Online Research: Conflict due to Workplaces and/ or Profit 

IS FAMILY life being split apart by huge societal and work pressures, leading to a serious breakdown in morality among young people with no sustainable role model? According to research, yes. There's a direct link between workplace stress and severe domestic conflict:

• Work-to-Family Conflict: High levels of job demands, work-related stress and long working hours directly translate into work-to-family conflict. This conflict negatively affects the well-being and behaviour of the worker and can be partially mediated by lower family life satisfaction (the word 'mediated' is used because it can't be 'supported').

• Psychological Distress: Employees in high-stress roles, such as social workers, report high rates of stress, psychological distress and burnout - with many stating their mental health suffers because of their job due to increased workload and lack of work-life balance.

• Family Cycle of Stress: Parental stress and concern about a child's mental health (often driven by the parents' own stress/work demands) impacts the parents' performance at work, creating a "cycle of stress" in both their home life and working life. This shows the damage extends beyond the worker to the entire family unit.

• Business Short-Termism: While explicitly linking the term "corporate short-termism" to family split is difficult, the underlying behaviors associated with it - pressure, workload and the need for managers to put 'the interest of the organisation above the wellbeing of their colleagues' - are the biggest drivers of poor mental health caused by work. These pressures are what ultimately destroy the work-life balance necessary to maintain a healthy family life.

• A System Cracking Under the Strain: People are gradually realising that the promise of 'work hard and you'll be rewarded' is often a lie. The reward for constant sacrifice is often just more work, followed by burnout, illness or redundancy (especially when you are no longer operating at 100%). The lived experience of millions is the system - as it's currently configured by many large employers and incentivised by government policy - does not have sufficient mechanisms or motivation to protect its people.

Seriously, if you could count yourself at work behaving a bit like that 4th point, just stop for a break one lunchtime, step back - and take a look at yourself. Things need to change, don't they? Be that change many want to see in the world...

Education programme on dangers of weapon-related crime

THERESA CAVE, mum of fatally stabbed teenager Chris Cave, is inviting schools and other youth organisations to sign up for a hard-hitting programme to try to prevent weapon-related crime.

POINT7 is designed to give young people a broader understanding of the often terrible and hurtful effects on the lives of family, friends and knife / gun crime victims.

The following video highlights the devastation and pain caused by knife and gun crime, and shows excerpts from the POINT7 initiative:



POINT7 is a Tilly award nominee and features on page 12 of ‘Tackling knife crime together - a review of local anti-knife crime projects’ a report orchestrated by Brooke Kinsella in 2011 stating the programme should be prevalent in all schools (Brooke is the sister of another young man, Ben Kinsella from London, killed in a knife attack).

More details about POINT7 programme, which is presented free, can be found on The Chris Cave Foundation website.

Remembering grieving mothers on Mothering Sunday

It is a tragedy that many mums today will be grieving the loss of their children as a result of knife crime, shooting or other violent act (glassing perhaps or from sickening punches).

In the last century, Mothering Sunday was when young people in domestic service (apparently about half the employed UK population) would return home.

They would go to the church where they were baptised (their 'mother' church) before visiting their families and bringing a gift to their mothers.

Today is a popular time for saying "thank you" (and "love you") to mums who have given us life and our first love.

For many mothers though, their loved son or daughter is not coming home today. Tragically, death at the hands of a criminal fool (or fools) has separated them. We remember these killings and the misery they have wrought, as ever   :'-(  and we continue to work for change.

Racism and knife crime

A person is a person is a person; a human being.

Anyone who takes a knife, or other weapon, and inflicts injury or death on another person for (deluded) reasons connected to the colour of her or his skin is someone who commits a racist assault or killing.

Not much more definition needed to make it clear what is a racist (knife) crime... crystal clear.

(Photos of some knife crime victims: many people of different colours, many of them should have been too young to die...  :'-(  http://knifecrime.blogspot.com/2010/12/murderous-death-toll-england-capital.html )

Ban the Voodoo knife block in 2012!

CAN someone explain to me why anyone would buy the voodoo knifeman kitchen block? It is unfathomable why this sickening knife 'toy' (for adults, allegedly) is still on sale for use in the home.

If I was to write a review about these it would say: "Sickening rubbish: if you are anti-knife crime, do not buy!"

Knifeman stand / Sickening stabbing block

I spotted Red or Dead co-founder Wayne Hemingway and his other half Gerardine had one in a photo of their kitchen carried in Hello! magazine last year (like the one inset on this knife crime post).

