Let's ban anything that can be made into a knife too - like spoons and forks.

So,

1) Metal cutlery that is not spoon or fork must not be carried outdoors

AND

2) Metal cutlery that is not spoon or fork can still be purchased freely

THERFORE

3) Something must be done, this something being removal of the adverb "freely" in 2)

It's pretty sad when the combined intelligence of parliament and gummint can be encoded in a production system oneliner.

"...he volunteered that the time may have arrived for government to make use of blocking software to prevent people accessing products sold into the UK from overseas for which age restrictions apply."

<despair>

With a credit card perhaps? That you have to be over 18 to have?

We should all start demanding that public bodies go back to serving the public rather than dreaming up sensationalist headlines for the media. Maybe their PR department could do with a jobs cull.

I think the banning sales of cutlery to underage youth is pretty dense to begin with. If a kid needs a weapon, a ban isn't going to stop him. They'll just steal them. I'd be more worried about them stealing a box cutter, than buying a pocket knife, or *shudder* perhaps buying a kitchen knife for mum and/or dad as a present?

Knives are tools, plain and simple. I grew up in a rather rural part of the US, where almost everyone I knew carried some form of pocket knife. We never had knife fights. Never.

Geez, whatever next. I tend to buy a lot of stuff online, including cookware and utensils, because frankly the shops near me have a pants selection of implements. Does it now need to be such that I can't buy a decent skinning or carving knife, just because kids *could* buy knives online.

FFS, they could just as easily nick one their parents' kitchen drawers, assuming the ferals that carry knives for protection actually have parents! ;-)

Still, it makes a change for a subservient bit of government (local authorities) to be reading Big Brother's script from Westminster for new laws. Usually it is fake charities who have been given the script by Westminster.

In the end, knives will be as illegal as guns. Chefs will be required to have a professional knife users license!

They will happily sell cocaine, heroin or pretty much everything you want, to underage kids. Let's ban them. Oh, of course you have to provide a bunch of paperwork... a bit like how most of the time you have to use a credit card to buy a blade online... of course there's PayPal and friends, but any underage kid with that kind of money on PayPal is already trading intensively on eBay and co, so I doubt they would have any trouble getting their mits on a knife, a scimitar or even a shotgun, if they so wished (and if they could conceal it from Mom and Pop). Not to mention that most kids will get a knife for Xmas if they ask their parents nicely. Maybe it's that I was raised in the countryside, but I know I had a couple of semi-serious blades before I was even 14.

And, stop me if I'm saying something stupid, but is there any evidence that any real-life yoof actually tried to illegally get a knife from a UK-based online retailer? Ever?

Wouldn't the average yoof buy his deadly, law-abidding-citizen-mugging oriented sharps on eBay under the false assumption that it's cheaper, anyway?

Is there even any evidence at all that knife-wielding hoodied ne'er-do-well are taking Britain over?

Pointless gesturing from useless people who need to look relevant to get public funding, I say.

So no DVD sales online either soon. "U" certificate DVDs only. And no CDs with "Advisory" notes on the front. Are under-18s still allowed to by USB cables on Ebay? Those cables can be used as garottes you know. Lethal.

What about paper-cuts? They should ban the online sale of books and lemon juice. You know it makes sense.

...the internet has to lose the porn as well? And the Booze? And the 18+ Films? And the cigarettes? And the fireworks? And the rest?

Fucking hell, hows about just a little bit of consistency...

As mentioned, it should be possible to use credit cards to control whether a buyer is 18yo+ but some banks, in their wisdom, have decided that teenagers are a source of revenue, so they can have the cards as well and their is now way for retailers to determine the actual age of a card users.

This is the issue that needs addressing, not the banning of the knives! Not withstanding that the majority of youth 'knife-crimes' are carried out with a kitchen knife swiped from their parents house.

I collect and use various knives for a my hobbies (bushcraft, archery & hunting) and all of them were bought on the internet as that is where the variety I require is.

If I were a teenager, and I desperately wanted a knife with which to go bother a victim ('cos we all know that's what teenagers do these days) and I found myself forbidden from buying my own online, I'd probably resort to raiding the kitchen drawers and using one of the handy, sharp food-preparation knives that my parents had been old enough to be allowed to buy.

So OBVIOUSLY the next step will be... what? Parents not allowed to buy knives? Parents responsible for keeping paring knives (and scissors? and veg peelers?) securely under lock and key? Kitchen knives outlawed and all food to be provided ready-chopped under controlled conditions in the municipal slicing factories (good employment idea, that...)

Thin end of an extremely silly wedge, I'm afraid. Not to deny the anguish felt by victims of knife crimes, by the way, but there are proportionate responses and then there are silly responses.

I have to echo Steves' point.

OK, you can use a range of debit cards online, but again, aren't these limited to adults?

Even if there are some types of cards available to the underage population, the banks have details such as date of birth, so I'm fairly certain the over 18 flag can be checked pretty easily (without the bank actually sending DOB details to the relevant site.

Don't porn and gambling sites already have age verification systems set up that the governments find perfectly acceptable?

Again, this whole exercise wreaks of mission creep

"Unless I'm completely out of date (which I don't think I am) you have to be over 18 to have a credit card, so if an online credit card transaction takes place, you must be selling to an 18 year old."

Very true, you do need to be 18 to hold a credit card but not so with debit cards that are handed out to11 year olds. (http://www.lloydstsb.com/current_accounts/under_19s_account.asp).

