ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who alone workest great marvels: Send down upon our Bishops, and Curates, and all Congregations committed to their charge, the healthful Spirit of thy grace; and that they may truly please thee, pour upon them the continual dew of thy blessing. Grant this, O Lord, for the honour of our Advocate and Mediator, Jesus Christ.
Sadly, the Book of Common Prayer is rarely heard in Anglican churches these days. The Book of Common Sense likewise. I have spoken to one or two bishops, and know people who regularly meet with those crozier-wielding smiters of the infidel over Earl Grey and custard creams. They are usually nice people. Learned. Well-meaning. Really, really nice. But, oh dear, their poor brains are sorely in need of those great marvels that the Lord alone workest:
Church leaders urge government to ban pointed kitchen knives
Church leaders in the Diocese of Rochester have called for the government to enforce stricter rules on the sale of domestic knives.
They’ve written an open letter asking for a ban on the sale of pointed kitchen knives. The letter was also signed by leading crime experts, as well as MPs, and community leaders.
“Historically we needed a point on the end of our knife to pick up food because forks weren’t invented. Now we only need the point to open packets when we can’t be bothered to find the scissors,” the letter reads.
It continues: “A five-year study in Edinburgh found that of the sharp instruments used in homicides, 94 per cent were kitchen knives. Research demonstrates kitchen knives are used in a large percentage of homicides due to their availability and lethal nature.
“Criminologists have demonstrated that reducing availability in turn reduces crime.
“The UK has worked for the public good by restricting handguns, paracetamol, smoking in public and plastic bags – now it is time to say ‘no bloody point’.”
The letter and conference are part of a month of awareness-raising activities about the dangers of knife crime in September, supported by the Diocese of Rochester, the Church of England in Medway, and the London Boroughs of Bromley and Bexley.
My first thought, upon reading this, was “It’s from The Onion, right?”. My second thought, upon realising it wasn’t, was “Oh dear, it appears Their Graces have been reading The Onion in search of good policy suggestions…”.
Another point (‘scuse the pun): I own a number of very sharp, and pointy, kitchen knives (I’m a keen cook) and not once has any of my blades violated the bodily integrity of another human being (accidental slicing of my fingertips notwithstanding). It’s almost as if knives, in and of themselves, are not the problem. But I’m sure that recognising the agency, and accountability, of those wielding knives in a criminal fashion would be ‘problematic’ on so many progressive levels. So, perhaps, better just to blame the blades, in much the same way as the truck takes the rap (at least according to the headlines in the meeja) when some jihadi mows down a crowd of innocents.
Yes, that’s the only possible reason we need a point.
Do Christians still eat fish on Fridays? Ever tried filleting a fish with a fork? Or butchering a lamb? I mean, I’m sure you could use a cleaver, but watching me attempt to french trim the rack with a cleaver sounds like an evening’s entertainment along similar lines to The Deer Hunter’s most famous scenes.
What a time to be alive. I thought I’d have jet-packs and holograms, not having to type the words “You can pry my boning knife out of my cold dead hands” and mean them.
The restrictions on handguns have paralleled an increase in gun crime.
Smoking is not banned in public spaces unless they are enclosed, and it is a moot point whether the recent decline in smoking is associated with that or the rise in vaping.
The “ban” on plastic bags has increased the use of plastic.
Anyone can buy paracetamol, they just need to go to a pharmacy for a large amount – or make multiple trips to corner shops.
I doubt a ban on knives would be any more effective, given the number of stabbing implements available, and the ease with which one can be made with a bit of metal and a stone. Maybe flintknapping will make a comeback?
The bishops may have once done without forks, but no one else has.
Given their entire ignorance on public policy, perhaps the Bishops should return to the dayjob. Fill the pews. Convert the heathen. They don’t need to send out missionaries anymore, there are millions to be converted right here. I would suggest they start by adopting christianity themselves, it is difficult to convert people when you believe in nothing beyond not upsetting anyone.
Mine too. Especially when I got to this bit:
Rt Rev Simon Burton-Jones, Bishop of Tonbridge said: “Knife crime rips up the lives of families and friends, piercing the networks that give us life.
Heh, good one! I see what you did there. But sadly, no. I found a reference to it in the Telegraph amongst other places.
“Crozier-wielding smiters of the infidel”
Oh that they were.
God has had several thousand years to stop people stabbing each other and the fact that she hasn’t suggests that either she can’t or she doesn’t want to.
Perhaps the bishop does not know about electric drills with grinder attachment, or knife grinder wheels so anyone could set up a service to put points on non-pointed knives. Business opportunity.
Not all knife homicides are caused by stabbing, slashing works well too.
And if one means is no longer available, people will find another.
What does the bishop say should be done about screw drivers and bradawls?
@Pat (September 26, 2019 at 11:33 am)
I agree: this proposal is likely to be ineffective, but then its effectiveness was never the point (I’m not punning deliberately, honest). The objective is to be *seen* to be doing something. Ideally without upsetting anyone.
