Banned wagon
Beginning today: a weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit IT is all very well banning a pastime such as hunting, but what when the activity or object within your sights is something which most citizens consider essential for day-to-day living?
Such is the problem that the govern- ment has with knives. Ideally, Mr Straw would no doubt like to outlaw these offensive weapons altogether. But that would inevitably mean that all bread would have to be sold ready-sliced, and that any steak which did not already fall foul of the beef-on-the-bone ban would have to be sold ready-chopped into bite-sized chunks which could be picked up by fork only.
The answer, believe some police chiefs and civil servants, lies in a DVLA for knives. In a pilot scheme in Coventry knife-buyers (even of fish-knives) are obliged to register their name and address, and the time and date of pur- chase, with the shopkeeper. Knife-relat- ed crime, claims the Coventry police, fell by 46 per cent in the first year of the scheme — a statistic which sounds a lit- tle too good to be true, given that there are millions of knives in circulation in Coventry which were bought before the scheme was introduced.
The next stage is to extend the scheme nationwide, perhaps introduc- ing registration numbers on all knives so that any weapons dropped at the scene of a crime could be traced back to their owners. The result will no doubt be a Knife Registration Agency which keeps up-to-date records of every penknife in the land — and no doubt employs the entire population of a small northern town.
Ross Clark
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