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UK To Mull High Video Game Taxes — To Fight Knife Crime
chareverie writes "The Prime Minister of the UK is being urged to impose high taxes on violent video games in an effort to reduce the number of knife-related crime. The request comes from Richard Taylor, who argues that young people 'feel that the law has no control over them. They just feel that they can go on the streets and do whatever they like.' He doesn't have a definitive number on how much to tax on the offensive video games, but says that they should be 'very high.' Rap music is also voiced to be a concern due to the alleged negativity and language. Taylor's son, Damilola Taylor, was killed in November 2000 at the age of 10 by knife stabbing."
Correlation is causation! Mwahaha.
People spending more time playing video games have less time to stab people.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Now that they've done away with all gun and knife crimes, they need to fight shillelagh crimes. Shillelagh crimes have been steadily on the rise, doubling from one to two in just ten years. Even worse, some oafs are starting to hammer nails into their shillelaghs, just so they have metal pokey-bits to inflict more damage.
We need to tax all carpenters and lumberyards in the UK, or our youth will pay a terrible price in violence and fear.
If raising taxes is a method of fighting crime (it's not, but supposing it is) then why not raise taxes on the sale of knives ?
The youth of Britain apparently feel that the law has no control over them (something I agree is probably the case).
So you solve that by... raising taxes? It doesn't even matter on what, it might as well be rutabagas for the good it does you in terms of solving the problem. How is making video games that thugs want more expensive so they have to knife four more people to get the funds really going to help?
Instead, how about imposing some more forceful law over those that feel the law is irrelevant to their actions? When actions start having real consequences, people can and will change.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
, you know, knives?
if they would put police on the street. Apparently, spy cameras don't deter knife crime unless someone actually gets arrested for it.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The British gov't has systematically distorted statistics and selectively presented data in order to advance its own agenda.
This latest ploy probably has little to do with crime, and more to do with bringing in more cash to fund the gov't's pet projects. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7780057.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7781030.stm
K
Some people in the UK are also calling for the ban of any pointed chef's knives. These people claim that there's no possible reason for a knife to have a point to it except to stab people. Now, I'm not a chef, but I've done my share of cooking. I will often use the pointed tip of my knife to "stab" a food item if the food (like, say tomatoes) resists my initial slice attempts (e.g. looks like it's going to squish instead of slice cleanly). What's next? Ban scissors? Box cutters (not just from planes but any possession of)? Swiss Army Knives?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Is anyone surprised that the chavs and yobs running around with knives are powerful, and the defenseless British public are scared and powerless? This is exactly what happens when the criminals lack fear because the British people have been completely disarmed. What is a person supposed to do now against someone who has a knife? Ask politely for them to stop?
While the timing of this article, and response, is very poor given the two horrendous gun crimes yesterday and today, perhaps it is time to revisit the anti-weapon stance that has gripped England since the Scottish school massacre. Take away the guns, then only criminals will have them. Outlaw knives, and only criminals have them. Outlaw video games next?
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There should also be a huge surcharge on Mario Kart applied to the uninsured motorists accident fund. While we're at it, America's Army could be taxed to fund the new push in Afghanistan, and the Bee Movie game could be taxed to find a cure for the honeybee diseases. Let's get creative. In this recession we need to find new ways of extracting money from people. Gamers obviously have too much.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
If you can't see the causal relationship between video games and stabbing hookers, then you've never played Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
Plus there is the minor side issue that most video games use guns, not knives to inflict damage. It sounds like the proponent of this tax are yet another example of knee-jerk reactionaries with a hate-on for video games and rap music. Why is it that such nutbars are even heard by government, much less seriously considered?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Far be it from me to suggest that people RTFA or question the correctness of a summary title, but the father of a murdered boy urging the Prime Minister to tax violent games is a pretty big fucking step from the "UK To Mull High Video Game Taxes - To Fight Knife Crime " in the summary title.