I think we all know an effective approach to tackling knife crime would be to profile the likely offenders – they’re not usually solicitors from Esher (other Surrey towns are available), or grandmothers from Auchtermuchty – and institute a rigorous stop and search programme aimed at the correct targets. But that’ll never fly – the woke crowd will see it as ‘problematic’, or worse. Plus, it’ll generate all manner of awful headlines in our corrupt meeja, and senior police officers will be in fear of losing their jobs (though some of them already deserve that).
We have a situation in our society where certain truths – based on observable events – have become unsayable if they cast an unfavourable light on certain ‘protected’ identity groups. Just another example of the pernicious effect of identity politics. And, if I may borrow a phrase from our cousins across the pond: no way to run a railroad.
Good one, Pat (September 26, 2019 at 11:33 am). A man with your talents should be writing for The Babylon Bee (and the church leaders in Rochester should try reading it – better policy suggestions than the Onion). The best comedy just tells the truth in a witty way. The last paragraph in your comment scores highly.
Natalie also shows much talent in that direction.
Historically we needed a point on the end of our knife to pick up food because forks weren’t invented. Now we only need the point to open packets when we can’t be bothered to find the scissors
Who the f*ck uses a kitchen knife to eat food with ? Most people use standard table cutlery, which is normally a knife with a rounded end. A “kitchen knife”, i.e. similar to one used in a criminal stabbing, is used to _prepare_ food not eat it.
Have you ever tried slicing a tomato with just the blade edge ? In most cases it is far easier to pierce the skin with the point and then slice from there, that is why they have points.
And to invalidate the statement, when you eat meat you use a steak knife, with a point, and a fork, because it is easier to cut cooked beef with.
Ed Turnbull wrote:
‘and institute a rigorous stop and search programme aimed at the correct targets. But that’ll never fly – the woke crowd will see it as ‘problematic’, or worse.’
Well, you’ll need to travel far to find a person less ‘woke’ than I, and I see this as extremely ‘problematic’. Stop-and-search without probable cause (fancy American-speak for ‘a bloody good reason’) is incredibly-corrosive of civil rights. And even sallow-faced tweakers in hoodies have civil rights. If they don’t, then nobody does.
In addition, if you give the police stop-and-search powers like this (and they have already been given this power in the UK on far-too-flimsy grounds and far-too-easily, far-too-often), the time that it takes for them to start using this power for reasons other than the original goals will be measured with an egg-timer. Soft-boiled.
There are two sure and simple ways to stop ‘knife crime’ in its tracks, neither of which attacks anyone’s civil rights and one of which positively expands them. And they are
– real and meaningful penalties – many years in the pokey – for anyone using a weapon – any weapon – to commit a crime.
– restoring both the presumptive right and the practical means for citizens to defend themselves against criminal assaults.
llater,
llamas
It’s tempting to make fun of this. But underneath it is a nasty view of what “civilization” means: Self-defense is a malum in se crime, anything that might be useful for self-defense must be banned lest the weak-minded be tempted into committing the horrible crime of self-defense, and if the Authorities say “You must die, not for any fault of your own but simply for the Good of Society,” then you have a duty to die.
Inside of London, I would only look like one third of the likely offenders, which is great.
Outside of London, I look like nearly three quarters of likely offenders, which is not so great. Am not a solicitor, nor do I look or speak like one. I’m not convinced that I’d be happy for the likelihood of having my person searched to increase significantly purely because I want to go visit my uncle in Rayleigh at the weekend.
The right does exist, in principle. In practice, that might be a very different manner.
But what would (in the UK) the practical means be? (genuine question)
If I ever have a knife pulled on me, I bloody hope I’m sober enough, level-headed enough, and with enough space around me to scream “KNIFE KNIFE KNIFE!” at the top of my lungs while running away as fast as I can.
@ NK, thank you, I’m flattered.
@ Llamas stop and search would help if properly targetted. Which could be done by assigning one group of cops to randomly search everyone, solicitors and old ladies included, in order to gather evidence as to which group should be targeted. Relying on the gut feeling of policemen causes a self reinforcing bias, as if only one type of person is ever searched then all finds would come from that type.
But ultimately, serious consequences to the perpetrators of violence, with no excuses for those who broke their own homes, is the only solution.
And the right to use practical self defence measures would also be a big help- violent types do tend to think twice when there is a possibility of losing.
neonsnake: “… scream “KNIFE KNIFE KNIFE!” at the top of my lungs while running away as fast as I can.”
Reminds me of the interview with a martial arts expert who was asked what he would do if a group of thugs confronted him at night on a dark city street. He replied: “I would run. But I would run with confidence!”.
I’m not surprised; standard advice is to run (in all situations where it is possible). Screaming “knife knife knife” or “gun gun gun” is what one of my sensei (a police combat instructor, FWIW) drills into us, to warn others around you.
