Let’s all tackle knife crime

AT 14, Jaden Moodie should have been in secondary school thinking about his GCSES, joking with friends and practising the latest Youtube dance craze.

Instead he’s lying in a mortuary, another victim of London violence.

His murder wasn’t the first in 2019 and it won’t be the last.

The schoolboy, pictured, was rammed off his moped and stabbed in the back seven times.

Every time a tragedy like this happens, the same questions are asked. Why is this happening, who is blame and how can we stop it?

Is it the schools? It emerged on Friday he had been excluded just weeks before he was murdered – not for anything he’d done on school grounds but allegedly for activities on social media. He was sent to a Pupil Referral Unit, sometimes dubbed a criminal training ground, but it’s unknown whether he attended.

Is it the government and politicians? We know that austerity measures implemented by the Tories have hit disadvantaged communities the most. Government cuts have meant fewer police on the streets, less money for community organisations and virtually no money to invest in things for local kids to do.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan doesn’t seem to have the answers. But there are no simple answers to this complex issue. It feels like no one in authority hority cares enough to want to fix this problem. oblem. There clearly aren’t many votes to be won stopping young black boys dying on the street.

The Government found £1billion 1billion for the DUP to prop them m up in Parliament but don’t seem willing or able to find the cash to try and d tackle what is becoming a national l crisis.

In Glasgow the knife crime epidemic was confronted in 2005 when the Scottish government rnment backed a police initiative to treat it as a public health issue. It worked.

The number of people admitted to hospital tal for knife wounds fell by 65 per cent by 2016-17. -17.

I know so many courageous people eople who are quietly setting etting up organisations ns in their spare time to tackle this problem. As communities we also need eed to do more to support each ch other. Never has the old saying ng “it takes a village to raise a child” been more relevant.

Let’s talk to each other r more, get t o know our ur neighbours and their children, en, maybe offer to babysit for ra a parent who has to work at night ht and leave their kids at home, me, volunteer in your local schools. ls.

Let every child know that hat someone cares.

SHE said she “hadn’t felt this nervous in a long time” but Fiona Bruce needn’t have worried as she took over from David Dimbleby as the presenter of Question Time.

She was confident and calm and made it clear she wasn’t going to take any nonsense. I particularly like the way she didn’t let politicians on the panel