Knife menace blamed on teens’ lack of social skills

CHILDREN are settling their differences with knives because they do not know how to talk to each other, a former chief prosecutor warned yesterday.

Young people fail to learn vital face-to-face social skills because they have most of their conversations online where disputes escalate far quicker, he said.

Nazir Afzal told a Community Safety Conference in London: “Our children and young people don’t know how to make conversation. They are having all their conversations online.

“They don’t know how to deal with tension and being challenged. They don’t know how to deescalate. What they have learnt from online is to escalate. People don’t know how to walk away.”

The former chief prosecutor for north-west England also said authorities are not doing enough to tackle other relevant issues including poverty, education, policing policy and inequality. Mr Afzal said: “There is a lack of urgency. There is a lack of civil leadership.

“We get a knee-jerk reaction. When you have children dying, young people being stabbed, older people being stabbed, you can’t keep doing the things you have always done. It won’t make a difference.” Police are battling record levels of knife crime, with 44,076 offences recorded in the year to June, according to official figures.

Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, of Surrey Police, told the conference he agreed about communication skills saying: “I grew up talking to everyone on a bus.

“Now if I were to try that in London people would look at me as though I have two heads.

“If we are going to have any chance of understanding what is going on in our communities, we have to learn to talk to strangers.”

Met police Assistant Chief Officer Anthony Peltier told the conference children as young as eight are carrying blades to school and are treating deadly knives like fashion items.

He said: “A while ago, when I spoke to children about why they carry knives, they would say it was for their protection. Now they carry a knife like an accessory.

“They say if they haven’t got one, they are not part of the gang.” the unnamed cubs have been cared for by their mother Willow in a special den at the zoo in New York.

Red pandas, which look like a cross between a raccoon and a fox, are native to south-west China. They are not related to giant pandas.

Nazir Afzal says there is a lack of urgency to stop knife slaughter

THESE curious red panda cubs braved the autumn chill to take their first look at the world – and climb their very first tree. The twin boys, born over the summer, took their first tentative steps out of their enclosure at Prospect Park Zoo earlier this week. Until now,