The discussion over “practical measures” of self defense against knives highlights only too well the idiocy of the proposal. If someone wants to really fuck someone up, they can use pretty much anything.
A tactical torch, for instance, is a pretty solid weapon and can do enormous damage. Ban torches?
Murder rates, who dies and who kills give you the necessary info to know who to target, where they live and their motivations.
You really want to stop Britain’s knife crime, you need to legalise, license and cheapen the production and purchase of medical grade drugs.
Everything else is just the talk of people missing the point. Pun slightly unintended.
Being a drugs gang member is a rubbish life. Take the money out of illegal drugs trade, watch the motivation for killing fall away.
@llamas (September 26, 2019 at 1:32 pm)
I don’t disagree with you on real and meaningful penalties, were that to happen I would applaud loudly. But it’s not likely to happen – we’re faced with a criminal justice system that’s a tad squeamish about holding malefactors to account (were we to go into the reasons for this I suspect it’d take weeks). Unless those malefactors happen to have posted ‘mean’ words on social media…
Similarly I agree, wholeheartedly, on the issue of self defence. But again, in the UK, it ain’t gonna happen (things are way better in this regard on your side of the pond). The gummint over here doesn’t want the citizenry able to defend ourselves. For if we can defend ourselves against criminals we defend ourselves against *government*. And that, in their eyes, would never do.
Yes, S&S maybe unacceptable from a purely libertarian purist POV. But I never advocated for its use without due cause. And are you arguing that profiling isn’t a legitimate tool in crime prevention, as well as detection? I’m not arguing for the abolition of due process following apprehension.
I no longer describe myself as a ‘libertarian’ because I found the ideological pissing contests were becoming tiresome (and reminiscent of the People’s Front of Judea sketch in Life of Brian). I’d now describe myself as a pragmatic – classical perhaps – liberal. (That’s not ‘liberal’ in the US usage for the sake of clarity). S&S was discontinued in London (at the behest of that tower of wisdom Sadiq Khan IIUC) and knife crime has soared. Yes, I know correlation doesn’t equal causation, but I find it suggestive nonetheless. And I’d contend the resumption of S&S would go some way toward ameliorating the knife crime problem in the UK.
You haven’t written anything that changes my mind, and maybe I’ve failed to alter your view with what I’ve written. But no prob, we’ll just agree to disagree.
Regards
ET
Pat wrote:
‘Which could be done by assigning one group of cops to randomly search everyone, solicitors and old ladies included, in order to gather evidence as to which group should be targeted.’
(Incidentally, you can’t “randomly search everyone”. If you’re searching everyone, by definition, it ain’t random.)
So let’s just follow this to its logical conclusion. Let’s do exactly as you say, and gather the data. It will certainly show that black-and -brown-skinned individuals carry knives at a higher rate than their proportion of the population. Because they do.
So would black or brown skin now be prima-facie grounds for stopping-and-searching people to look for knives?
See where this leads? You just legitimized purely-racist grounds for deciding who to stop-and-search. Does this seem like a good idea to you?
llater,
llamas
@neonsnake (September 26, 2019 at 2:05 pm)
So, you look like a (likely) knife crime offender? A young single male, probably raised in a fatherless household, and deeply immersed in gang culture and other criminality? Being a bit hard on yourself, aren’t you? 😉 Look, I know what you’re driving at, or at least I think I do: you’ve drawn the inference that there’s something possibly maybe perhaps *racist* in the way I framed my comment. (And if I’ve mischaracterised your position I sincerely beg your pardon). That’s not the case, and allow me to clarify.
Your likely knife crime offender is indeed a young single male, fatherless household, gang culture etc. And, in some parts of the country, the black population is indeed disproportionately represented in that type of crime. (Just as other demographics are disproportionately represented in other types of crime. Our fictional Surrey solicitor is far more likely to commit some kind of fraud, for example). It’s not racist, or islamophobic, or whatever, to notice such patterns in criminal activity, and to ask why they exist. Yes, you’ll almost get idiots (actual racists) claiming that knife crime arises from the perp’s ethnicity, conveniently overlooking the fact that Sir Trevor MacDonald, for example, has, to the best of my knowledge, never chibbed anyone…
It’s foolish to ignore patterns in some types of criminality just because acknowledging them may lead to questions some find uncomfortable. This attitude allowed Rotherham, Rochdale et al to continue for far too long. Asking certain questions doesn’t automatically mean the questioner’s motives are suspect. It’s not wrong to profile likely suspects based on observation of patterns in types of crime.
Regards
ET
@llamas (September 26, 2019 at 3:48 pm)
Yes, individuals from some ethnic minority communities *do* carry bladed weapons in disproportionately large numbers, but I don’t think anyone’s arguing that race is the only characteristic here, beyond being an identifier (see my comment above about Trevor MacDonald) Taken together with others: age, sex, family background, previous criminal behaviour (if any) and known affiliations I think the rozzers can build a fairly valid picture of who they should be targeting.
