Catch Up With June
DAY 2
So we’ve officially been live for just over 24hrs, and what a 24hrs it’s been! First of all myself and the PATC team would like to say a huge THANKS for all of your messages of support, we’re all so excited and thrilled by the response we’ve had so far.
Last night we had our launch party at the ICA, luckily the weather held up (something it most certainly hasn’t done in London today), it was a fun event attended by an interesting and eclectic mix of politicians, celebrities, press and my old school teacher. Check out the Glossy Wire to see the pictures.
On a more serious note I was invited today to attend a panel meeting regarding a new campaign the Daily Mirror are launching to tackle the growing number of knife crimes being committed by young people in the UK.
Stop Knives Save Lives was started as a result of the ruthless and senseless killing of 16 year-old Ben Kinsella. The meeting was attended by senior members of the Police, former gang members and victims including East-Enders star Brooke Kinsella who spoke so eloquently about the anguish of her brother’s murder.
She also went on talk about what she thought the solutions were to stop the violence. She pleaded with Home Office minister Tony McNulty (who also attended) to create a booklet for every parent and secondary school child warning them about the impact of knife crimes and the devastating effect it has on all sides, including the families of the perpetrators. This will be a lifelong fight of hers and she’s determined not to allow her brother’s death to have been in vain.
Overall the discussion was enlightening and extremely productive, the Mirror has produced a list of five demands that they are presenting to the government.
SKSL FIVE DEMANDS:
1. Give our police tools to catch knife thugs
2. Launch amnesty to bring in the blades
3. Nurses must report treating stab victims
4. Teach all pupils that knives solve nothing
5. Texts and internet will help win battle
These are exactly the sort of actions that can help save young lives. However, I feel there should also be more emphasis on what preventative measures can be taken. I had a rather heated debate with Tony McNulty about this, as I felt he was failing to realise that the threat of prison no longer scares a lot of young criminals and we need to take a more rounded approach in dealing with them. This is not the first time Tony and I have publicly disagreed, the same thing happened a few weeks ago when we were both guests on Question Time. On both occasions we respectfully agreed to disagree.
When I hear both David Cameron and Gordon Brown talk about tougher sentencing for knife crimes, I can’t help but wonder why neither of them are focusing sufficiently on what we can do to ensure these young people don’t carry knives and, more importantly, don’t use them.
It seems to me there is an erosion of the moral compass of these knife-wielding youngsters which, at it’s core, stems from an immense lack of self-esteem. This has desensitised them from caring about their own lives and therefore they do not value the lives of others.
We live in a society of instant gratification, which teaches its young to act on impulse. It’s imperative that we create a framework where disenfranchised youth realise that crime and violence are not the only options and that there are serious consequences to harming or indeed taking another life.
We need a much more effective state education system which not only demands excellence from its pupils but also focuses on their emotional wellbeing. This is a problem that we must tackle together as a nation - irrespective of race, class or region.
I genuinely believe we can solve this issue, but we need cross-party unity to ensure that this stays at the top of the political agenda.
For more information on STOP KNIVES SAVE LIVES click here:
When you listed those five ‘demands’, did you, like, count them out on your fingers, like? You spend all your energy slating politicians for finally getting muscular on the brutality of youth, then spout party-line failed policies from yesteryear that if anything, contributed to the problem. You’ll never get away from deterrent being the best form of crime prevention. And whilst you flutter in your meeja circles, try having a word with the bling-obsessed you associate with who give your ‘youf’ their reference points, huh? Maybe they’l quit pumping youngsters heads full of craven avarice and want-want-now-now and make an attempt to set some sort of example. Like. Can’t wait for Chakrabati. She’s FUN!
Very good article especially with regards to pointing out the low/lack of self esteem. To me there seems to be be no single solution, but I would add absent fathers and lack of male role models such as male teachers in primary schools as another possible contributing factor.
