8 Comments »

1. "We did not comment on leaked documents".

   It seems to me there is precious little the PMOS DOES comment on. Hear no evil, see no evil…

   Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 4 Jul 2005 on 9:48 pm | Link

2. "the Prime Minister’s Spokesman (PMS) said that journalists should look at the context of the report"

   Again, it seems to me that the "context" of things in the upper echelons of British Government depends very much on what day of the week it is, what Tony Bliar had for breakfast, and whether the PMOS feels like owning up to actually knowing someone called Tony Bliar in the first place…

   Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 4 Jul 2005 on 9:51 pm | Link

3. So what! I always carried a knife when I was a youngster, often several, as did all my friends, It is people who kill, not tools or weapons, you can just see the Headlines, Man caught with fork eating his dinner. Carpenter arrested for possesing a screwdriver. This obsession is absurd, and almost certainly does more harm that good.

   Comment by Colonel Mad — 4 Jul 2005 on 11:48 pm | Link

4. These guys are not carrying penknives to sharpen their pencil stubs. The law makers have made a few stupid rules ( lock knives are safer to use than penknives and are now illegal to carry on the street) but there is a huge problem out there.

   It’s a bollockingly simplistic NRA argument that people kill, not weapons. Put a gun in every hand and one provides the weaker individual with the ability to stand up to the bully: accidents happen, tempers fray, alcohol disinhibits, drugs confuse and bodies mount up. Take a look at the USA gun death statistics.

   Perhaps if we all had your self-projected training Colonel…

   Comment by Mr Pooter — 5 Jul 2005 on 6:35 am | Link

5. Putting a gun or a knife into the hands of everyone should not – note ‘should’ not – lead to an overall increase in deaths.

   American society and culture is so remarkably different to ours that it is unwise to extrapolate those statistics and apply them to Britain, although Blair and his colleagues – and notably some senior police officers – seem to believe (perhaps, wish) that is where we are heading. Maybe he has been seeing too much of George recently.

   In all of this there is a debate as to the moral and social responsibilities of the whole of our society.

   If children (and I use that term advisedly) are carrying weapons around one must wonder at the the feckless parents and the more general (lack of) decency in society. Attacking the behaviour of children will not itself change the culture which has allowed such behaviour to flourish.

   That said many of our young people are old enough to regularly carry weapons – and sometimes to die – in (misguided?) wars.

   Comment by Chuck Unsworth — 5 Jul 2005 on 10:13 am | Link

6. I wonder whether our society would be that different on the crime level from the USA if we all got tooled up? Traffic cameras would certainly take a beating, like many American road signs do, just for starters.

   Even highly trained armed police make fatal mistakes. Surely we want less room for life threatening errors of judgment and accidents, not more? Think how different it would be on the streets at night if the odd angry piss-artist could shoot the place up.

   Far easier to ban guns than change social mores. What are we talking about here, compulsory parenthood? Forced co-habitation until children reach 16, 18, 21?

   Comment by Mr Pooter — 5 Jul 2005 on 10:37 am | Link

7. No there is NOTHING wrong with knives or guns or scissors or anything else than might be used to kill people. A check of statistics in areas where populkations have been trained to use weapons properly confirms this.
   What may be wrong is the total lack of respect for Government and the law. This lack of respect seems to begin in the home, get worse in the little or no discipline school and increase thereafter. If people think they can get away with crime – and they clearly do under this and the last years of the previous (conservative) government, then what is to stop them enjoying (if that is the right word) themselves by using whatever weapons come to hand? Clearly nothing that has been proposed by Parliament for some several years.
   Banning things is not the way forward – otherwise the Great Leader (that’s Tone to his mates) would surely have banned alcohol after his child acted unwisely under the influence?

   Comment by Roger — 5 Jul 2005 on 7:46 pm | Link

8. No, banning things is not the answer – but as always human nature gets in the way of logic and common sense. You may be sure that if by following the common sense approach TB or some of this colleagues or cronies stood to gain personally, they’d take that route. But they don’t. In the same way that war = big business, so social imperfections = raison d’etre for government and ruling elite. Politics is not about doing the right thing for the country. Politics is about doing the right thing for yourself and your mates. It’s only about doing the right thing for the country when you and your mates also gain personally.

   Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 5 Jul 2005 on 9:19 pm | Link

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