Regards
ET
Didn’t St. Monty of Python have something to say about point-ed sticks?
😉
What does a person look like from the background you describe? Bit skinny, wearing a hoodie, stubbled, working class accent, smoking a home-rolled ciggie, full-sleeve tattoo?
To look at me or listen to me, you wouldn’t know my background and upbringing. You can’t tell from looking at me whether my father was present for my upbringing, or whether I’m involved in gangs etc
No, I don’t think you were being racist. 66%-ish of people found with knives in London are from ethnic minorities (I haven’t yet checked the numbers on whether they’re finding them because 66% of the people they were searching were from minority backgrounds, and indeed whether they carry knives at a higher rate than whites).
Outside London, it’s roughly 72% whites that carry knives, but 34% inside London is still a big number. And something like 80% of searches find nothing, apparently.
So if it were applied “properly”, then I should get stopped and searched. One in three searches should be on me, or people who look like me. Occasionally in London, and more-so outside of London.
I’m not keen on going about my daily business and finding myself stopped, frisked, delayed by 30 minutes, and generally having to justify my existence to the Met for no reason other than my appearance – anymore than I’d want them coming in to my kitchen and depriving me of the ability to easily fillet some sea bass.
And it strikes me as fair that if I wouldn’t be happy about it, then I shouldn’t be happy about it being applied to people who don’t look like me either.
Discussions seem to keep swirling around the drain of an issue which dare not speak its name — the great fear we all have of being accused of being racist. We need a word for that fear — raceophobia?
An Israeli shaking his head at the theater of TSA treatment of passengers at US airport security checkpoints commented — ‘In the US, you look for weapons; in Israel, we look for terrorists’.
Since almost anything can be used as a weapon, the real threat is the woman behind the knife, gun, SUV, frying pan, whatever. But that is “profiling”, and we are so afraid of being called racists that we would rather see innocent people die than use our common sense.
@ Ed Turnbull 4.09 pm
The multiple factors you mention would work very well in an intelligence-gathering and analysis application – very well indeed. But we’re talking street stop-and-search without probable cause (so, not connected to a specific crime and not in response to BOLO for a while male, early 20s, 5 feet 6, Arsenal T shirt and blue jeans, last seen headed West along Jermyn Street). In that circumstance, all the officer has to go on are i) visual appearance and ii) prior knowledge of the person, if any. In other words, purely-subjective measures.
One of the basic facts of criminology is that a very large proportion of crimes is carried out by a very small core group of criminals – especially true of property crimes, but fairly-true of violent crime as well. These people are not hard to find or to catch – after all, they’re committing lots of crimes. Instead of vaguely fishing for potential criminals by stop-and-search – which is rather like looking for your lost car keys under the street light, since that’s where the light is – it might be better to toss violent offenders in the black-bar motel for a very long time indeed – as used to be the case in the UK – and make the black-bar motel a very unpleasant place to be. (I was in UK last week and saw a news story about prisoners at a high-security prison posting cell-phone videos to their Facebook pages. Cell-phones? Facebook? I think that there has been some loss of vision on just what prison is supposed to be?)
I did want to make one more point, to wit – the concentration on stop-and-search is partly-misplaced, it seems to me – it concentrates effort of finding people who most-likely have done nothing actually wrong, and who may be behaving in perfectly-rational ways in response to their circumstances. After all, I carry a pistol, more days than not, but that doesn’t mean I’m a violent killer. Once you legitimize stop-and-search for no reason, the focus will soon become catching people who carry weapons, when it should be catching people who hurt other people. Maybe some see this as a distinction without a difference, but if you believe (as I do) in both the right to self-defence and the right to the means of self-defence, then criminalizing those rights and putting in place measures which will inevitably criminalize large numbers of people is fundamentally wrong.
llater,
llamas
llamas,
So true, yet so opaque to so many people….
“It’s not wrong to profile likely suspects based on observation of patterns in types of crime.”
Of course not. 90% of criminals are male. You’re male. Therefore…
“I did want to make one more point, to wit – the concentration on stop-and-search is partly-misplaced, it seems to me – it concentrates effort of finding people who most-likely have done nothing actually wrong, and who may be behaving in perfectly-rational ways in response to their circumstances. […] Once you legitimize stop-and-search for no reason, the focus will soon become catching people who carry weapons, when it should be catching people who hurt other people. Maybe some see this as a distinction without a difference,”
It’s a common logical fallacy; one which is even more common in propaganda. You can a Group A you want to destroy, but know that you have no reasonable excuse for doing so, and no public sympathy for your cause. So you find a Group B that overlaps somewhat with Group A, that everyone rightly hates. Then you talk about the people in the overlap, declare the need to do something about Group B, and propose methods targeting Group A in order to do that. The people cheer.
