Do you think Gordon Browns's latest initiative on knife crime will work?

Question

Gordon Brown has warned parents they have a duty to keep their children under control amid escalating public fears about youth knife crime.

Up to 20,000 families could face eviction from their homes if they fail to rein in their offspring, the Prime Minister said.

Youngsters who carry knives were also threatened with being forced to spend their Friday and Saturday nights carrying out hundreds of hours of community punishment.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/pressass/20080714/tuk-pm-threatens-parents-on-knife-crime-6323e80.html

Answer 1

Apparantly troublesome families will have to have 'contracts' so when the kids behave they will get a financial boost, if they are disruptive they'll be evicted from their homes.

It's just another bloody gimmick for gods sake. It's never going to work. It's just a way of trying to bribe people to get their kids to behave without dealing the problem itself.

Answer 2

No.

However, he is right that parents have a duty to keep their children under control. Unfortunately for the last fifty years politicians of every stripe have done everything they can to discourage family life, encourage disrespect, destroy British culture and promote state dependency. All of this has, of course, been done for the best of reasons.

If you don't like your partner any more, why should you stay with them? Marry the state instead, we'll look after you. You won't be rich and you know that kids from broken homes are likely to suffer and stand a very good chance of turning disrespectful, feral and antisocial with a propensity to violence and likely to stab someone for the slightest perceived offense, but that wouldn't happen in your case.

Chide a child or a young person for rudeness, thoughtless behaviour or yobbishness? No can't do that, if you're not their parent it's none of your business. Besides, they have a right to express themselves, don't they. Running through a crowd screaming at the top of your lungs isn't wrong. Why would anyone be offended by that?

Discipline your own children? You can't do that, you don't know how, don't you realise you could scare them for life? And if you actually consider putting them over your knee then you are obviously a dangerously violent sexual predator who should be imprisoned for life. Well, five years anyway.

And British Culture, we can't have that. You can't expect people to show self-discipline, self-reliance, respect for authority, respect for their elders, good manners, fair play and gentlemanly or lady-like behaviour. It just wouldn't be fair would it?

Anyway, what about all the people that come to this country, it wouldn't be fair on them to expect them to act like the British, would it? After all, they want to live their life like they did in their old country, you know, the one that was so abhorrent they felt the need to move halfway around the world to get away from it.

Fifty years ago almost every boy between the ages of eight and fifteen had a sheath knife with a four to six inch blade. They did not carry them around all the time, they didn't use them as weapons, indeed, if they were caught up in a fight it wouldn't even have occurred to them to try and use it. A knife in a fist fight? Absolutely shameful. I know, I was one!

No, now that we have apparently been reduced to country of yobs and feckless semi-literates - oh yes, the government is proud, proud that only a fifth of school leavers are now functionally illiterate - there is only one answer to the problems of violence, knife and gun crime. Bring on the police state! Stop and search every school kid as they go about school, stop anyone under twentyfive on the street, especially if they aren't white, bring in a curfew.

What, that won't work either? Well what can we do then?

Nothing, society, like television, always tends toward the lowest acceptable standard, which then makes the next drop acceptable.

Answer 3

Just about as well as everything else he comes up with. He will probably quadruple the knife murder rate.

Answer 4

No he is completely out of touch, as to the idiot who suggested that the thugs should go to hospitals to visit victims of knife crime, to see the type of wounds and the effects is  obviously on some other planet from the rest of the country.

Answer 5

Everything that King Midas touched turned to gold.  Everything Gordon Brown touches turns to shite!

Answer 6

well, seeing as how well gun control has worked.. I'd not stake my life on knife control as they are so much easier to access.  And even if they manage to control knives whats next "brick control" to prevent people from smashing each other's heads?  The only thing that works is an automatic 20 years if a gun or knife is used in commission of a crime.

view from canada anyways,

Answer 7

No!