How to get stabbed: you, too, can be knifed in a public place

Jez, Leeds

The thing is Rod, you'll find that the young kids that do this, most probably have been drinking heavily before they've gone out. It saves money, then they'll hit a bar totally out of it, 'bulletproof' and looking for a row.

"a total and utter lack of either discipline or deterrent from those who are supposed to have domain over them"

It's drilled into the youth no one should have domain over them (by the usual suspects) so in their mind, they're making the rules.

Jo

A "generation or two before we make headway"? What an optimist. I don't see any way out when the signals from government are so weak and watery.

Dave

A generation or two before we make any headway?
Why, only a generation or two ago sports shops, hardware shops, gun shops all had in their windows attractively arranged displays of pocket and sheath knives of various shapes and sizes. It was pretty much a rite of passage, usually about 12 or so years old, when your dad took you out and bought you your first "real" knife. This was used for whittling. throwing at but failing to stick into tree trunks, playing "splits" etc. I once stabbed a piece of balsa wood to within an inch of its life.

John Armitage

The way out is deterrence. Bring back capital punishment and have enforced news blackouts on the time/date of execution and no appeal for such crimes once guilt is proved in court.

This is being fed by fashion. Thugs who think it clever when there is no real retribution or justice for their acts, just the "glory" of having taken a life and gaining kudos within the gang they are a part of.

Bring in long drop hanging - quick and efficient - and cremate the body shortly afterwards.

This IS a deterrence and no amount of liberal wishy-washy arguments about capital punishment not being a deterrent will convince me otherwise.

Kill the perpetrators and thin their ranks. Eventually it may dawn on some of those involved that it just isn't worth the alleged glory or street cred.

The long-awaited chickens coming home to roost of 40 years of liberalism by this naive stupid baby boomer wrecking generation - of which Rod Liddle is a part - and, interestingly, can't quite bring himself to say, that real deterrence in the form of "a life for a life" is the answer.

See the statistical evidence

http://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecinqu/v44y2006i3p512-535.html

amongst many other articles.

Just common sense really which the hippy generation has always shied away from.

Let's hope Cameron and co will start to end the infection of the last 40 years. Bold new thinking is required and real toughness amongst a new brand of politicians.

John Armitage

And look at the graph in this article on the deterrent effect of Capital punishment. It works.

Check the sources.

http://www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html#intro

Sean Dunne

“Your likely assailant, though, will be white and probably lower-middle-class, rather than blue collar or intermesh.”

I don’t know where Liddle gets his information from - but from the limited details published and examining the results of actual convictions, the assailant will be non white and first, second and third generation immigrant origin.

David Short

I think RL was talking about who you provoke.

It doesn't seem to take much to provoke people in Britain anymore.

Look at them the wrong way just about anywhere, and you're in for trouble.

Doesn't matter what colour, class, immigration status, or even age.

It's something that I hate to admit about my own country.

It's also something that will never be solved.

We don't have the stomach any more for the kind of policing it would involve.

Mind you, they have that kind of no-nonsense policing, though it's private policing, in Canary Wharf, home of huge amounts of aggression.

Rhory Fraser

What statistics was Mr Liddle using? Certainly not those relating to the current spate of knife murders in London (No.18 yesterday).

The vast majority of victims (including yesterday's) were black as were the overwhelming majority of assailants (not one of the latter group was White British).

Richard K

Quite spurious and misleading profiling "white male not from a lower-class background".
Facts are to date, for example, out of the 17 teenagers stabbed to death in London this year NONE have been stabbed by a white male. 16 have died at the hands of black murderers and one from a Turkish Muslim.It is of course the media who persist in peddling this "white lie" and are electrifyingly quick to label the suspect as white and hide it when they are ethnic. Remember the recent stabbing in the park in West Yorkshire, the police and media shockingly quickly tried to point the finger of blame at the white community which could have precipitated a riot. It turns out that are the assailants came from Muslim or Pakistani backgrounds.

Peter :Larkin

Liddle's conclusions are as wrong as his article is flippant and unfunny. This clumsy head-in-the-sand, finger-in-the-ears-hope-it-goes-away vain attempt at humour is a tacit admission that no resolution is possible without turning the liberal philosophies that produced the problem on its head. On divorce above family, on pursuit of self above muddling through as virtue, on self and materialism above common Goodness, and hedonism and social engineering above decency and justice.

Like many of his generation, who are now thankfully just past their point of peak influence, they are reluctant to admit that what the UK now reaps what it has sown, and this article confirms his generation's refusal to face up to the consequences of their actions - so corrupting and apparent are the cause and solution respectively - as J.A. has already pointed out above.

Time to leave the EU and its Human Rights Act and get tough on fashion knife and gun criminality by fighting fire with fire.

Liddle is typical of that Oxbridge Radio 4 BBC set from whence he came. In the long view the move away from Capital Punishment will be seen as just a moment of naivety by the Atlee heirs who thought that ending poverty amidst social engineering dressed as education, would solve all. It hasn't and it didn't, as is now so apparent as yet another motiveless knife crime is in the news - black on black - once again running contrary to Liddle's "ingredients of a stabbing" article.

"Nasty brutish and short" to quote Hobbes. Where is the Leviathan now in EU la-la land?

Bellum omnium contra omnes indeed.

May God help you all

Shame really.

Sean Connery said it best:

"When he pulls a knife, you pull a gun."

Paul Grey

I am not sure you are correct in your assertions about either victim or attacker. We have been running a longtitudinal study on violence and aggression and have found that although there is indeed a relationship between alcohol consumption and victim BUT this seems to be more about where the attacks are taking place (public areas in urban centres more commonly late at night). The relationship between drink/drugs consumption and the attacker appears to be more significant.

I also question your assertion regarding profiling of the attacker.

What we do know is that in only 19% of the assaults we have monitored the attack was one on one, mostly it involves 2-3 people against an individual.

Finally, I think your attempt at humour on this subject was poorly judged. Innocent people being murdered and mutilated, often at random is no matter humour.

I suspect should a friend/family member of yours been attacked in this manner you would have performed some basic research and been more sensitive to what you are reporting.

Liam

"you need to be between the age of about 14 and 30 years, white and male."

Yes, and poor. And uneducated. And unable to see anything more interesting to do than quarrel with the next street's tribe over the propriety of a lavatorial crust of South London.

The wealthy and the educated have remained remarkably unstabbed, which is why the likes of Mr Liddle remain at large to vent supercilious rubbish like this.

Geoff M

The latest police stats show that knife death victims are overwhelmingly white and male.

The perperators of these murders are however overwhelmingly black/asian.

That however is not a "story".