So, Group A is people who carry things that can be used as weapons. (i.e. everyone.) Group B is people who are likely to attack other people without justification. Point to people carrying knives to stab people with, propose methods to target people owning knives.
Also, radical feminists can do it with men, racists can do it with blacks, (or whites,) anyone trying to take away any liberty whatsoever can do it with any specific group they select. Whenever you see someone trying to ban something, or get society to ‘fight’ something, look through their argument and see if you can spot a Group A and Group B. It’s amazing, once you start looking, how often it’s there. Hidden in plain sight.
Exactly this. What percentage of males are criminals?
People who eat bacon are 20% more likely to get bowel cancer. Ban bacon. Obviously. What kind of nutter wouldn’t be on board with that?
Facts is facts.
People who don’t eat bacon have a 0.4% chance of getting bowel cancer.
Therefore people who do eat bacon have a 0.48% chance of getting bowel cancer.
Still ban bacon? Stop, search, and arrest people with more bacon than can be viewed as for personal use, since they’re obviously planning on murdering their spouse?
Bit Gooner-ist, that, llamas. Anyway, it was a long time ago, and I said I was sorry. It was all a terrible misunderstanding.
And they got my height wrong…
😉
I think I have a multi-tool in my bag. Am I the bad guy?
Here, it won’t be weapons, I think, as much as “things that could be used as weapons”.
Which pretty much puts the kibosh on anyone black who is off for a round of golf.
It’s not, especially here in the UK, for reasons stated above.
neonsnake – it was an obvious troll. After all, what are the odds that a Gunners fan would ever be seen in Jermyn Street? After all, neither garish T-shirts or Carling Black Label are to be found there.
🙂
llater,
llamas
😆 😆 😆
Well played, llamas. I fold.
(For the benefit of you colonials, Jermyn Street is mainly known for its upperclass tailors)
At least these church people are trying to think of a solution to knife crime.
Libertarians are free to offer alternative ones.
Let me guess your approach: CCTV cameras, put them in every room of every house, and on every street, all paid for by immigrants? That seems about on par with trying to ban the sale of steak knives.
Seriously, trying to make steak knives illegal is cultural and philosophical degeneration in its terminal phase.
Until the Rochester bishops (and, more urgently, certain other groups) are rendered less powerful, I fear that more of mere stop&search would disarm defenders (or dissuade them from arming) more often than attackers. While knife crime is high, and thus carrying a knife or similar means of defence in a rough area may be prudent, I don’t actually want to be balancing my desire to survive visiting a friend with my fear of heavy-handed stop&search. Just having a knife should not be an offence and so any stop&search should be searching for something else.
I more than take Ed Turnbull’s point that criminals are not spread randomly in the population and it is mere common sense (or, to put that in modern language, prejudice and probably illegal) to devote most of your effort where most of the problem is. However, just as Robert Conquest once joked that he opposed communism from the left (i.e,. as a system that made the workers poorer and oppressed them), so let me critique from the right the idea of otherwise-truly-random targeting of whole sub-populations based on superficial appearance. While its precision would exceed the bishops’ proposal to target all with kitchen knives, we can profile more accurately than that. (Mr Turnbull notes that point in a later comment but I think it would have to be central.)
Decades back under Thatcher, before screams of racism made it illegal, the Special Patrol Group had a stop&search technique. It may be that information on it could provide some guidance on the relative strengths and weaknesses of such ideas.
The SPG were formed to combat rising levels of petty street theft in London (snatching hand bags and the like – Oh, that we now could be concerned by such trivia). The idea was that, on those rare occasions when the crime was reported well and very promptly, and the SPG were monitoring the locality, hundreds of officers (with as much knowledge of known local perps for this as they could remember) would swiftly flood the immediate area stop&searching everyone who fitted the description. I knew the details of this almost entirely from the left and could not help being aware that my informants’ hatred of it had nothing whatever to do with thinking it ineffective, nor did some in their hearts object to such thefts (except when it was their own bag). But I have less information about whether it was truly effective. Obviously, unlike a knife, the stolen bag, if found, would be evidence of an actually-committed crime, not just evidence that bishops in Rochester would suspect you might commit one sometime. The method was highly targeted as regards nearness in time and space to the point of crime but fairly scattershot as regards who, of those who literally ‘looked’ good for it, were searched. A friend of mine walking in London with a black man was much amused to see how the correct but firm and suspicious officer changed in a moment into a relaxed and friendly, just-going-through-the-motions officer when her friend spoke to him in an educated Oxford accent. (I was myself once stopped for “running while male in a built up area during the hours of darkness” and the once-free-speech-destroying but now-partly-penitent Trevor Phillips was several times stopped for “driving while black”.)
