Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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
In fact, the victim has a Duty to Retreat, sometimes even within their own homes. It is laws like these that have made the public scared and powerless. For the convenience of the government, it is better for ordinary people to simply lay down and die when face with criminal activity.
People have the right to stand their ground and yes, use violence when they are in danger. While I don't agree with "shoot first" laws that some American states have implemented, it is not always the case that the first person to use violence is in the wrong.
It's not just guns and knives. People have been seriously injured, permanently disabled and even killed by bare hands and boots. It may be more legally clear who is in the wrong if your attacker strikes first, but that will not help you much if you have to walk with a limp for the rest of your days. Unfortunately, modern legal systems do not recognise this, and will judge the honest man who strikes first far more harshly than the career criminal who does so.
It's not a question of being armed. Arming people won't help. You have to give people the right to defend themselves. The real right. Not a clause that only comes into effect when they've already been rendered unconscious.
May the Maths Be with you!
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?