h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What's interesting is that when painkillers stopped being sold in packets of 100 a lot of people said 'this is the nanny state in action, if people really want to kill themselves they will just buy three packets of 32'.

But after this happened deaths from overd

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/bmj;329/7474/1076

Yes people who were determined to kill themselves just brought larger packets, but lives were saved. The lives were saved were people who in the heat of the moment decided to take a paracetomol overdose and just took all the paracetomol they had in the cupboard at the time. If they had a pack of 32 paracetamol instead of a pack of 100 that just meant that they took less paracetamol: and perhaps lived instead of died.

They're not talking about banning all knifes or even all pointy knives they're talking about banning the *long pointy* ones. They'll still be pointy knives, and still be long knives but with a rounded end.

Yes, people who are really determined to kill their partner will kill them - but people who grab the nearest thing in the heat of the moment will grab a short pointy knife instead of a long pointy one: and do less damage.

An alternative, proposed by me, is simply to make long pointy knives harder to buy - don't make them available in the 'knife blocks' you can get from Ikea. If you want to buy them because you're really keen on cooking - you should just have to go to a catering suppliers.

The less homes that own these knives, the less people will stab each other with the - the higher the chance that they'll choose a smaller knife to stab with.

The majority of people in this county own a long pointy knife: but I bet that hardly any of them actually need them, unless they are serious cooks.

And lets face it, if you stab your parter with a vegatable knife, the chances are that you won't get through the adipose tissue - depending on the weight of your parter, obviously.

As I understand it, the Millwall Brick is a newspare folded up and used to hit someone. I'm not sure, though the name seems to imply it is something that would pack a wallop not unlike a brick.

The pointy paper was described to me as being a Millwall Brick, but I think you're right.

"The Nation is just the right size, weight and paper type to be folded into a "Millwall Brick", which can be a pretty nasty offensive weapon in the right hands. Strangely, there don't seem to be any instructions on the Net for the creation of a millwall brick -- all there is are a couple of sites for some ska band, which might or might not be Nazis. But basically, you have to fold your copy of the Nation to a third of its width, then fold the resulting long thin tube in half. You keep the two folded ends in your hand, and bash the cop with the corners."

I just wanted to say that that was a quote from a discussion forum, not mine. I don't advocate violence, let alone violence on the police. The site only has a cached copy of the page, so I won't bother to post it.

From what I was able to gather, the Millward Brick is basically a small bat made from a folded newspaper, rather than a pointed stabbing weapon.

I don't advocate the use of either, though it is handy to know how to protect yourself with just a newspaper if you had to....

I found the forum in question, and quite a few others. The Millwall Brick was invented when 'weapons' such as beer bottles were banned from football grounds. Aren't there some charming people out there?

It does prove that if people intend violence, they will manage with or without long pointy knives.

Actually, I think that, just from an informal "memory" survey of television murders, fireplace pokers, bowling (or other sports) trophies, frozen legs of various animals, and wrenches are used more often than knives in "heat of the moment" crimes.....

I would wager that most enraged, drunken spouses would grab whatever was handy, rather thangoing to the kitchen and getting a knife.

In regards to selling knives in sets, I would have to say that most people don't. Good carving and other chef's knives are bloody expensive and any I have have been either bought singly by me, or been received as gifts.

We have a drawer full of a variety of types of carving, serrated and chopping knives. I have never counted them, but between what I have acquired over the years and those my mother moved in with, we must have about 20 (just the sharp pointy ones), not including steak and paring knives (and we must have at least the same number of those.

I have to say that I use them all, except for the odd one that which I never would have bought for myself because the blades are badly designed and, therefore, useless for any purpose except perhaps for using in the garden.

>>"I don't advocate the use of either, though it is handy to know how to protect yourself with just a newspaper if you had to...."

Watch out mate - I'm skilled in the ancient martial art of origami.
Now, one fold here, and another one there, and... damn! - another bleeding crane.

Ouch!

*thud*

Actually, I just realized that in movies, pairs of shears (as in scissors) seem to always be lying around whenever someone becomes enraged or someone needs to protect themselves from an enraged attacker....

BAN BIG POINTY SCISSORS!

In drama, there's always an appropriate object lying around.

I don't think there's a suggestion that people 'go into the kitchen to get a knife', more that that's where domestic rows often take place. Back to the broken glass - a severed artery or two can lead to death fairly quickly.

