5 thoughts on “Scottish Re-Enactors Beware”

  1. What is up with this whole “knife crime” business the cops have got going on up there, anyway? I assume this kid wasn’t booked just for Waving A Sword On The Internet, or they’d have to put the whole British Iaido Association in the dock. Is it a class thing? Waving A Sword While Poor? Waving A Sword While Listening To Hawkwind?

  2. Todays news: there is a Finnish schoolboy who had a dream about the school shootings. He told about the dream to a friend who told that to a friend and so on.
    He was soon lockd-up by police and the whole school was in total alert.

    Even after all was cleared the school officers would not have wanted to let him to school trip with others.

    Be careful what you dream and especially what you tell about it and to whom. This reminds me about couple of books. Scary.

    http://www.iltalehti.fi/uutiset/200811108567005_uu.shtml

  3. David:

    As far as I can make out from the reports, all the kid did wrong was wave a sword about in a public place as post a picture of himself doing so. The whole of the UK is gripped with a moral panic about knife crime – has been for months now. The police can’t do anything to stop kids getting and carrying knifes – or indeed knifing each other. I guess this is their way of proving that they are Doing Something.

    I note from today’s UK news that while it is perfectly OK to teach kids about every murderous nut job from Caligula to Robespierre to Pol Pot, the mere mention of a Gary Glitter song in a music exam paper is cause for more moral panic and vast expense.

  4. This report (giving a different name for the finee) says the charge was “possessing a blade in public”.

    I wonder if it was legal for me to bring my Swiss Army Knife when I went to Interaction.

  5. Aside from all the panic about eedjits with knives, and the police taking your weapons from you (not that we’ve ever had a right to bear arms in this country), the simple fact seems to be that he waved an offensive weapon about in public and had a photo taken of it, if what Cheryl is true.
    In this country that is effectively the same as pulling out your 9mm semi-automatic pistol and waving it around in public boasting to your friends about how brave you are.

    So of course he got prosecuted.

    There will be no problem at all with your penknife, as long as you don’t try and get into a nightclub at 11pm after a few pints whilst carrying it in your pocket and its the kind of nightclub where they wave a metal detector over you.

    The police can do various things to reduce knife crime, but the main problem is cultural, insofar as the gangs of teenagers wish to enforce respect, and are also acting out of fear that someone will chib them first. Due to various changes in culture, escalation is expected, whereas in “the good old days” you generally used your fists to show how hard you were, knifes were for pansies.

    More here:
    http://livinghistory.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15682

    Needless to say, as a UK re-enactor and historical fencer with 5 blunt swords, a blunt axe, 3 blunt daggers, and a number of sharp knives, I am not particularly worried. I already know that the police can arrest me for just about anything they like, terrorism charges seem quite popular these days if you annoy the gvt.

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