Sorting out better ‘things’ for young people to do with their spare time might be one avenue to explore, something like ‘compulsory’ community service for a period of time, sounds contentious, but should not be promoted as a punishment, more as addtional education.
Interesting website, will be back again.
Good first piece. I was getting a little worried on reading the first half that yet another campaign just did not get it but on reading the second half of this piece I am a little more reassured.
Yes, policing is important and can have an effect on knife crime for no other reason than locking someone up gets them off the streets. But, unless we address the cultural problems we have created in Britain there will always be another person to take his place.
The problem is cultural, pure and simple. You are right that it is a lack of a moral framework that cuts so many young people adrift from norms of civilised behaviour for no other reason than that they have no idea what that civilised behaviour is.
I would recommend we add the following to the SKLS demands and we might do a little better in tackling this problem:
1. Attack welfare dependency. All this dependency does is destroy self respect and as you say, lack of self esteem tends to desensitise people.
2. Stop undermining the traditional family unit. We find our moral compass from loving, self respecting parents, not the remote state.
3. Recognise the civilising role of the Christian ethos to the development of civility in society.
4. Get immigration back under control to try and redress the tendency to fragmented communities cut adrift from cultural and moral norms.
5. Release all schools from the suffocating grip of the state with all its politically correct, equality driven, rights dominated, dumbed down, anti-standards, poor academic aspiration character.
These will have much more of an effect on what you see as so important: moral compass and the culture of which these people find themselves a part.
I’d love to see the government help fund, support and listen to Camila Batmanghelidjh. Now she could turn things around I’m certain.
Very interesting comments June, well articulated. I wonder what are views regarding the situation in Zimbabwe. I come from Zimbabwe myself but resident in UK for the past four years. The situation in our country no matter one’s political affiliations is quite sad indeed.Thanks.
—————————–
http://www.zwtube.com-afrocentric video sharing platform.
Tracy,
I admire your aspiration but government funding is the last thing she needs. Once they start funding social projects, they start insisting on all sorts of warped and politically motivated conditions. And that is exactly what causes the problem in the first place.
Arthur - and anyone else reading this. Try to disassociate ‘morality’ with anything remotely ‘Christian’ flavoured. You don’t have to believe in anything spiritual to own a moral framework dedicated to stable citizenship. God will never save you, nor will any other nebulous entity. The moment we centrifuge out so-called ‘Christian Morality’ from our mindsets, stop brainwashing kids from the age of three that they should polarise their beliefs and start teaching them basic humanity with self-discipline then the sooner the planet can look forward to better days. That’s ignoring the fact that we share 98.4% of our DNA with chimpanzees, mind …
Yes Ben Kinsella was a local lad and his needless death is a clear sign the kind of moral compass that guides people to lead a peaceful life is no longer in existence. We can’t keep always keep blaming the politicians. parents and teachers also have to take some responsibilty. But the truth isyouth violence is not a modern day phenomena it has existed from time imimorial. How can we judge our children when those who we elect kill innocent children and people by dropping bombs on them what kind of example is that to our young people Ben Kinsella’s death was tragic, and waste of young life, but we could learn from it and if we do then his and other lives lost would not have been sacrificed in vain
Stun,
I sympathise with your point but if you want a moral framework then it has to be based on something. We have tried a secular morality and we ended up with communism, fascism, political correctness, moral relativism, multiculturalism and the rest of it.
And if you want to teach “basic humanity and self-discipline” then how do you define this? I can guarantee that I will not agree with your definition and she will not agree with his definition so we are left with argument and recrimination.
We have in the New Testament a pretty good set of principles by which to guide our lives and I challenge anyone to write a new set of guidelines that are better and that people will agree on.
The Christian template has lasted 2,000 years and it is the root of the enlightenment, our laws and notions of civility and civilisation. Indeed, it is no coincidence that where Christianity is most absent, there we find the worst deprivation.