“All pointed knives of more than 2″ shall be permanently attached to a 3/16″ stainless steel cable of not more than 4′ in length, whose other end shall be secured at all times to the wrist one of that knife’s registered Named Persons. That Named Person (who shall be a government employee) shall be responsible for witnessing the use of said knife during his or her 8-hour shift. Each knife shall have three appointed Named Persons, who will each supervise that knife during their daily appointed 8-hour shift. In order to secure funding for these Named Persons, the sale of each knife shall trigger a one-time tax payment of $528,000, made to the Office Of Registered Named Knife Persons.”
There. Knives made safe, and unemployment cured, in one easy step. Kitchens will become a bit crowded, but we need to do this for the children!
Sadly, no, they are not. They are trying to avoid thinking about solutions to knife crime. Thinking factually about knife crime risks having politically-incorrect thoughts. As Orwell put it, “There is always the risk that any thought, freely followed up, will lead to the forbidden thought.”
It is interesting that an argument often made against gun confiscation is “What will be next, knife confiscation?” a retort dismissed as ridiculous exageration by the “reasonable gun restrictions” sort of person. But today’s reductio ad absurdum is tomorrow’s crazy idea, is next week’s public policy, is next year’s “how can you not believe this obvious moral truth.”
I’d ask if brick control is next on the agenda, but I’d rather not give them any ideas.
I am also reminded of that line in Yes Minister, spoken by Humphrey Appleby. “It is interesting how politicians want to talk about moral issues and bishops want to talk about political issues.”
Niall, just above:
Indeed.
Wherefore, following the thought to its pseudological conclusion, we should all simply stop thinking. Not sure if we should forgo the practice altogether or rather do as we are currently urged to do, and leave this highly dangerous activity up to Experts.
Despite attending an avowedly Anglican school and being an Englishman, the only time I came across the Book of Common Prayer was when I went to Venice with my good friend the Sage, and we went to an Anglican service at St. George’s Church in Dorsoduro (really going just to annoy the Pope). It was very nice and they even handed out prosecco afterwards.
My second thought is that wasn’t there a rule in Dungeons and Dragons (I’m going back around 4 decades here) that clerics couldn’t use blades? Are they getting confused between role-playing and real life, and appealing to the Dungeon Master to level the playing field in combat?
Perhaps we should all eat just soup (from ring-pull cans) and pre-shelled nuts?
I see you like to live dangerously, sir. I applaud you.
Pretty sure I’ve cut myself on the edges of can-tops more than with my knives. We’ll need to move to tetra-paks.
And as for nuts – are you crazy, man? Think of the allergies!
@Mr Ed
I believe that in medieval times fighting clerics (such as Bishop Odo) did not use an edged or pointed weapon becuase they interpreted religious strictures about “not spilling blood” to mean that they couldn’t slash or stab.
So they used maces and morningstars mainly.
At least that’s what I was told back at school.
I always assumed that was where the D&D rule came from.
If we got the C of E bishops playing D&D it might loosen them up a little.
I know several bishops. I have had a hilarious time in bars with some of them (and an archdeacon or two) discussing matters which I will leave out to protect the guilty. All of them have their odd blind spots and flaws. They are after all human. They are usually experts in their field and fairly good at what they do; it is noteworthy that cathedral congregations are thriving. The problem is that being public figures, they find themselves straying into subjects of which they know little. These include economics ( and I include our ex financial sector archbishop) and matters of law, order and violence. At that point they often make twits of themselves. someone once remarked that the Church of England discovered Marxism at about the time when the rest of the world was abandoning it; one result being that we do have a remarkable number of anachronistic left wingers in our senior clergy. A bit like some political parties really…
Sorta-likewise. They were a bit of an old urban myth by the time I was old enough to hear about them, but my informants were of the “Battle Of The Beanfields” ilk, so the SPG were painted as para-military thugs. I have little idea of the truth.
I got searched for “existing while young male” a couple of times in my youth. In both instances, all I’d done was step out into the back alley from a friend’s house for a smoke, since they didn’t want me smoking indoors (perfectly understandable), and the police rolled up on me and gave me a good interrogation and a searching. One time, I actually went and sat in my car to have my ciggie, so they searched my car too when they got to me.
I think that’s a pretty awful invasion of privacy and the right (fictional or not) to exist unmolested by the government.
Stop & Search without probable cause “works” (if indeed it does) because were I the type to carry, then I would be put off by the mere chance of a stop & search. You don’t know if you will be, but you never know. Which reminds me a little too much of not knowing whether a Party Member is currently monitoring your tele-screen or not.
My gut instinct, Niall, with your “handbag” example, is a little different though. While I strongly object to being stopped/searched because I look like the “type” that might commit a crime, my initial instinct is different if I happen to meet the “description” of someone who has committed a crime.