Just for clarity - the UK government aren't doing anything like what's being implied. One man, rightly or wrongly, is suggesting this.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
they need to head off spoon crimes. I recommend SPOOOOOOOOONGUARRRRD!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
...that some deranged turd will use WHATEVER weapon he can get his hands on to do WHATEVER he wants...
outlaw guns, use knives
outlaw/outtax knives, use baseball/cricket bats
outlaw bats, use rutabagas
You can never prevent crime, just certain tools used to accomplish it. Even if they have to resort to bare handed strangulation, that's what they'll do....
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
I heard Jack Thompson over at the pub commenting that the degradation of society has a strong corollary with the development of more violent games. Remember Pong? You could scarcely kill someone with a pong machine as it took the strength of 10 geeks to lift it. Now when cartridges came by there was a critical paradigm shift which resulted in a switch from 'death by console' to 'death by cartridge'. If we use the same measure it takes .005 geeks to lift and swing a cartridge with deadly force. Yet this was the equivalent of using an animal bone until the advent of optical media. Coupled with the introduction of bad asian ninja movies it took very little for young minds to substitute throwing star with cd. Now it seems perfectly reasonable to tax the hell out of games.
This is what happens to a country that takes people's guns away.
I propose a 278% tax on all history books. History has long been known to contain scenes of bloody violence, sexual deviance and disregard for authority. It is time that the government and parents started to take a stand against the corruptive influence of history.
He was stabbed by a gang of 11 to 14-year-olds. The boy's mother had complained repeatedly to the principal about bullies, yet he did nothing.
Bullying is the real problem here which should be addressed.
sig: pv qid
Sooo, they put a tax on video games and how does that cut down (no pun intended) on knife crime?? Do they use that money to hire more cops to patrol, or do studies on the relationship between gaming and knife crime?? Seems to me like they are just looking for another revenue stream, and vilifying video games usually seems to be an easy target, especially when its being done for the greatest of all causes, for the children.
My head just exploded.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
... soon criminals will only have knifes. What's next? Sticks and stones?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Stabbings occur with knives! Not Video Games. It's the knives that they should be taxing!!!
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
What has this got to do with guns?
Do you think violent crime would be so rampant if the criminals weren't assured of having unarmed victims?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
...since they also 'feel that the law has no control over them'.
I still don't get this. Why is knife crime suddenly such a big deal here in the UK? It seems like every other day some newspaper or TV news or something is talking about it. You hear phrases like "knife-crime epidemic" bandied about.
See 2008 crime figures:
Nothing to see here. Move on. Stop whining, and yes, Daily Mail editors, I mean you.
I thought all crime was supposed to cease in England when they banned firearms.
So, now it's knives?
Next, they will come for the pointy things.
Eventually, everyone in England will be required to be lobotomized in order to prevent anyone from taking any actions whatsoever that might be harmful to someone else.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
They made knives available and cheaper to the lowest common denominator of society. Plus easy credit made it possible to order with express shipping! So it's MasterCard's fault too! And the TV stations that broadcast these calls for slaughter!
Don't forget your local/national/international package delivery service for allowing dangerous, dangerous knives to be dropped off at the homes of young, impressionable children. It's called "The Postman Always Rings Twice," not "The Homicidal Maniac Always Rings Twice."
And the parents, such horrid parents, for using knives in front of their children, cutting meat and chicken like so many innocent bystanders.
Home kitchens should have all utensils tethered to the walls like in prisons. I've seen it on TV. I've never heard about anyone getting stabbed in a prison kitchen.
Now how much would you pay? In dollars or the souls of your victims?
I prefer the good old days of clean cut television. Wholesome programming like "Leave It To Beaver." But can anyone help me remember what Beaver's last name was?
You never expect irony, do you?
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@iyfwrestling
If you think punishment of any form is not a deterrent, then talk to the guy who wrote the proposed law since he's the one saying youths have no regard for the law and that is a problem (again, how it relates to his proposed solution is not clear but whatever).
Punishment is not a 100% deterrent, but that does not mean punishment is never a good answer to get some level of prevention.
In particular, note that negative consequences are even more powerful. Fear of capital punishment is remote in someone's mind, but fear a target may be armed is much closer to someone's mind as a criminal. That's why areas with fewer gun control laws have all sorts of better crime statistics in general, especially when you factor out criminal vs. criminal crime (like turf wars).
If you truly believe utter lack of punishment and personal responsibility makes for a great society, I encourage you to move to the UK in a small town with some of the "Youths" in question and see how you feel in two years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Taylor's son, Damilola Taylor, was killed in November 2000 at the age of 10 by knife stabbing."
Actually, although it doesn't make it any less tragic, I'm pretty sure he was stabbed with a broken bottle...
Before you ask, in the UK bottles are only taxed heavily if they contain alcohol.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
If raising taxes is a method of fighting crime (it's not, but supposing it is) then why not raise taxes on the sale of knives ?
That is a damn good idea. And to stop rape, we should tax penises. By the pound.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I will often use the pointed tip of my knife to "stab" a food item if the food (like, say tomatoes) resists my initial slice attempts (e.g. looks like it's going to squish instead of slice cleanly).
Offtopic, but you either need to sharpen your knives or use the right knife. Probably both. :-)
A freshly sharpened chefs will cut tomatoes, but not for long. Using the steel hone will prolong this, but it's still not the right blade for that. I pull out a scalloped or serrated blade, and that works wonders. Even so, I need to get mine sharpend.
... feels as if the government *must do something* owing to his loss...
Hell's bells, why do we excuse this ridiculous assumption everyone has that the government is the solution...
Did he teach his child to be aware of his surroundings, or was the government supposed to provide cops to watch his every step?
Did he consider moving since the neighborhood was turning to shit or did he expect the government to clean up the streets at some other tax payers expense?
Did he teach his kid not to piss off and enrage the unstable or was the government supposed to put him in a protective custody so he could shoot off his mouth without consequences?
Maybe none of these apply, maybe all of them do, but damn... this insistance that we can't make changes ourselves, that it HAS to be done by the government is 80% of why the economy in both our countries is sucking the crack pipe right now.
Don't know about you, but my daughter has known for the last 10 years (she's 14) that if she's ever uncomfortable being somewhere, get off the streets and call me, anytime and anyplace. And I've taught her to be paranoid an err on the side of caution... should I have to? Well, not if we lived in Candyland...
But we don't... so get off your ass, protect yourselves, and then see what you can do to make the place better... after that, then maybe the government can help. But if you haven't done that first, you make idiots look smart and the crime situation is a direct result of your (and your predecessors) actions.
--
I drank what?
While I have every sympathy for the poor man, it's not a good idea to let the victims of crime determine how to prevent it. Their judgement tends not to be the most balanced.
He doesn't know what the causal relationship is between knife crime and games, nor does he have any idea what the effect will be on demand for games should they be taxed (it's possible that the publishers would end up swallowing a large part of it because games are presumably at the price which maximises profit*number of sales).
Not to be rude or anything, but maybe he shouldn't have named his son Damilola? With a name like that, the kid was doomed to be either the victim of a gang or the leader of a gang...
Seriously though, there's too many things wrong with the whole story to do more than begin to point them out. He's trying to legislate his grief, which has been a bad idea since the beginning of time (and the reason a lot of humanity has gotten away from the idea of kings). And in the process, he totally missed his mark. If he wants to legislate something, he should consider what went wrong in the schoolyard.
Why, with the UK's omnipresent surveillance and nanny state, did no one notice that a pack of kids had gone all Lord of the Flies on the playground? Could it be that the surveillance of everything DOESN'T WORK? That it induces a sense of false security on the part of adult supervision, eliminates the idea that personal responsibility should be inculcated in kids, and does absolutely nothing to address any of the root causes of gang violence? Could it be that by passing law after law after stupid assinine law that a contempt for the law has been bred into the citizenry? And now he wants to add another stupid assinine law...
A certain Biblical quote is apropos: You reap what you sow.
Tonight I'm going to start on a flash game. Basically your an intoxicated youth, you run around knifing people in town centres trying to stay off CCTV (because that's what youths do I understand), you need to steal bottles of liqour and syringes as power ups. If you drink too much your screen blurs, you fall down and The Fuzz get you, if you sober up, you go back to school get a job and the game is over. Watch out for the CCTV. What shall I call it? "Tax This!"
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Yes.. or are you trying to say the violent crime rate is higher in the UK than in the US?
While a lower violent crime rate in the UK is not an argument saying that outlawing guns lowers violent crime, I think it is a fairly strong argument that allowing everyone to own guns doesn't necessarily lower it either.
I think your idea shows a common misconception about violent crime. For example, a lot of violent crime occurs between gang members; the fact that the gang members they commit violence against also have weapons does not seem to deter them from committing the violence against each other. Secondly, most other forms of violent crime is not against strangers (check out http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/), but against people who know each other (family especially)... you would be hard pressed to argue that this violence would be prevented if everyone owned weapons. The biggest argument against your reasoning, however, is your implied assumption that criminals use game theory to decide if it is rationally beneficial to commit their crime.. I think it is a stretch to suggest everyday law abiding people apply this sort of rationality to their actions, let alone violent criminals who clearly demonstrate they do not act rationally.
While a lower violent crime rate in the UK is not an argument saying that outlawing guns lowers violent crime, I think it is a fairly strong argument that allowing everyone to own guns doesn't necessarily lower it either.
I suspect that we would both agree that the best way to lower crime is to address the underlying causes of it. You'll note how crime tends to go down when the economy is doing better and less people are pushed into desperate acts for example.
I also suspect that we would both agree that no matter how good of a job you do on paragraph a, you'll never be able to entirely eliminate violent crime. Once you accept this you have to decide if you want your citizenry to be able to defend themselves or if they should have to rely on the state to do it for them. Personally I want to be able to defend myself and am glad that I live in a country where that is possible.
The biggest argument against your reasoning, however, is your implied assumption that criminals use game theory to decide if it is rationally beneficial to commit their crime
*shrug*, I've seen studies of convicted criminals that suggest that one of the biggest fears they have is running into an armed victim that is able to resist their attack. Either way though I don't really have to justify my ownership of weapons in the United States. It's a Bill of Rights, not a Bill of Needs.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Not sure what both parties carrying guns would accomplish, except to make one or more parties into a fatality.
And the criminal ending up a fatality is a bad thing, because.....? The criminal is the one who made the decision that somebody was going to die when he decided to pull that knife or gun. At that point it's just a question of who.
But the few times when I have been mugged, me having any sort of weapon would have very quickly become the criminal having that weapon, along with my wallet and phone
Maybe you should learn some situational awareness so you won't get surprised like that in the future? Go take a self-defense class. You need not carry a gun to learn ways to defend yourself against those situations, although the gun certainly helps.
Should you have the right to kill someone because they want your wallet?
I would only kill someone if I believed my life was in danger. If someone pulls a gun or a knife on me then my life is in danger and his underlying motives (be it robbery or murder) don't really matter, do they?
I really dont think arming more stupid humans is the right way to go.
So what is the way to go? You'll never eliminate all crime. Criminals will always be armed with something. The only question is whether or not the citizenry should be able to defend themselves. I've yet to hear a compelling argument for why they shouldn't be able to.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
They destroyed industrial communities. They gave the police virtually unlimited powers to stop and search young people. They established a foreign policy of might-makes-right and went out of their way to antagonize and alienate immigrant communities. They lied, took bribes, started wars, incited racism, crushed civil liberties, and they are still standing trying to talk like statesmen.
And computer games are to blame when the kids go berserk? Fucking retarded.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?