Good grief. Anyone can sample-quote scripture and modify it to suit. Fancy reading through the less-tasteful sections that advocate hatred, brutality, mysoginy, ethnic cleansing and even intolerance of any minority-sect outside of the middle-eastern norm? The Bible is a 2000 year old fable, scratched together by people willing to believe anything fanciful, modified by Greeks, Romans and goodness knows whoever without a shred of concrete science to support it’s credibility. It doesn’t say anything about today or the owt-for-nowt mentality which pervades young minds. If it did, the drastic fall in church attendance wouldn’t be so profound. It has basically been found out for what it is - and is only sought out by those in dire need of solace because human beings aren’t quite so altruistic as we’d love them to be. Running through every human psyche is their own personal survival trait, driven by genealological attributes. God has sweet FA to do with that. And by nature if we allow impressionable youngsters to free-wheel under the guise of liberalism and ‘freedom’, then it’s no surprise they wil revert to baser instincts.
And for your information, I’d try looking at the poor Christian souls trapped in abject poverty in Central and Southern America, the Middle East, Indo-China and even the good ol’ USofA before adopting a superiority complex about the virtues of worship. In some parts of this planet, I have seen those that God kinda forgot.
Stop Knives Save Lives seems to have been a touching tribue to Kinsella, how ever, I believe all the VIP’s who attended need to meet again and discuss this problem properly.
Texts and the internet WILL NOT solve this problem.
Teaching kids ‘knives solve nothing’ WILL NOT solve this problem.
Nurses reporting stab victims will help us ‘good’ folk who read newspapers see how big the problem is, but WILL NOT solve this problem.
Amnesty’s are launched in most towns every year. This has NOT solved the problem.
Police have the tools to catch knife thugs. This has NOT solved the problem.
These SKSL action points WILL NOT stop knife crime.
The Daily Mirror has NOT and WILL NOT come to the rescue over knife crime, but it’s great that celebrities support such things, wear badges and ’say no to knives’.
All very touching, but one point seems to have been left out of all these ‘feel good’, ‘fluffy’ meetings that are going on to try to tackle this terrible type of crime.
Parents.
I was brought up to know right and wrong. I know it’s wrong to hurt someone. I know it’s wrong to threaten someone. I would feel out of place carrying a knife under my clothes, on a keyring or in my back pocket.
You can preach all you like to kids in school, but if back in their homes, they roam about un watched and un cared for, they have no role models to look up to. No way to tell what’s wrong, or right and no one to give them a good slap around the legs when they talk about even contemplating touching a knife for something other than cutting vegetables.
I wish I had answers to offer with my points here, but I’m not an influentuel police commissioner or Member of Parliament with a think tank to hand that can hold a week long conference to nail this problem and come up with 5 points that WILL DO SOMETHING.
The Heat magazine culture won’t solve this problem, newspaper campaigns may raise awareness, but won’t solve this problem - the media thrives on reporting such terrible crimes and enjoys creating a climate of fear. Sad, but true.
All I can hope is that new parents or parents to be are now teaching, or preparing to teach their kids the difference between right and wrong. In the meantime, let’s rub out those 5 points, and start again.
Stun,
You entirely miss my point. I am not advocating blind obedience but that we pay a little more attention to the civilising message of the Christian tradition: love, compassion, forgiveness, discipline, service, respect and yes, the freedom to question its veracity. If this is a 2000 year fable that has no relevance to today then we are in more trouble than we think.
Christianity is not perfect, by any means, but the way you seem to imply that at best it has no relevance to contemporary society and at worst is the cause of so many of our problems is daft and narrow minded.
But, you picked up on this single point in a way that implied its supporters were single issue idiots. My original comment mentioned four other things in addition to the SKSL list, no less important than a Christian attitude, that need addressing if we are to mend our broken culture: welfare dependency, broken families, fragmentary immigration and appalling schools.
And why you lay the problems of Central and Southern America, the Middle East, Indo-China and the USA at the door of Christianity is beyond me. Do you not think there could be other contributing factors? Try Marxist politics in Southern and Central America, how about racial divisions in the USA and Islamic persecution in the Middle East?
