From the Daily Mail this week:
Carry a knife and you'll go to jail, David Cameron warns
Anyone carrying a knife on Britain's streets would automatically face jail under the next Conservative government, David Cameron warned today. Under the new plans, everyone carrying a blade without a reasonable excuse will be prosecuted and those convicted will get a custodial sentence.
Current sentencing guidelines, which allow some offenders to escape with a fine or caution, will be scrapped. The Tories' Knife Crime Action Plan stops short of a mandatory jail term but makes clear the presumption should be that offenders will go to jail. The minimum sentence will be a community penalty with the offender wearing a high visibility uniform.
Gordon Brown has already said that he wants to create a new "presumption to prosecute" for anyone found carrying a blade longer than three inches. But Mr Cameron wants to go further. "The Government should say not just there is a presumption you will be prosecuted if you carry a knife, but that there will be a presumption that you will go to jail," he said. "It is not a minor offence. There is no excuse for carrying a knife when you walk out of your door."
All very tough and no-nonsense, Mr.Cameron. But it's also a load of total garbage. What do you mean exactly, "There is no excuse for carrying a knife when you walk out of your door"?
There are dozens of reasons why this is a completely normal thing to do.
Suppose you're a chef on the way to work? You might well be carrying not one knife but a whole set. Or you might just be a housewife who's been to the shops and bought herself a new kitchen knife.
Clearly a menace. Lock 'er up!
Yachtsmen habitually carry knives because they sometimes need to cut rope. The GOS has a boat, and he carries a chunky stainless-steel folding knife with a blade at one end and a shackle-key at the other. Yacht chandlers recently have started selling special knives with no point to the blade at all, because it's well-known that many sailors have injured themselves on their own knives when tossed around in bad weather. I believe the same sort of knife is available for divers, whose need to carry a knife is even greater - getting tangled in a fishing net fifteen fathoms down is no laughing matter.
There must be many other trades that require possession of a knife, often a very sharp one. Shoe-repairer, fish-monger, butcher, leather-worker, carpet-fitter … any of these might need a knife on a daily basis, and will sometimes need to carry it to or from work - in other words, on the street.
And don't try telling us, Mr.Cameron, that you only mean young people. The GOS is in no danger of being mistaken for a hoodie, but carpet-fitters are often young, and whatever your trade you have to start young and you have to possess the tools for the job.
Nor can we expect the police to exercise discretion - because they just don't, do they? Remember Tom Foulkes MBA, BSc, CEng, FICE, FIMechE, MioD, Director General of the Institution of Civil Engineers, who was hauled off a Paris-bound train at Waterloo, locked up for four hours, photographed, forced to give his fingerprints and a DNA sample, and entered in the police national database of criminals for carrying a two-inch pen-knife?
No, face it, Mr.Cameron, if you make a law, sooner or later some tosser will use it. Some police constable with a target to make will arrest an innocent old codger on his way to a day's fishing because he's got a pen-knife in his tackle-box, some jobsworth in the CPS will look at it and say "Well, this is silly but the law is perfectly clear, and the stupid old git can't deny he broke it, so we're bound to get a conviction", and then some supine magistrate will think "I don't want to do this, but the law is the law and it's more than my job's worth …" and so on. Bingo, another martyr.
Now here's an idea, Mr.Cameron. It's a bit off the wall, I know, but let's just send it up your trouser-leg and see if it bites your balls … why not prosecute and punish people for what they do with their knives, rather than for the knives themselves? You know, next time some feral little scroat from Peckham sticks a knife in someone, don't let him off with a caution if he promises not to do it again, don't give him a pat on the back and community service because the prisons are full, don't give him a social worker and try to help him because he's disadvantaged … send him down and throw away the key: fifteen years, no remission, no treatment, no excuses. Get rid of him. For fifteen years at least, the rest of us will breathe a little easier and feel a little safer.
And the cost of his imprisonment?
Who cares? We're worth it.
Or perhaps you don't think we are …?
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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