Been stabbed yet? Give it time. The latest weapon of choice for our go-getting and imaginative young people, apparently, is the ‘cat skinner’, a thin and very sharp device properly used for removing the plastic jackets from electrical cables. But also for skinning cats, I assume. And — increasingly — stabbing, or more likely slashing, people. From the pictures I’ve seen, if you’ve bought a cat skinner with which to stab somebody, you’ve bought the wrong tool for the job. No use complaining later.
In the last year for which figures are available there were 64,000 knife crimes committed in Britain — the figures have been rising with great vigour over the last eight or nine years. Some 17 teenagers have been stabbed to death in London or its environs this year alone, and we are in high summer. Stabbing is muscling out shooting as the violent crime du jour, despite a Scotland Yard knife amnesty in 2006 and a possible four-year sentence just for being found with a knife (unless you can convince the court you were intending to use it to fillet a halibut, or slice a piece of foie gras in half prior to searing it).
If you haven’t yet been stabbed and are beginning to feel a little excluded by all this frenetic, joyous, stabbing going on around you, then I hope that this article will point you in the direction. Treat it as a public information leaflet: How To Get Stabbed, like the ones the government hands out should you wish to stop smoking. Because despite my opening comment, it’s not so easy as it sounds. Here, anyway, are the general principles to follow — there are of course exceptions to my rules.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in