It is baffling why prominent people, such as these trendy / fashion-conscious partners - with huge fashion design credentials - would own such offensive crap. (You may recall Wayne Hemingway recently moved the Vintage Festival event from Chichester / Goodwood to London, unsuccessfully apparently; here's another example of poor judgement then.)

When this knife crime blog first started, I remember highlighting how people in the fashion industry have some kind of sick love affair with violence, stabbing, death, knives, guns etc. Do you recall the post? You can read it again here (about an Italian fashion house... must be something in the sick mafia blood over there): Boycott Dolce & Gabbana over idiot knife adverts.  Think D&G removed the ad (thank goodness!) but the BBC report is still live and explains all and the ASA ban on this horrendous advert is still accessible. Wonder how many more fashionista idiots abound... let me know!

In any event, let's have the anti-knife crime campaigners get these voodoo 'blade blocks' banned, let's have retailers remove them from shop shelves and online stores stop stocking them. At the very least we need to embarrass (odd!) people, such as the Hemingway's, buying them. If you bought one by accident, just bin it (try metal recycling perhaps, pop it in at one of the world's police stations, or drop it off in a local knife amnesty bucket somewhere).

Murder rates across the world, country by country

A pioneering international crime study has been published revealing data about murders in countries across the world - and alarmingly, economic downturns have been shown to increase murder rates, with figures tending to lag behind the economy as it recovers (or worsens...  so more murders in the UK and USA maybe on their way!)


Crime statistics are usually difficult to compare across borders - but murders tend to always be reported so the figures in the study can be considered accurate.


Compiled by UNODC (the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), the report reveals there were c.468,000 homicidal deaths on planet Earth last year.


More than a third of murders (36%) were in Africa and just under a third were on the American contintents (31%); in these global regions, the murder rate was 15-16 killings per 100k people, more than double the average of 6.9 killings per 100k for the rest of the world.

Illustrative map of murder rates on planet Earth

Murders in most countries have reduced in number since 1995, but in the Caribbean and Central America, murder numbers have increased.


Interestingly, the UK is a developed nation and can be considered relatively safer than others, enjoying one of the lowest murder rates for individual countries. I can't help speculating how our anti-gun culture helps here, especially when one considers US murder rates are tending to be double the UK's.


Two trends seem to be apparent:


1. A link exists between development and crime. Countries with low scores on the UN Development Programme’s human-development index reveal high murder rates and vice versa.


2. Exceptions to the above show another trend. Organised crime, drug trafficking, violent gang culture and the prevalence of firearms are also correlated with higher murder rates, even in relatively developed countries.


This distressing phenomenon just noted above is proven in Honduras and El Salvador. It would be wise probably not to travel to this pair of countries; they suffer the highest and second-highest global murder rates (82 killings per 100k and 66 killings per 100k resp.).


To download more detail on this report, visit the 'Homicides Study' on the website of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Gun + knife criminals revel in their reputations

Browsing around WH Smith's (as all of us in England or other parts of the UK must have done at some time or another), the 'True Crime' section sounded alarm bells. A sizeable section made up of several shelves, the faces of the bad, the violent and the ugly were impossible to miss.

Time is at a premium as I write this so will add to this post later sometime. However, thought I would throw open this post to comments from all. What's your opinion about these type of people enjoying plenty of shelf space in our stores while the work of the good, the kind and the gentle often goes unnoticed? You tell me.

Channel 4 joins campaign to battle knife menace

A new anti-knife crime resource is now online. Channel 4 is starting a gun and knife crime season - called "Disarming Britain" - from June 30 (Monday) at 9pm.

Video films and information are already on the website about the series - and you can contribute to a national commission set up to examine the issue of weapons carried and used on our streets.

• Watch the Channel 4 'Disarming Britain' trailer

Programmes featured in the season:

• Street Weapons Commission - Cherie Booth heads commission to understand the weapons culture
• Helen Newlove - widow of Garry, kicked to death near his Cheshire home
• Teenaged, Armed and Dangerous - teenagers' accounts about carrying and using weapons
• Fallout - drama about race and law + order, covering murders of Stephen Lawrence and Damilola Taylor
• Police Line - a review of damage and injury caused in attacks from a doctor who treats stabbing and shooting victims

I've added a permanent link to this resource from the weapons crime resource links on this blog's right hand navigation menu.