before the media started to join deaths of teens as far as manchester, glasgow, and london, describing them collectively as a wave, or a trend, i often ask my self this question, how many deaths of teens by teens had there been before ? ... we know that teenage stabbings have always been an issue for sectarian riven glasgow, a fact that just now much of the london centric media is picking up on.... and there have been a few high profile killings like james bulger and the damilola tailor 'incident' ...but what about those declining northern towns that are literally disappearing off the face of the map due to chronic under investment and drug s....

i'm not so-much arguing a new point, all i'm saying is that where my folks live ( south london), there has always been a problem with kids and weapons, small though it has been, i just feel as though middle class london is now for the first time waking up to it...

@backtaya, the media never gives context, like you say compare it to one time or another...
yes i'm concerned and my heart goes out to those parents family and friends of the victims but.... i'd like to see the media also focus on the dozens of women that are killed in domestic violence cases, and i'd also like to see more help being given to women who kill babies after post natal depression ( something like 1 baby a week is killed ) but I digress,

@kunjufu i don't really see the young age of the victims and perpetrators as shocking after all, at sixteen you can conceivably kill someone legally; when you are in the army, buy your own home ( if ya can afford it ). and you are more or less an adult in the eyes of the law... but saying that, i'm almost thirty and i will always be my mums baby...

It is an aberration, a recent anomaly, a ‘spate’ that 15 or so teens have been killed recently in london, and that in itself is a tragedy, but it does not warrant the daily mail headline
‘BLADE BRITAIN’ or sky news calling it a ‘knife crime epidemic’ nor does it warrant draconian knee jerk policies of turning certain areas into authoritarian ghettos : community only curfews and indiscriminate harassment by the police, targeted at the black community… it feels like SWAMP 81..AND WE ALL KNOW WHAT THE RESULT OF THAT WAS…

Props to saint sage.

The real concern is that young teenagers have been murdering one another, otherwise knife and gun crime has always been an issue, they just don't report them all as it would cause mass hysteria, and thats something I heard from someone who worked in the news industry. The A&E wards on a friday and saturday night are packed full of knife victims, guns to a lesser extent but its frequent. When I was younger it happened to me and it was common back then, no diffrent now except that they choose to put focus on it.

Was a spate of shootings and a literal gang war in my area not so long ago, when I say literal I mean a good 50+ people going at in on the North Circular in an on going beef between the Albanians and some other gang, none of it made main stream news, only when they were shooting at each other outside the local police station did it get a mention. Just not newsworthy for what ever reason.

Good point.

Just watched banged-up and the ever present theme running through the veins of hoodlums is the relationship or more the missing relationship with their dads. with this void they were asked to list the things their dads could give them. Of the ten or so things the itemised money was nowhere to be seen. Bro's watch out for money monkey mothers, these women are selling out our kids big time....these same mothers are regularly seen bigging up their murdering sons in the dock....guess ten years in jail is no biggie if in her kotch she's surrounded by the trappings of her sons immoral earnings.

but the point is that the media DOES SELECT what is and isn't reported i.e. the paedophilia ( spelling ) , or lack of reporting, we all know that there are things going on that the media chooses to report or high light to the detrement of others... again the A and E ROAD SERVICES REGULARILY SCRAPE PEOPLE OFF THE ROADS BECAUSE OF CAR crahes. over 3,000 people died last year let alone were injured in road crahes , but this isn't talked about or put on the front pages as often ...

Was agreeing with you but the issue at the moment is that all too many young people are killing one another you're right in that their, now going on about all knife crime is a scapegoat to their localizing miniature police states, longer prison sentences for menial crimes and ridiculous harassment tactics.

Not related but another interesting thing that dosen't get reported (apart from certain international news like the war in west papua for example as the west funds the Indonesians) is just how many people die during heat waves, the number is huge, approx 15,000 people died in france in 2006.

Britain sizzles in heat wave sweeping Europe - USATODAY.com

for the first time, knife crime has been given it's own individual stats, in other words its not simply read as a small part of overall crime. the figure of 22,151 is almost meaningless because you can't say that knife crime figures for the previous year are down or up because... its the first time figures on knife crime have been tallied this way...the figure of 22,000 is tiny in comparison to the 60,000,000 population of the u.k.

if you want a some what accurate figure on knife crime, and a non hysterical point of view don't listen to ITN OR SKYnews ....