if you surprise someone from behind you can choke him to death before he has enough time to realize what happened.

So, why focus on the tools? The utter materialistic Brazilian government banned chainsaws in a poor attempt to stop the deforestation of the Amazon, do I have to tell you what happened? Indeed, some illegal deforestators stopped using chainsaws because they became harder to purchase, however, the human precedes the chainsaw, the desire to deforest precedes inanimate objects, so they changed their tools, of course many still use illegal chainsaws, there's no one to arrest them, but others developed a new method, far superior to chainsaws:

Instead of sawing tree by tree, many illegal groups are now using two Bulldozers or other heavy tractors with a HUGE naval anchor chain attached between them and dragging the chain knocking everything down in its path, this is ridiculous, it's the apocalypse of the jungle, an area the size of Belgium was deforested in one year with the invention of this new Leviathan, it is WORSE than chainsaws, when you know of the illegal activity with chainsaws and when you take action to stop them you can stop the damage soon enough and there might be a possibility for recovery to some extent because the low vegetation, the plants close to the ground, the soil, are still intact. But with the naval chain, nothing is left to recover, the land is DEVASTATED. This would never happen if chainsaws were never banned, instead of hunting down every criminal, instead of arresting them, fining them, instead of policing and being vigilant to prevent new deforestation activity, somebody had the great idea to focus on the material realm and pretend that would solve anything.

The focus must be on the human beings then, instead of attempting to remove material objects, people must be taught not to kill, instead of attacking freedom, people must be taught to be responsable.

I visited with a group a minor offender facility (from minor crimes to murderers), we gave them a piece of paper and a pencil and asked them to write 3 good things about them, 3 of their qualities.

Out of the dozens of minors, you want to know how many managed to write anything?

NONE!

Those teens were not capable of recognizing anything good in them, they never received a compliment in their entire lives, they were never loved at all, any type of love, they were never cared for, they had no hope, no faith, no determination, no self-esteem, no confidence.

And you believe you can stop these kids from commiting crimes by attempting to remove material objects from their hands?

They'll use Brazilian Jiu-Jitso instead then.

It's the human who commits the murder, not his hands, not the cells, molecules and atoms of his hands, not his muscles, bones or tendons, not his brain alone, but his mind, his essence, his thoughts and most importantly his choice, his decisions.

Fix the human, work on the human, think of the human, love the human.

You won't have to worry about any material objects if the human is working properly, give him a 50" sword if you want, give him a loaded sub-machine gun, give him a flamethrower, you don't have to fear anything. But since there will always be someone, somewhere, who will choose a different way, you must be vigilant and take the appropriate action against them, there are the occasional petty robber in Utopy, I mean, Iceland, there are petty robbers in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, there is organized crime in Japan, it doesn't matter how perfect the enviroment is, a rotten apple will appear eventually and what you want is to prevent this apple from contaminating every other healthy one, and not punishing the healthy apples, believing they are as bad as the rotten one.

Quit with the populism, demand serious action, don't cave in for symbolic measures.

[Marhkimov]

Hey TteFAboB? Where were you when I needed you to back me up in other discussions?

I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU!!!


Banning inademant objects is the stupidest thing I ever heard of.

[SUBMAN1]

Hey TteFAboB? Where were you when I needed you to back me up in other discussions?

I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU!!!


Banning inademant objects is the stupidest thing I ever heard of.

Hoplophobia

-S

[STEED]

Reading up on Jeff Commentaries, and he makes this statement:

Now it appears that some curious group in England has decided that too many people are getting stabbed, and that therefore long, pointy kitchen knives should be banned. Apparently they think that kitchen knives with blunt points would lessen the incidents of stabbing. Hoplophobes being what they are, it does not occur to them that they might reduce their problems by making armed assault illegal. Of course if they did that, they would find it necessary to do something about unarmed assault, and presently we would be called upon to eradicate boxing, wrestling and kendo.

Is that true?


Welcome to Great Britain home of fish and ships and yes the NANNY STATE you can not do that do this ect ect ect another saying we have here POLITICAL CORRECTNESS it's all a bad joke :down: :hulk:

[STEED]

Is the United Kingdom becoming a Big Brother state

The answer is yes just like America from what I have been reading.
Are own Government has gone nuts at this rate you will not be able to go to the toilet in peace without being spied on.

It's a bad joke :-j that has gone to far. :fff:

[STEED]

Is the United Kingdom becoming a Big Brother state? Read on -

Big Brother spies on Britain

In Britain, Big Brother really is watching you almost everywhere; according to civil liberties campaigners alarmed by the proliferation of spying machines in trains, buses, high streets, sports stadiums and perhaps soon even in clothes.

