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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Knife amnesty

There's been a hell of a lot of noise being made in the UK about inappropriate sentences for serious crimes. It's good headline grabbing stuff but it's highly unlikely to have any influence on most peoples day to day life. These extreme crimes are rare, thankfully, and most folk will get through their entire life unaffected by such events. That is as long as they don't live in permanent fear because of their skewed tabloid based perspective of the dangers inherent in the world.

This knife crime fear that's been stirred up by the media is just another pile of hyperbole and nonsense. A knife amnesty will not stop anyone who wants to get a knife, getting a knife. It won't save one carrot from being diced and won't save one kid from having their ribcage aerated. It's something I've worked with for years and it's always a concern. Thankfully using a knife properly is a very difficult thing to do. Taking a knife off such an expert is hard, taking it off some-one who hasn't a clue is a whole load easier. It's not something I want to be doing but it's something I've got to know and practice.

Even if you got every knife out of every pocket the risk from broken off bottles or even hair combs would remain. Life is never going to be 100 percent safe, you've got to get some perspective and take sensible precautions.
Thankfully it's so much less of a problem south of the border.

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