Boy Scouts, penknives and how self-reliance became a deviation
The Boy Scout movement in the UK has foresworn knives, even the smallest pocket knife.
A spokesperson for the organisation, whose motto is ‘be prepared’ said that: “I think it is safest to assume that knives of any sort should not be carried by anybody to a Scout meeting or camp, unless there is likely to be a specific need for one. In that case, they should be kept by the Scout leaders and handed out as required.”
So, you should only ‘be prepared’ for entirely foreseen circumstances.
Another spokesperson said: “We believe that young people need more places to go after school and at weekends, where they can experience adventure without the threat of violence or bullying and the need to carry weapons.”
The Boy Scout movement is clearly endorsing the common belief that the only reason that anyone would carry a knife is to use it as a weapon. You might have expected them to argue that whether you are in the wilds or in the city, a penknife is a useful tool with a variety of uses other than as a weapon (including a number of first aid uses).
Instead they are bowing to the current zeitgeist of Blair/Brown’s Britain, in which doing anything other than watch trash television is deviant behaviour.
When you have a nation of people whose experience of reality is limited to ‘reality’ TV, and who are increasingly protected from even moderate risk by ’health and safety’ concerns (Asprin can only be purchased in maximum quantities of 16 in the UK), then the mentality of the chicken-coop takes over. Someone taking out a pocket knife to alter the length of a shoelace in England runs the risk of arrest and jail: ’he’s got a knife! he could stab me! why else would he have a knife?’ and the Scout Movement has been stupid enough to cave in to this kind of thinking. If you can call this thought.
Against this backdrop of adults living in a state of permanent adolescence , petulant, demanding, but still totally dependent on a parent (the state), being able to look after yourself and take responsibility for your own welfare makes you entirely unpredictable and therefore potentially dangerous.
Although there has not been one incident to my knowledge of a uniformed boy scout abusing his scout knife, children in the UK are killing each other at the rate of about one a week. It seems that the scouts are an easier target to bully into parting with their knives than the feral teenagers produced by the Blair/Brown experiment.
Tags: Blair, boys scout movement, Brown, knife law, knives
