It's ok to carry a knife, as long as you're a home owner

Happy New Year

and happy new blog - http://argyattemptsapostgrad.blogspot.com - everything I can learn, find out, beg, borrow and steal about applying for masters courses as I go about it myself.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/10/myleene-klass-knife-intruders

Piano playing, M&S wearing Myleene Klass has been told off for brandishing a kitchen knife at 'youths' in her garden. A gasp goes up from middle England - can we not even protect ourselves in our own home? Thank god for David Cameron, the superman with a plan to be more lenient on people who bludgeon buglers to death.

These youths - presumably wearing hoodies. probably scarfs too. clearly to cover their own illegal weapons rather than because they too get cold when it snows - were 'peering' in at her windows. Intrusive yes, and unpleasant, but not necessarily threatening. They would probably have been gotten rid of with the banging on the window alone, and if not a call to the police. They were certainly not in the house itself and aren't reported as having made any any action towards Klass, therefore I wouldn't say it was technically self defence.

And there's the problem. One man's self defence is 'I woke up to find a balaclava-d man going through the drawers in my room with an uncovered gun in his hand so I hit him over the head with my bed side lamp.' Another's is 'I saw some kid at the bottom of my garden. he looked suspicious. so I stabbed him with a bread knife.'

You would end up with a situation where "they carry knives so i can", or a call to more widely legalise guns. And the shockingly high gun crime figures in America show that it only makes things worse.

I've had a penknife since I was a kid. I live in the country and its useful. But my dad always told me the worst thing I could do was carry it in self defence. Because if I get that out truth is my assailant will probably trump me and respond much more strongly than they would otherwise have done.

Our society isn't perfect, but lets not give up and make allowances for violence but keep trying for a weaponless, peaceful country, with police not vigilante justice.



The friendliest O.A.Ps in the world...

An old man named Roger asked me to cross him over the road in the snow. Having acquiesced he took my arm, told me he was only joking he didn't need help, he just liked to get people to. I was the third that day.

A woman on the train moved her bag so I could put mine on the luggage rack, telling me sternly it was too heavy to go on my lap and then gave me a copy of Heat.