Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday May 01 2019, @12:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the slashing-stock dept.

POUNDLAND has banned the sale of kitchen knives across the UK in response to the crime wave hitting the country.

The retailer stopped selling the weapons in London last week and is set to extend the ban to all 850 of its UK and Ireland stores by the end of the year.

The move follows 35 people being fatally stabbed in London since the beginning of the year as violence in the capital spikes.

Austin Cook Poundland's retail director said: "We have committed to take knives out of all our stores, starting with London, which we have done with immediate effect a couple of weeks ago, and we will take them out of the rest of the country by October.

"Since I've come into my role we have had a lot of feedback from our store colleagues that we are retailing knives that can have the wrong ultimate purpose for them.

"We want to take them off our shelves and take them out of the hands of the wrong customers and, whilst there is a sales implication for us, it's much more important to us to protect both our colleagues and our customers from any risk.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6069878/poundland-stop-selling-knives-london-stabbings/

Story continues below:

Town-centre pound store prosecuted for knife sale

Management and training procedures at the town-centre branch of a national retail chain were questioned when the company was prosecuted for the sale of a knife to under-age customers.

Poundworld Retail Ltd appeared at Croydon Magistrates' Court on 16 May and was fined £4,000 and ordered to pay costs after being found guilty of selling a knife to a person under the age of 18. The total penalty, including victim surcharge, amounted to £8,520.

The court heard that, as part of a test-purchasing exercise conducted by the council's trading standards department, two 14-year-old volunteers went to the store's North End branch on 28 May 2015 and, after selecting a kitchen knife from a display, took it for payment to one of the tills.

The sales assistant, on only his second day at work in the store, failed to challenge the youngsters and the sale was completed.

http://news.croydon.gov.uk/town-centre-pound-store-prosecuted-for-knife-sale/

  'You cannot be soft on this': Boris Johnson calls for stop and search increase to combat London knife crime surge

Boris Johnson has called for an increased use of stop and search powers to combat knife crime following a spate of fatal stabbings in London.

The Foreign Secretary warned against "going soft" as he insisted that Scotland Yard and Sadiq Khan "come down like a ton of bricks" on gang leaders.

His comments came after teenager Sami Sidhom, 18, was knifed to death on Monday night in the capital's third killing in two days.

Mr Johnson said when he was Mayor of London he adopted a dual approach that boosted stop and search incidents while mentoring young people to prevent them getting sucked into gang violence.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, he told current London mayor Sadiq Khan: "You cannot be soft on this."

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/you-cannot-be-soft-on-this-boris-johnson-calls-for-stop-and-search-increase-to-combat-london-knife-a3817816.html

London murder rate overtakes New York as knife crime rises

LONDON (Reuters) - London police investigated more murders than their New York counterparts did over the last two months, statistics show, as the British capital's mayor vowed to fight a "violent scourge" on the streets.
There were 15 murders in London in February against 14 in New York, according to London's Metropolitan Police Service and the New York Police Department. For March, 22 murders were investigated in London, with 21 reports in New York.

  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-crime-murder/london-murder-rate-overtakes-new-york-as-knife-crime-rises-idUSKCN1HA1DH


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:23PM (7 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:23PM (#837274) Journal

    There is no such thing as dozens of people in a city randomly stabbing each other. It is happening for a reason madness.

    FTFY - cause I fail to see how "stabbing people" and "reason" can be rationally related.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:32PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:32PM (#837278)

    You must lack the capacity for empathy then.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:35PM (4 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:35PM (#837281) Journal

      Explain.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:41PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:41PM (#837290)

        Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and understand why they act the way they do. You apparently can't imagine any reason one person may stab another since you lack that ability.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:52PM (1 child)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:52PM (#837293) Journal

          Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and understand why they act the way they do.

          Believe it or not, I can do this easily most of the time.

          Though, ponder a bit on the difference between the motivation and rationality/reason for an action.
          Also on the difference between understanding and accepting or approving something.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 4, Informative) by schad on Wednesday May 01 2019, @03:27PM

            by schad (2398) on Wednesday May 01 2019, @03:27PM (#837309)

            Not sure if you genuinely don't understand, or if you are just so deadpan in your pun delivery that I'm being whooshed.

            In the event that it's the former, you and your parent are using different meanings of the word "reason." The one that your parent is using is the meaning that most native English speakers would use in this context. Using the word "reason" in the sense of intellect or logic is relatively uncommon in modern English except in specific technical contexts (e.g. philosophy).

            To put it another way, it's perfectly correct to use "reason" as a synonym for "explanation" in this context, and it does not in any way imply that the reason is logical, rational, justified, etc.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @05:40PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @05:40PM (#837424)

          No that would be sympathy. Empathy is *feeling* what the other person is, such as someone's pet just died and you also had a pet die recently so you empathize with what they're going through. Someone who never lost something important in their lives is more likely to be sympathetic, they understand the person is sad and why but they personally don't have the same feelings.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday May 01 2019, @04:57PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 01 2019, @04:57PM (#837368) Journal

    It certainly *can* be for a reason. That you can't find out what the reason is is also possible. E.g. there was a period when gang violence was usually confined to members of gangs, but when they wanted to let people know they were very upset, they spread it around a bit.

    Actually, that may still be true, though I doubt it. I think there's a lot less centralization of control these days, and a lot more clumsy criminals. This, however, could be an artifact of styles of reporting.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.