Or you could threaten to bash an attacker with a cast iron skillet. My favorite one is 14 inches across and must weigh at least 4-5 pounds!

Ban iron skillets, then?

SC

My personal experience of domestic violence suggests that automobiles and television remote controls are the weapons of choice.


Pointy kitchen knives are reserved for suicide attempts (and, since it is the edge that is operative on those occasions, the shape of the point seems somewhat unimportant).

wh do people do the bookmarking thing? Can't you just click "subscribe to this conversation"?

Go here and see why - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F77636?thread=653358 In a long thread where you have read backlog up to a certain point but have never posted a comment it can be hard to remember where you got to. This has now been fixed but previously researches would post something like (actually non functional but looks like GuideML) etc to mark their place. We don't need to now but I'm sure some still will! turvy

Long pointy knives are excellent at opening cans of worms, such as the bookmark thing, so should probably be banned.

Z,

I wrote the first Rapid Response to the Letter of the Long Knives BMJ article. Suffice to say, I was rather fuming that day, for reasons outside of knives and more to do with Public Health. Anyhow...

I have to say, I'm rather embarrassed by this open letter; it was written by three people at a hospital attached to my medical school, and it's a rather good hospital too. Actually, that might be why I'm a bit angry about it --- it just doesn't show the hospital in a good light. On the other hand, they must be getting really fed-up of the knife-related jokes now...

"What's interesting is that when painkillers stopped being sold in packets of 100 a lot of people said 'this is the nanny state in action, if people really want to kill themselves they will just buy three packets of 32'.
[snipped]
Yes people who were determined to kill themselves just brought larger packets, but lives were saved.
[snipped]"

There's a famous case in psychiatry that I seem to recall about the switch from coal gas to North Sea oil gas. The most popular way of self-destruction in the 1950s was to put your head in a cooker. The carbon monoxide from the outflow tract would have the same effect as popping a hose in your car. The change meant that this route of suicide was no longer available, and hence --- rather than seek other routes, the suicide rate dropped. The same has happened with paracetemol, and there was good evidence (note the emphasis on *good*) that the restriction of sales of paracetemol was successful in its goal.

In terms of knives --- I think I already made my point in the RR; to summarise, yes it might be good for those who use the large pointy knife for nothing but popping holes in the tops of their microwave meals --- but perhaps myself and my circle of friends are a bit different; we cook from scratch, and use a large pointy knife pretty much every day. And good kitchen knives are hard to source; I'd restrict the sale of those ones from Ikea more because they're not really useful for anything other than show --- they bend like something rotten when you try to get between a leg joint in some poultry, for instance.

Banning knives gives the illusion of safety. In some ways, you assume that without one object of harm, you will be more 'safe', when in fact you have just shifted the weakest secure point somewhere else. In any case, it might be good to teach people to cook from scratch, so that they can use these knives for their intended purpose --- or at least, that's a pipedream of mine.

"And lets face it, if you stab your parter with a vegatable knife, the chances are that you won't get through the adipose tissue - depending on the weight of your parter, obviously."

I now have an image in my head of a guy covered in small paring knives acupuncture-style, with an irate wife shouting 'Why don't you just die!'

Stay ,
WD

For the sake of reference, here's a picture of my workhorse kitchen knives: http://public.fotki.com/anhaga/fun_stuff/photo_060705_001.html

(about a hundred years old, from the L'enfer factory at Thiers)

They don't strike me as particularly 'dagger-like', but they are certainly 'traditional'.

What exactly is the shape of the knives that are being called a public health danger?

anhaga,

I think it's the long, pointy and thin knives which are seen as causing the most damage as they can slip between ribs. I think the authors of the open letter geniunely believe that a reduction of spontaneous knife stabbings can be acheived from the banning of large knives.

I don't think it's something that they've thought completely through though. Z's approach of making it more difficult to buy good kitchen knives (which it is, but that's a wholly different rant) would be far better --- those who want them can get themselves good quality knives. The path of least resistance etc...

Stay ,
WD

Chefs knives definately do need to be pointed. Many preparations require piercing of things or entry of the knife at very specific points. Although, not all jobs require such a point, cleavers for example have blunt tips. In an effort to reduce the incedence of injury from falling knives at least, good knives are balanced to land handle side down as not to stab your feet.

Maybe they should introduce the surgical scalpel as a cooking aid