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Murder! Professor Plum, in the library, with a rather fine replica teaspoon
...Last November, Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister, announced that 272 people were killed in knife attacks in the year 2002-03. On closer inspection, these knife murders include all homicides by sharp instrument, such as broken bottles and glasses. Perhaps any potentially sharp objects should be outlawed as “replica knives”. And what about the blunt objects used in 47 killings that year, or the ropes and things used to strangle another 68 victims?

In 1996, when I was editor of Living Marxism magazine, we ran a front cover ridiculing the launch of the first war on knives under the headline “Ban These Evil Spoons — join the crusade against cutlery”. We pointed out that, if combat knives were to be banned as the Labour Opposition then demanded, then surely lethal-looking kitchen carving knives ought to be banned, too. And why not artery-puncturing forks or eye-gouging spoons hidden in every cutlery drawer?

In 2005, that is no longer a laughing matter. Last month, a group of doctors used the British Medical Journal to demand a total ban on long, sharp kitchen knives, in order to stop us all stabbing one another to death. They insisted that knives less than 5cm (2in) long, or with blunt, round ends would meet all of our “culinary needs”. Let them eat lentils?

There are already plenty of laws against some little toe rag using a knife or replica gun. This obsession with imposing ban after ban can only intensify the climate of fear in which we are treated as children who need to be kept away from sharp edges and nasty toys. The very idea of launching a war against “evil” objects smacks of superstition. The superstitious ancients used to put inanimate objects on trial for murder, and condemn carts or statues to death. In these more enlightened times, we await the headline “Knife gets life”. ...