Streets of Rage

I’ve got a daughter who’s at the age where she goes out to pubs and clubs, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared for her safety. She went to a club with her friend last night, and I couldn’t go to bed until she called me to say she got home safely.

It seems like going out these days is like living on a knife edge. Violence could break out at any moment. Just looking in someone’s general direction these days could wind up with a gang of feral youths beating the living shit out of you.

But it’s not just a beating anymore. It’s like they’re not satisfied unless they leave you with brain damage or serious injury. There’s also the knife problem that seems to be getting worse every year.

Knife crime is turning our streets into a war zone. Our kids are taking their lives in their hands every time they go out there.

Why is it like that anyway? It wasn’t like that when I was young. When I was young and you got into a fight, only chicken-shits used any kind of weapon. It was strictly punching and kicking along with use of the knees and the occasional head-butt. And when your opponent went down and it didn’t look like he was going to get up, then the fight was over. You did not hit someone when they were down – again, only chicken-shits did it. Also, fights were one on one back then. If you needed your mates to help you fight, then you were a poof.

When I was 14, back in the mid-eighties, there was one case where a gang attacked one chap on his own. It was big news because it was a rare occurrence, and some of the kids in the gang came from our school. It was apparently a revenge attack because the poor kid had beaten up one of their friends. So, this gang of chicken-shit tossers went after the kid mob-handed. There were six of them against one of him. They beat him to the ground and then kicked him to death.

We were all appalled at this. What kind of cowards gang up on someone and kick that person to death?

One can only imagine the blood-bath if gangs back then carried knives like the modern ones. It makes me shudder.

My local Police and Crime Commissioner is heading up a campaign in which he’s saying that knife crime is not dividing the community as the news would have you think. He’s had eight weapon surrender bins installed across Birmingham.

I don’t want to impugn his efforts. In fact, his commitment to the project is admirable. However, the only people who are going to put knives into those bins are the kind that wouldn’t actually go so far as to stab anyone anyway.

In my opinion, the answer to the problem of knife crime is to hand down much tougher sentences on those convicted. Prison itself should also be much harsher. Only when these people are punished properly will we finally make some head-way into this nation’s growing crime problem.