Middle-aged men and women who use tumble-dryers, trebuchets, horses and poisons as their murder weapons in the television seriesMidsomer Murders are not only unlike real killers but may be undermining public health messages aimed at reducing violence, according to a study led by NHS psychiatrists.
The researchers said that unrealistic TV portrayals of homicides may obscure potential prevention measures, including campaigns to make kitchen knives – used in six out of 10 real homicides – safer and less accessible.
Jeebus! It’s fiction. Did anyone ever take Agatha Christie’s novels as serious examples of murder most foul? No – because what she wrote were intellectual puzzles. The Midsomer stories are much the same. They are frothy stories to chill in-front of. No one takes them seriously and no one in their right mind expects them to be furthering the public health message. It’s entertainment. Froth. Nothing more.
And someone paid these cretins to do this “research”. Probably us.
Campaigns to make kitchen knives ‘safer and less accessible’?
So they are planning to take the knives out of the kitchens then. We’ll be back to ripping a roast chicken apart with our bare hands soon.
And throw the bones to the dogs.
The accepted convention is that after ripping the bird apart you toss the bones over your shoulder and emit a loud belch, I saw it in a film so it must be true.
Don’t these people realise that home made knives are one of the easiest things to make ? They don’t even need to be metal, I have two wooden paper knives that with a little bit of extra honing would be perfectly capable of inflicting a fatal injury. Coming up next, third hand wood causes more deaths than cancer, Government bans trees.
What research has been ‘paid for’ exactly? I can’t even see the title of a research paper this facile puff piece is supposed to have been picked from, let alone where it was published.
Presumably you will have to peruse a copy of the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine…
I have found this pamphlet….. not sure it is the one the (not very) Independent (any more) is referring to though.
http://www.oxleas.nhs.uk/site-media/cms-downloads/shift_tv_research_summary.pdf
At the end it says “A full report is available at http://www.shift.org.uk – but that website is unavailable with a 404 error.
Making Drama out of a Crisis was mentioned in the Guardian as long ago as 2010.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/nov/22/tv-programmes-mental-illness
The Independent may be recycling very old stories…..
No, that seems to be something different again – the portrayal of mental illness in drama. Although the principle still applies – it is just fiction. I get irritated when people in films and TV dramas don’t do their helmets up when they get on a bike, but I don’t go to press about it. Maybe I should. Is there a research grant available?
Is there a research grant available?
Probably, if you word your application well.
I would imagine that if you could shoehorn in some guff about the association between not doing up your helmet, third-hand smoke and lung cancer, your grant would be favorably looked upon. And if you told them you were a trans-gender black African trapped in an Anglo-Saxon body, and wished to research this from the point of view of a disadvantaged minority then the monies would be assured.
It’s all in the wording.
Mr Nisakiman
You missed out a disability and CAGW *
DP
* Computer aided global warming
And the bikes always have the wrong kind of engine noise dubbed on.
Yup. And have you noticed how a roadster suddenly becomes a trail bike leaping impossibly before resuming its previous shape when landing?
Yup. And have you noticed how a roadster suddenly becomes a trail bike leaping impossibly before resuming its previous shape when landing?
My trail bike does that. Or at least, it does when I’ve had a few beers….hic… 😯
Well, I’m playing it safe: ever since I saw “Lamb to the Slaughter” – Tales of the Unexpected, April 1979, I’ve not allowed my wife to buy a frozen leg of lamb…
Readers younger than me (probably around 99% of you) can see what I mean at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0717455/?ref_=tt_ep_ep4
😉
Oh, I remember it.
XX The researchers said that unrealistic TV portrayals of homicides may obscure potential prevention measures, including campaigns to make kitchen knives – used in six out of 10 real homicides – safer and less accessible. XX
O.K. Leggy got there first, but…
We, the shooters TOLD them that they would come for the kitchen knives next!
No fucking cunt believed us!!!!
I believed it.
Its amazing aint it………Ive been toating a buck knife on my side since 7th grade and in school too. Nobody said anything. We had our guns as kids in our trucks in the school parking lot or in rifle racks. Then today we have concealed or open carry rights. I now have both the knife and the gun on me…………They can all kiss my redneck American white ass!
Arse dear boy, arse. An ass is an ungulate quadruped, the arse is what you sit on and defecate out of which I think is what you meant.
Despite this I did like your comment. 🙂
Ah, yes, two nations divided by a common language…
arse is what you sit on and defecate out of which
Yepper that’s it!
Dear Tcheuchter
Some people talk out of it, too.
Present company excepted …
DP
It seems to me these loonies have trouble differentiating between fact and fantasy in every walk of life.
I am waiting for the legislation that makes all sharp edges illegal and we are all left trying to cut up tough root vegetables with plastic cutlery or getting a couple of large rocks and smashing the veg to pulp with it, thereby leading to a ban on rocks as the new murder weapon of choice.
When will they realise you ban one thing then something else replaces it then you ban that and something else comes along and so we go on till we are all locked inside government control centres (which used to be called our homes) and only allowed out for an hour a day.
All because we are incapable of looking after ourselves.
Ban the ban to ban the ban on the ban and so we go on………