Once again, the transparency we do have in the UK is weaponised against it.

You see this with "OMG knife-crime is out of control in London" type stories that the US love to run.

It's because we were :

  1. a decade or more ahead of the rest of the world in actually collecting knife-crime stats
  2. Include in those stats people who were simply carrying the kind of knife that wouldn't even get you noticed elsewhere, let alone recorded in the stats.

The actual rate of stabbings per capita is higher in the USA than the UK.

And that's even without considering that the weapon of choice in the USA is the firearm.

But you wouldn't beleive it from the headlines.

Back to this story, here we have legislators doing their job of scrutinising, and their open scrutiny is held up against the country.

We could instead have a system where people vote on bills without knowing their contents like the US does.

▲ pjc50 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Back to this story, here we have legislators doing their job of scrutinising, and their open scrutiny is held up against the country.

> We could instead have a system where people vote on bills without knowing their contents like the US does.

UK MPs are quite capable of voting on things they haven't read, and indeed their individual opinions are irrelevant due to the whip system. Voting against the party is a rare, major event and can be punished by expulsion. The US traditionally had less party discipline, as can be seen from certain non-party-line Democrats.

▲ callamdelaney 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Per capita is a pretty useless stat. I'm much more interested in why there are particular cities where being stabbed is much more likely than in my rural village, per capita.

	▲	pjc50 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Cities are generally worse because that's where the organized crime is, and a nasty spiral of people carrying weapons because other people are carrying them. Scotland used to have the worst reputation for stabbing until the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Reduction_Unit incredible success. You won't hear about it in England because it reflects well on the SNP.

▲ AlexandrB 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> The actual rate of stabbings per capita is higher in the USA than the UK.

This fact seems to have no impact on UK politicians who now want to try to ban knives with pointy tips: https://theconversation.com/why-stopping-knife-crime-needs-t...

In general, this approach to crime is ridiculous and has no rational end-point.

	▲	joe463369 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		There is nothing in your link that says that the UK government is considering banning knives with pointy tips