Children as young as 10 arrested for offences involving firearms and knives

What’s happening with our youth? Guns and knives are carried regularly by young people in Britain today, including children as young as 10, according to reports released last week.

An inquiry by a committee of MPs found that knife-carrying, mostly by males in their late teens and early 20s, is becoming normal in poorer parts of the big cities, where street violence is on the increase. The murder rate in the UK is not high in comparison to many countries — latest figures show there were 537 homicides in 2013. But more than a third are by stabbing.

The MPs found that “most young people who carry knives say they do so for protection, reflecting a lack of faith in the police and parents”. Status and peer pressure are also factors.

As for firearms, according to The Guardian newspaper, 1,549 child arrests for gun offences were carried out by police between 2013 and January 2016, with the number increasing last year by 20 per cent.

Statistics secured under a Freedom of Information request revealed that children as young as 10 years old were among the arrestees. One 10-year-old was detained by Derbyshire police and one by Cumbria police, who also arrested two children aged 11 and two aged 12. Over the three years, young girls were arrested in Northern Ireland, Kent and North Wales.

Ian Swanston, whose 20-year-old brother was shot dead in Manchester in 1999, said some youngster carried guns as for status. “Having a gun is seen as having power and people become fearful of you.” But gangsters also used children to move guns. “They use people who the police are unlikely to search,” he said.

A police spokesman said police and local communities were working to prevent young people getting involved in gangs and therefore firearms. What was key, he said, was breaking the cycle of young people becoming involved in gangs and associated criminality.”

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Brett Davies is a likeable-looking, well-dressed young man who claims superior computer skills, but he has been turned down for jobs not once, not twice but hundreds of times. The reason? Brett is autistic.

When BBC cameras filmed him being interviewed by a potential employer, it was painful to watch as he struggled to speak, uttering a few rushed words interspersed with long silences. It became quite clear why he was rejected so many times.

CONVEY HIS FEELINGS

The BBC documentary, in which he appeared, aimed to show how having conditions such as autism should not make the sufferers unemployable. Brett was given a two-week trial at Peacock’s Medical Group and in that time he got to the bottom of a computer problem no-one else could fathom. He was hired full-time as a computer design technician.

Unable to convey his feelings in the usual way, Brett wrote a speech on his iPad, which he delivered flawlessly to his assembled colleagues. Many were near tears as he explained how much a job opportunity meant to him.

He said: “One word among a thousand comes to mind — accepted! I really want to work and be part of a team and for the first time I feel that I have been.”

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Is there anyone who has not come across Andy Capp? The cloth-capped, work-shy, beer-drinking (and in the early days, wife-beating) cartoon character has appeared in thousands of newspapers around the world, including this one.

He typifies a certain type of working class male from the North of England, where his creator, Reg Smythe, lived. But is Andy just generic or was there a specific model?

A BBC story suggests there was a real Andy Capp. Apparently, cartoonist Smythe was at a football match one Saturday in his home town of Hartlepool. When it started to rain a man near him took off his cap and stuffed it into his pocket, declaring, “I can’t be expected to sit in the house all night wearing a wet cap.”

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One warm day a wife came in from shopping and saw her husband with a fly-swatter in his hand. “Get any flies?” she asked. “Five,” he said, “three males and two females.” “How can you tell the difference?” she asked. “Three were on a beer can and two on the telephone.”

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When the US started sending astronauts into space, scientists discovered that ballpoint pens would not work properly. They spent ten years and millions of pounds inventing a pen which could write in zero gravity, upside down and under water. The Russians used a pencil.

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Always space for a joke or two about lawyers.

Attorney: How was your first marriage terminated? Witness: By death. Attorney: And by whose death was the marriage terminated? Witness: Guess.

And finally,

Attorney: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people? Doctor: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.

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