Violent Britain

The sad death of Ben Kinsella has had a very profound effect on the local communities. North Road London N7, the spot at the cross roads with York Way, where Ben met his tragic but brave death is close to where the boundaries of N7, NW5, NW1 and N1 (where Ben was from) meet.

Ben was a GCSE student at nearby Holloway School for Boys in Hilldrop Road, across Camden Road.

Brave, because Ben took a stand against knife crime and had written to Gordon Brown about it just weeks before. Now he is a symbol of hope that this terrible, cruel, crime will diminish.

Ben may have become a martyr in taking such a prinicpled stand for now the tide has turned and we see the time has come for the knife violence to diminish, before London becomes like inner city Chicago, with 17 deaths a week!

Question is, how?

Christina 123

Violent Britain

LONDON, once seen as a quiet and respectable sort of city, is in the grip of a culture de poignard, the French press have taken to reporting. On June 29th two students from the University of Clermont-Ferrand were found horribly murdered in the British capital. The bodies of the young men—bound, multiply stabbed and set alight—have inspired horror on both sides of the Channel. A grisly run of teenage murders before this episode had already caused Britons to wonder what is up.

England and Wales are not unusually murderous (see chart). The homicide rate is higher than anywhere in western Europe except Finland, Belgium and indeed France (though Britain edges ahead of France when Scotland and Northern Ireland are included). But Britain looks gentle next to former colonies such as Canada, New Zealand and especially America. And it compares favourably with the EU average, thanks to the new eastern European states: in Latvia and Lithuania homicide is five times as common as it is in Britain.

THE ECONOMIST 10-07-2008