A Life of Crime

Us poor old brits have to suffer a tidal wave of disaffected youths criminal “cries for help” as part of our daily life. Unlike our cousins across the pond, we have no right to bear arms and defend our family and property. We read with frightening regularity about good fathers and husbands being killed by gangs of young people for daring to stand up to violence and criminal damage, usually outside their own homes, in front of their families.

I really don’t have an answer for the youths who feel that this is a way to live and communicate to the rest of the world how they feel. The problems that these youngsters have can be very serious or just an excuse to run riot. The situation is compounded by the slow death of moral guidance in what used to be the three main bastions, church, school and the family. Church is almost a dirty word in Britain and most Christians feel compelled to keep quite about there faith for fear of being branded racist, schools have become so impotent in their ability to enforce codes of conduct that they have become drop-in centres for kids and as for the family, if a kid is lucky enough to have both parents at home its going to be a miracle if they can actually speak to them as they are both probably working double shifts to make the house payments.

So if no one is around to help and guide kids they will simply do it themselves and make their own rules up.

One police officer told me that if I was in fear of being attacked in my own home to make sure I kept a hammer handy. This was an unofficial comment but it sends a clear message from the police force, we cant really help you so help yourself. Great. I would suggest to anyone thinking about confronting violent or anti social behaviour to be very careful about carrying any kind of weapon, and this goes for all the youngsters who carry knives to look cool or “for my own protection”; NEVER carry anything that could be used against you in a fight.

My advice to anyone who is really living in fear of their lives, is to contact a proper self defence instructor. Not your local Karate club, as almost all modern martial arts are simply not appropriate to “street” situations. Any art that has rules is of no use to you. You should be able to know enough to make you confident about handling situations with no more than a few hours of training in close quarters combat.

I used to run a busy inner-city pub and many of my fellow bar owners had baseball bats or clubs under the bar. Not really a good idea. I used to have a bowel of pepper and chilli mixed up. If you know what your doing with that you can take out 10 men and still walk them out of the door. You see it isn’t years of training that you need to be able to take care of  you and yours, it’s the right information and the right tools for the job. If you do find someone that claims to know serious techniques ask him/her about using a pen or thumb to take someone out, if they don’t know, or look like they are fishing for an answer, find someone else.

I teach Japanese martial arts to over 18s only, its not pretty, its not sport but it will save your life. If anyone needs any advice I will gladly help as much as I can. Oh one more thing, if you do end up hurting an attacker NEVER say it was in self defence, always say I was in fear for my life and I don’t remember exactly what happened, a small technical point, most relevant in England.