This makes it pretty easy for a retailer to check the age of the card holder but I sincerely doubt that any self respecting bad boy is going to kit himself out with an 8" Global Santuko. I suspect it's far more likely that the type of weapon used will have either been given to him by someone he knows or procured from some less reputable shop or market stall and therefore bypass any restrictions put in plave by the ITS.

Another genius system that is doomed right from the get go...

Seriously, what a ridiculous thing to suggest that because something that is currently illegal to sell to minors can be bought over the internet without validation it should be banned from sale online completely. Are these morons for real?!

A more logical response, one government funded bodies seem pretty unable to manage these days, would be ensure any product intended by over 18s has to be purchased on a funding mechanism available to only said age group. How about we ban the use of cards available to under 18s from use on UK based web sites that sell adult products, rather than the idiotic response of banning the items for sale themselves.

I wish the state would stop interfering and greying the areas of parental responsibility with scaremongering and shock tactics. It's getting old...

...stickwithanailinit.com. Its going to be huge.

as my sister was when she went to college with a lovely (and expensive) set of various knives, all very sharp in a black knife roll. A well aimed 30cm chef's knife or a nice fine bladed boning knife can do lots of damage.

The trouble is we want to stop people from carrying "weapons" but how do you legislate that? When is that knife part of a chef's work equipment and when is it something else? Is that person a chef in the kitchen and a knife carrying thug outside?

They actually think that the kids who run around with knives actually get them from the internet? This is a joke right? The kids I know of who carry knives either steal them or they are given to them by their older siblings/friends/etc.

Spending X million sterling to put some wacky internet block in place is mind boggling. Not to mention all the cash they already blew on the damn research. If anything they should ALLOW the sale of knives on the net because then at least its traceable, rather than a hoodie walking out of an off-license with a stolen sharp in their pocket.

This way of thinking is an embarrassment to the crime fighting community and a mockery to the victims of knife crime. Someone should put these morons on the street so they can get a clue.

Prisoners chib each other with sharpened toothbrushes, an HB pencil properly applied to an ocular orifice is fatal, and then there are any amount of sporting goods that could be used in the course of a proper GBHing, including tennis racquets and practically everything to do with cricket.

FWIW most of the knives that the filth actually confiscate (i.e. not the PR friendly collection they keep for showing TV cameras when they have amnesty campaigns) are, in fact, of the cutlery draw/home ec department variety rather than the well crafted (expensive) outdoorsman's variety.

But it's not really about crimes of violence, it's about the interaction between hysterical parents who wish to abdicate responsibility for their own children (if they're shopping online and you don't know about it, you're doing it wrong. Period) and a state which is only to happy to arrogate that responsibility to itself because it is run by scary authoritarian control freaks with their heads up their arseholes who can only remain in charge if those parents can be kept hysterical enough to vote for them.

If the fuckers were smart, they'd be thinking about banning piano wire, and maybe sturdy lamp posts.

When I were a young boy scout (it wasn't all THAT long ago...) our troop had a tradition: every summer we had a two-week camping trip in the middle of nowhere (Scotland) where we'd learn all those useful skills. Building fires, hiking and orienteering, building and sleeping in bivouacs, how to dig and maintain a field latrine, how to turn two pounds of gorgeous minced beef into grey, unappealing yuck with undercooked tatties... You know, useful stuff.

Every one of us was under eighteen, had a knife, and knew how to use it to whittle a replacement tent peg, or sharpen a stick with which to cook sausages, that kind of thing. The really REALLY cool thing was that, each year, the newbie who was judged the best by the patrol leaders and scout leaders (stop sniggering at the back; this isn't that kind of story) was awarded a prize: a particularly fine sheath knife, theirs to keep and use with pride. Competition for this honour was, as I'm sure you can imagine, very stiff indeed.

Seriously. Titter ye not.

Obviously if this happened nowadays the dunghill would hit the windmill. I think that's extremely sad.

... what, exactly are "underage products"?

Here in Germany, there is very detailed regulation about the nature of knives that are allowed for sale, those that are not, and those that while legal for sale, cannot be legally sold to minors. Legislation applies to every kind of store, brick&mortal or virtual, and sellers need to verify the age of the customer — usually via national ID-card. It's quite easy, actually.

Minors who want to lay their hands on something illegal will find ways, as always, but why ruin everybody else's business and shopping because of that?

You can sod off if you think I'm going to be getting myself a credit card I don't need just so that I can buy a knife. Its bad enough I need to pay for a passport/driving license to prove my age despite being in no position financially to go abroad or to run a car around London.

... at those "evil" guns, did they?

Now its knives. Next forks. Shortly after, pencils, because they can stab, too. Brooms and shovels...

Eventually, you will need to be restrained, simply because you can't be trusted not to hurt someone else, even though you're naked, and can legally possess nothing.

Hey, I'm a kid. I want a knife. Where shall I get one? Shall I go on the internet and buy it? Or shall I just take one from the drawer in the kitchen? Let me think.

Restricting gun sales works because guns are tricky to get hold of.

Restricting knife sales does not work because there are many more knives than people in the UK and, actually, in the whole world!

It's the old "foot in the door" for ID cards... Hello? Nobody wants them! Get a grip on putting the chavs to work for a change or just dump 'em in the bloody ocean so they're not bothing anybody but the sharks.