"In terms of western democracies, we are by far and away the most spied-upon nation," Mark Littleton, second in command at citizens' rights group Liberty, told AFP. One camera for every two adults Britain is already home to 10 percent of the entire world's close circuit television (CCTV) cameras.

By 2007 it will have 25 million of them - one for every two adults in the country - Liberty says, quoting industry forecasts. Some visitors to British shopping centres might feel reassured to know that they and fellow shoppers' movements are being tracked by CCTV.

It was thanks to a security camera that the young killers of two-year-old James Bulger in Liverpool in 1993 were traced. Bulger's horrific murder and the gruesome deaths of other children since have left a deep scar on the nation's psyche and some parents could feel less anxious knowing their offspring's movements may now be easier to trace.

But how many in the country are aware of just how often their own movements are tracked by roadside speed cameras, new travel passes and satellites? The introduction of electronic tollgates designed to curb the number of cars coming into London's crowded streets has led to the installation of around 800 cameras to catch motorists who do not pay their daily five-pound (seven-euro, nine-dollar) "congestion charge".

Across the country there are a further 5000 police traffic radars, set up to catch overhasty drivers, and their number is increasing. At this rate, there could be more than 20 000 within 10 years, according to Edmund King, executive director of the prestigious Royal Automobile Club (RAC).

In London, the public transport service is upgrading its ticketing system, introducing electronic smartcards which it hopes will be easier to use than paper tickets, while simultaneously cutting down on fare jumpers and inspectors. Infringements on privacy? But civil liberties groups say the new Oyster Card could lead to infringements of privacy when it comes into effect in late 2004.

The electronic chip in every card means the expected three million users can be instantly localised, every time they get on or off a bus or underground train, whether they want to be or not. Other projects with ostensibly laudable aims will also increase surveillance of the public's movements.

In October a think tank close to the centre-left Labour government came up with a plan to better control air pollution by imposing higher taxes on motorists who use their cars in the rush hour or bottleneck zones.


It involves equipping vehicles with devices so they - and obviously their drivers - can be tracked by satellite. Retailer have their own little plan But one of the most insidious spying schemes is a plan Liberty says has been dreamt up by Britain's giant retailers.

The group says high street chains like Marks & Spencer and Tesco are pioneering the use of tiny microchips, which are inserted into the packaging of goods or sewn into the labels of clothes. "Supermarket executives would love to be able to track every item of clothing we bought.

It would enable them to build up customer profiles, which they would use for specific marketing campaigns," Liberty's director, Shami Chakrabarti, wrote on the association's website. "Some customers will be comfortable with this; others will consider it a gross infringement of privacy.

The important point is that the technology is too powerful to be unregulated," the trained legal advisor said. "If anyone had told me two years ago that we would soon be in a position where it would be normal for many of us to be under 24-hour a day surveillance, I would have told them not to be ridiculous. But now it looks like happening."



The United Kingdom & Big Brother

Controversial plans to introduce a compulsory identity card scheme have been unveiled in the Queen’s speech. The cards, which had been dropped ahead of the election, will be linked to National Identity Register holding information on all UK residents. Home Secretary Charles Clarke said there had been “technical” changes to the new bill to take account of previous objections to the plan. Ministers say the new Identity Cards Bill will help protect people.

Biometrics (The various forms of identity verification which range from scanning the eye to fingerprints.)

Facial & Voice Recognition (Computer programs used to recognize various features and pinpoint them to an individual.)

DNA (From a simple Q-Tip swab of a person’s mouth, your DNA profile can be obtained and stored in a data base to ensure identification.
Or saved for future analysis.)

The British Government is proposing a law that every child born should be genetically screened and their DNA recorded and then stored in a government computer database

In July 2000, a surveillance bill granting the U.K. government sweeping powers to access email and other encrypted internet communications passed its final vote in the House of Commons and is set to become law on October 5th 2000

George Orwell. Britain’s surveillance camera culture is terrifying in terms of Big Brother watching your every move. There’s cameras are every where, in many establishments there are five or six small cameras up on the ceiling, in plain view. And those are just the ones you can see. A multitude of stores around London have the bland black and white "C.C.T.V Camera System in Use" signs that greet shoppers as they enter the establishments. Then the elaborate network of government camera lenses that blanket London.

Big Brother instead uses the computer and the newly developed software to do their monitoring and gathering of information.

[XabbaRus]

About banning knives. I was being sarcastic...

I think it is daft...

Too many daft people in the UK..I say stab them all....with knitting needles. Yep those grannies got to watch out for them.

[STEED]

About banning knives. I was being sarcastic...

I think it is daft...

Too many daft people in the UK..I say stab them all....with knitting needles. Yep those grannies got to watch out for them.


Is this a declaration of War :shifty: