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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!
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.
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.
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.
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).
But according to the CCTV footage, the criminals start by crouch-walking to their targets, then they start stabbing at one stab per second while still two meters away, escalating to bunny hopping if the victim fights back, and eventually crouching again after the crime.
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.
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?