If Paul Dacre cannot be sacked, then perhaps the newspaper should be shut down.

Other newspaper editors like Richard Wallace of the Daily Mirror and Rebekah Wade of the Sun should take care that their own newspapers do not use knife dysphemisms or cacophemisms too.

But at least they did not print such headlines in an obsessive continuous manner.

What kind of a “family newspaper” prints a headline like “Who who wield the knife?” as a double page spread in the first few pages of its’ contents ?

What kind of a “family newspaper” prints a headline like “Knives are being sharpened” with reference to City news, or on another occasion, also in City knives, “Barlcays’ Knives”.

Did you know after the latest “Knives are out” headline just a few months ago, in the Daily Mail – although it was printed as a smaller headline, 8 people were stabbed to death in one day, just a fwe days later.

Since which time the “knife” headline has been used further times.

Why is Mr. Dacre obsessed with using these knife headlines? Obsessed with scaring the nation with Knife culture related headlines like “The Spectre of the Knife”. What the Hell has this man been doing?

I do not wish anybody to be murdered or attacked with a knife. I do not wish to be personally murdered or attacked. I have a business to run called “smokenotar.com”

Only two days ago, I had to act quickly to stop a knife incident outside my house late in the evening, where somebody was trying to make a film of stabbing someone so that they could upload their “first” recording of their attack onto an internet site – for viewing and downloading. How disgusted do I feel !

This is serious as hell.

Peter Dew.

“KNIVES ARE OUT FOR GORDON BROWN”

Since July 2001, the Daily Mail has used “Knife” ‘dysphemism’ headlines on over 100 occasions.

Whenever they print such a headline, there is always guaranteed to be at least one murder, which is then reported a few days later. When I wrote to Paul Dacre about this in 2001, he responded by using “Knives come out” or “Knives are out” at least once a week for about 6 weeks.

The expression “Knives are out” printed as a headline is a catalytic trigger to mentally unstable people with a predisposition to kill with knives, there’s no doubt about it.

So when will the Daily Mail stop doing this? Other papers have done similar things. Recently, the Sun printed “MPs queue up to knife Brown” on page 2 of their paper. That afternoon a man was killed in Oxford Street in broad daylight.

There is a massive connection, because I have interviewed someone who threatened shop staff with a knife (in 2006) and she says she felt compelled to do it after reading one of these “Knives are out” headlines!

…thus proving the point in my article linked above, about The People having massively exaggerated fear of crime because they don’t understand that anecdotes are worthless and statistics are vital [ha ha...].

As the BBC piece linked above highlights, no you aren’t.

Incidentally, there’s another excellent post by Mark Easton here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/07/sceptical_of_knife_epidemic.html

disputing the IoS figures which were publicised yesterday. I don’t think anyone is disputing that there is a serious, potentially intractable problem in parts of London, but to suggest it’s country-wide is simply not backed up by the facts at the moment.

A blog worth its salt as a moral and political force would be arguing today for a black leader in City Hall with the mutual backing of all 3 parties, to fill the vacuum left by the departures of Jasper and Lewis and get a grip on the situation.

Instead it’s party politics as usual, and you lot having YET another wank about the Daily Mail.

Pathetic.

Spot on.

If i ever meet Paul Dacre, I would have one question for him: how can the Daily Mail be outraged by youths murdering other youths when it has spent the last decade breeding hate, contempt and fear against those very youths.

Another old chestnut – to what extent does culture inform or reflect politics (*and vice versa)?

I suggest the answer lies in the false definition of the question. The transition from youth to maturity is the process by which innocence is corrupted – so how you describe the nature of the paradox is a statement of self-description above anything else.