London 2019 (Knife Crime)

Knife Crime on the streets,

Young innocent victims becoming a regular cull.

How many innocent victims will it take before this becomes a real national emergency?

 

Send your child to school for 10 years or more,

To see them learn to do wonderful things,

Like to read and write,

To judge and evaluate, and interpret,

Most of all to think,

Then let them walk home on their own,

Or go out in the evening,

Into streets which are increasingly dangerous.

Let them take the risk.

It is not the adults,

who ride in cars and no longer need to go out to socialise,

who take the greater risks.

It seems to be the young who are targeted the most,

although who knows when that might start to change?

 

But for now it is the young who seem to be in most danger from random thugs and killers,

who don’t seem to care whether a victim might die or not,

disfigurement, disability,

are these acceptable as long as they’re not dead.

The roll of the dice when they go to school,

Or just step out of the door.

 

Will it affect tourism?

Will the foreign visitors and the visitors from other parts of the UK stop coming?

Will the London earning power of tourism go down?

Quite probably, if this is not stopped.

But how can we stop it?

 

Now the poison is in the streets,

And the bloodstream of the gangs of youngsters,

Drug gangs!

Is it a dare or a gang initiation,

or a means to extort money,

or to punish the opposition?

Why else would someone want to do this to another person,

a flesh and blood like ourselves?

 

Is it a horror movie come to visit real modern life,

In our most civilised and democratic safe country?

Have we imported the third world,

Or manufactured our own hell,

By our lack of care for our young and their upbringing?

 

The public money which once encouraged youth clubs and activities stopped a few years ago,

And even police numbers have been cut,

Thanks to austerity,

Thanks to the actions of gambling merchant bankers and mortgage salesmen,

And the inactions of paid auditors and government officials,

And Members of Parliament,

Who allowed a bubble of bad credit to develop and get bigger and bigger,

Hidden from view like a cancer in the flesh of western economies.