Love, compassion, respect, service, discipline and forgiveness are not the whole domain of the spiritual. It is absolutely possible to own these and not beleive in God, Allah or any other deity. To implicate Atheism as bereft of these is moreso daft and narrow minded. People fight over resources, polarised over cultural lines and in the majority of cases on grand scales, polarised over which entity they devote their belief to.
You too miss a point. In my travels I have seen Christians on most continents living below what anyone would deem acceptable regarding poverty. They pray, but remain destitute. I worked briefly in a Catholic mission in Argentina devoted to lifes rejects - the insane, the disfigured and the disabled - and the place was potless. Meanwhile, across the planet, the head of their church - a ‘Christian’ church, pulls on a set of fucking garments which cost possibly more than it would take to run the place for ten years. Christianity? is this the love, compassion, respect, service, discipline and forgiveness you speak of?
Stun,
I think we might be talking at cross purposes here. This thread is becoming fixated on Christianity so I refer you again to my original comment where I clearly said that we needed to think about many different things to address our problems, not just the good example of Christianity.
I agree with your first paragraph, Christianity does not have a monopoly on love and respect and neither do I think atheists are necessarily bereft of these things. But then I never said they did. There are indeed many Christians who hide behind the label who are bereft themselves.
However, one of the great things about the Anglican version (which is also its weakness) is its rejection of dogma and ability to live within the secular state. We are governed by elected representatives and I would not want it any other way but just think they could all do with thinking a little more about the message and philosophy of Christianity, as established in this country.
But your second paragraph does not make sense to me. You seem to take an example of Christian imperfection as proof that it is all useless, a charge you accused me of over atheism.
I have no doubt that Christians live below the poverty line in many places around the world but what is your point? Many people around the world are poor. That is how things are at the moment. Your experience in the Catholic mission appears to have convinced you that they caused the poverty they were trying to mitigate. At least they were there, trying to help.
And neither is the Christian ethic anathema to creating wealth. What about the Protestant work ethic that fuelled British 19th century industry and formed the bedrock of American growth?
Again I refer you to my original comments that solutions are multi-faceted. Please move on from your fixation with and apparent visceral hatred of Christianity. Taken in the right way it can help and even if people do not want to subscribe to the ‘fable’, the message itself can do a lot of good.
I think the points sksl are making are valid, but the point is nothing will change whilst sentencing guidelines [which are independent of Government] mean that knife crime doesn’t result in jail sentences.
Jack Straw made a big fuss that people carrying knives would be dealt with more severely, but the fact is that the Independent Sentencing Guidelines council has been giving more lenient sentences, so nothing will change while that is still the case.
The point about the ‘take knife-carriers to hospital to see victims’ gimmick is that it is just that - a gimmick to head off more bad headlines for the Prime Minister, and to make Jacqui Smith look as though she is ‘doing something’ for a couple of days.
Then hopefully the media spotlight will move elsewhere and they can carry on as before..
Arthur - second paragrah - poor Christians pray for salvation, and the head of one of their churches dresses in garments that are obscenely expensive. Try to keep up. It’s no different in any other church and has never been different in the past. Try and focus on the collection tins being passed around and level that with the outrageous majesty of the upper echelon of faith management. Were God so altruistic, he’d level the playing field. You can’t tell me that anywhere in the Bible does it mention that the Pope (for example) is more deserving than his poorest follower.
And more gimmicks from the government, instead of moral courage and commitment. Stand by for more stabbings and shootings.
This is my first time visiting this site and i must say i’m quite impressed.
Keep it up june. Very catchy wbsite
What happened to the piece by Lily Cole, please? Please don’t keep ignoring me. Please.
stun - From reading the threads you seem to be a ‘man of the world’ so why does it shock u so much that there is corruption in religion and politics? Yes people in developing countries are suffering… don’t u think having faith and belief that things will change for the better a good thing? Instead of just accepting your situation, the corruption and give up on life!