Sunday 4 October 2009

Let’s Just Lie! No-one Will Ever Find Out!

It seems the phrase ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again…’ has been taken on board fully by the government.

Unfortunately, it never occurs to them to try something different, instead of something already proven not to work:
A task force of young anti-knife crime campaigners has been set up by the Home Office.

Ministers have also launched a new set of adverts designed to turn young people away from knife crime.
And what do these adverts say?
Posters showing youngsters behind bars, with the slogan "carry a knife and lose your life" will be displayed at bus stops across England and Wales.
FAIL!

As a recent news story showed, this is a blatant lie:
It emerged in December last year that only 17 per cent of people sentenced for possessing a knife receive a jail term and no one has been handed the maximum four-year sentence brought in two years ago under a government drive to tackle knife crime.
In other words, just as with ‘reefer madness’ in the States, and the 90s HIV adverts, the government plans to launch a propaganda campaign based on scaremongering that bears no basis in reality.

So do they think that the NuLab generation are so dim and uneducated that they will swallow this?

Well, they might be on to something, if not for the fact that they almost certainly know someone who is either a victim - or a perpetrator - of knife crime, and they will know what did (or rather, didn’t) happen should it have actually come to court.
Home Office minister David Hanson said: "The vast majority of young people are honest and law-abiding and won't tolerate violence in their neighbourhood.

"This campaign targets the small minority who break the law. We are sending out a clear message that people who break the law and continue to carry offensive weapons will face tough penalties."
No, you are lying.

And the kids will know it…

6 comments:

Von Spreuth. said...

So do they think that the NuLab generation are so dim and uneducated that they will swallow this?

They appear to be in overdrive trying to make it so.

You thought that destroying the education system did not have any reason behind it?

Quiet_Man said...

Problem with destroying the education system isn't that it produced dumb kids, because it doesn't, simply uneducated ones. Street smarts will tell the kids that the Government is running a bluff, that and the experience of pretty much getting away with anything they do as the "adults" can't touch them.

David Gillies said...

When venturing outside my apartment, I have a razor-sharp 3 1/2" flick-knife on my person at all times. Thus far, the number of times I have used it to stab someone: zero. Number of times I have used it to defeat recalcitrant modern packaging methods: lost count. On the other hand, since I live where mens rea has not been completely negated by actus reus, were I to gut a street-robber with it, the cops and the courts would probably let me off scot-free.

Mark Wadsworth said...

The article misses a bit - out of people committing knife-related offences, how many get arrested? And of those arrested, how many are taken to court? Of those taken to court, how many are let off as innocent (i.e. not sentenced)

The article picks up the story at the "sentencing" stage so probably woefully understates your chances of "getting away with it".

Maturecheese said...

Where the law is wrong on this issue is this, it is the inapropriate use of an offensive weapon that should be punished, not merely the possesion of one. I, like many of my generation(in my forties) have nearly always carried a knife but I have never injured anybody with one and so what business is it of the government to tell me whether I can posses a knife or not. It is nanny statism and what is worse, when purpertrators of violents crimes involving offensive weapons are caught, they are given ridiculously lenient sentences.

JuliaM said...

"Street smarts will tell the kids that the Government is running a bluff..."

Yup. NuLab's education system can't dumb those down. I'm sure they're working on it though...

"The article picks up the story at the "sentencing" stage so probably woefully understates your chances of "getting away with it"."

Oh, I'm always pretty much resigned to the thought that it's usually worse than I feard!

"Where the law is wrong on this issue is this, it is the inapropriate use of an offensive weapon that should be punished, not merely the possesion of one."

Indeed. As David Gillies points out, they have a legitimate use, so why criminalise the mere possession, and not the act?