If the police are looking for a white male, late-30s, 6 foot, 11-stone, wearing a hoody, tattoo on left arm (etc etc) who has mugged a little old lady, and they pull me up, I don’t think I’d feel too aggrieved. The description of me isn’t quite accurate, deliberately to illustrate the point, but it’s close enough that I think I’d forgive the police for assuming that dear old Mavis might not have had her wits entirely about her, post-mugging, and decided that I’m within acceptable parameters to warrant a closer look.
There’s all sorts of sneaky practical implications that I haven’t fully covered (what’s stopping someone pulling me up and just saying that I meet the description of the perp of a recent local crime?), but in principle, I think I’d feel much more accepting of it.
Neonsnake – Mornington Crescent!
More to the point, you hit the nail on the head with your example of random S&S vs S&S based on actual information of an actual crime. I’ve been stopped twice in the US in case #2 (not searched, but then, in both cases, I told the officer I was packing, what more did he need to do?) and once in the UK, back in the days of gas light and stone tablets. I don’t have a problem with it.
Mind you, I do know that, back in the UK, at least one force that I had knowledge of had officers who would broadcast reports of ‘suspicious male, dark shirt, dark trousers, walking west on the High Street’ every 30 or 40 minutes, just to provide their fellow officers with a plausible basis for stopping just-about anyone they wanted to. There’s always an unlocked door, a poorly-parked car, a tripped burglar alarm or some other vaguery that can be spun into a plausible basis.
I interacted with the SPG on several occasions, most-notably during the 1981 riots in Brixton, when I was living in Stockwell. Seemed like experienced and sensible guys to me. The Battle of the Beanfield was after my time, but from what I have read about it, it sounds like a GMB of epic proportions. I think that the events of the miner’s strike(s) had a very negative effect on British policing, encouraging an environment in which the basic functions of the police (a la Peels Principles) were lost and police commanders who would do the bidding of the government of the day, rather than adhere to the proper purposes of the police, found favour and advancement. I’m not sure that those principles have ever been restored.
llater,
llamas
Give us this day our daily bread knife/knifing,
Is this as close as the Church of England gets to a schism?
The events of the miners’ strike had a negative effect on my view of miners. It was they, after all, not the police, who murdered a fellow miner for not joining in the strike (which was not even properly called under the union’s rules). It was they after all who beat up the female police officer for the crime of being there, then, in a variant way of breaking Godwin’s law, compared her to Irma Grese on the grounds that she, like Irma, carried a truncheon.
Communist Arthur Scargill’s policy of trying to get a ‘rolling strike’ going instead of letting his union’s members simply vote to have one or not (because he feared losing that vote) inevitably meant intimidation of miners by other miners, and the police were bound to get involved in that.
“The events of the miners’ strike had a negative effect on my view of miners.”
Ah! The happy days when the UK had a coal mining industry!
There may be a message from the past to the present there. Whether talking about the UK miners strike or the abysmal US auto workers labor relations of the same period, there is a definite correlation between the activities of unions supposedly advancing the interests of their members and the longer-term loss of employment for union workers in those industries. Whether that correlation demonstrates causation could be the subject of a discussion on another day.
All I can say is, if your knives can’t have points, how the heck are you supposed to cut the pockets for garlic into the roast?
With a plastic spatula obviously.
Wait, no, we’re not allowed plastic. A wooden spoon?
A meat tenderiser? I dunno. I’m now looking round my kitchen looking for a) alternatives to pointy stuff, and b) wondering how much damage I can do to someone with a pair of rubber tongs.
And I’m wondering whether I’m a psychopath because I’m idly trying to work out if I can take someone down, armed with nothing but a roll of grease proof paper.
Good lord. What have we come to? ROFL
Also, llamas – is “Finchley Central” the appropriate response?
Julie, you are, of course, correct with the insertion of garlic into a roast. A roast being basically the only thing we English have to be proud of, culinary-wise.
I look forward to Niall’s (rightful) view on haggis, which of course, young men hunt as an initiation ritual.
Nonsense, neon. You have both Cornish Pasties and crumpets. *double-yum-yum!*
And don’t forget, P.M. Hacker went up against Brussels in defense of the British sausage. Good man, that Hacker.
P.S. I’m not sure whether it’s wild or domesticated, but our friend Laird (not much in attendance lately, much missed), in I-forget-which Carolina, attends Burns Dinners betimes and recommends the haggis for sale from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Caledonian-Kitchen-Haggis-Highland-14-5-Ounce/dp/B01LOHG6KA/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=haggis&qid=1559700952&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1
“At least these church people are trying to think of a solution to knife crime.
Libertarians are free to offer alternative ones.”
So for you the solution to rape is to ban the weapon…?
@Julie near Chicago
All I can say is, if your knives can’t have points, how the heck are you supposed to cut the pockets for garlic into the roast?
Simple Julie, you won’t have a roast because we will have killed all the cows to prevent their farting from destroying the earth. I think you can poke the garlic directly in to your bean paste roast, so you are good to go.
And the miners’ strike must surely be a bit of a tricky one for modern speakers on the matter. How do you reconcile the idea of the workers rising up against the man (or in this case the woman) against the fact that the thing they dug up was going to turn the earth into a crisp?
Perhaps the plan would be to dig up the coal and just leave it in a big pile outside the pit?
Fraser, I’m a fool for beef or pork with garlic & black bean sauce, and also for sha bao (if that’s the right name — the steamed buns filled with red-bean paste). But I just can’t feel the same way about imitation cow or pig or sheep, etc.
Anyway, I don’t believe all that cow-fart, um, cowpie nonsense. If Messrs. Gore, McKibben, and Nye would keep their yaps closed we’d have a lot less hot air steaming up the climate, and since they also wouldn’t be able to eat, in due course the Earth’s fart-load would be considerably less. 😈
Meanwhile, I’ve got a taste for properly-crisp roast duck. Best I ever had was at a restaurant in Milwaukee. I don’t suppose — …?
Then, they came for the Stanley knives…
This just shows that the gap between education and intelligence, especially in Rochester, appears to be getting wider and wider.
I see what you’re up to, neonsnake – you are trying to trick me into revealing that great Scottish secret: what on earth a haggis actually is! Sorry, the ‘initiation ritual’ is to bind all Scots to keep that secret, and also one other: why on earth anyone would want to eat haggis anyway? (This last secret is easy to keep.) Edible haggis may indeed be available from Amazon, Julie near Chicago (September 27, 2019 at 10:18 pm), but I assure you it is not available from Scottish schools’ kitchen staff on Burns nights (this may have been my earliest intimation that state control did not make things better).
I will however betray that without access to knives with points, you might have a problem preparing haggis.
Niall Kilmartin
…what on earth a haggis actually is!
Here where I live you can’t buy traditional haggis because (to my understanding) the FDA does not allow the use of lungs in a food product. (You an buy cans of it on Amazon, but I am pretty sure that is actually illegal.) However, butchers shops here do prepare haggis without lungs, and you can buy that.
I am rather embarrassed to say that I have tried it and it is considerably better than the haggis I remember from Scotland.
(In fairness, most of the haggis I ate in Scotland was deep fried with chips from the local fish and chip shop, frequently on the way home from the pub after a bender, so perhaps the comparison with the American gourmet version isn’t entirely fair.)
But for Julie’s benefit and any other residents of the Chicagoland area, if you are interested there is a restaurant in St. Charles called Balmoral, run by a Scottish guy, which serves really excellent Scottish food including the aforementioned lungless haggis. If you are feeling flush (because it ain’t cheap) you might want to give it a try.
So the 60 million bison in North America c. 1800 must have been a huge ecological disaster too. Good thing we took care of that.
Fraser, I look forward to it! When will you be picking me up? 😀
“Simple Julie, you won’t have a roast because we will have killed all the cows to prevent their farting from destroying the earth. I think you can poke the garlic directly in to your bean paste roast, so you are good to go.”
Yum!
Well, Nullius, I already eat & adore shrimp, crab, lobster, and crawfish (which last is fine but not as good as the others), and I’ve always suspected I might like fried or chocolate-covered ants provided I didn’t know what I was eating.
Other than that … I’ll stick to spinach or seaweed, tofu with garlic & black bean sauce or agedashi, and sheep, pig, cow, goat … and even most offal, if it’s properly cooked. (My mother used to make the most absolutely scrumptious pan-fried calves’ brains. Like the tenderest, creamiest croquettes, with a tender but a bit crunchy floured crust.)
The Grauniad is going to have to eat its own insects.
The British establishment has been driven into madness by the demented nonsense that is called “liberalism” – this “liberalism” is just about the opposite of what real liberals, such as Prime Minister Gladstone, believed.
The Church of England (like the Church of Scotland – and so on) is part of the British establishment – and has been undermined by the same FALSE “liberalism”.
The late Maurice Cowling implied in his book on John Stuart Mill and Liberalism (1963 – at least I think it was published in 1963) that J.S. Mill was not really interested in liberty (and certainly Mr Mill did not believe in philosophical liberty – he did not believe that humans were beings, i.e. had agency, a soul in the Aristotelian sense. Mr Mill was a Determinist not a Libertarian), but was really just interested in replacing the rule of the landowners with the rule of intellectual bureaucrats – such as himself.
I am NOT sure about this – as, to me, J.S. Mill’s writings indicate a tormented man (with contradictory tendencies within him), not the cynical S.O.B. that Maurice Cowling implied.
But certainly Maurice Cowling was correct about modern “liberals” – they use the words “freedom” and “liberty” a lot, but they do not really give a Tinker’s curse about liberty.
The modern “liberal” is about POWER – the power of a small group of “educated” bureaucrats and quangocrats (like the creatures who make up Mr Blair’s “Supreme Court”) to control the lives of ordinary people – from the cradle to the grave.