London police charge man in connection with acid attack

I am amazed at how quick people are to call for regulation of any product that is misused for nefarious purposes. I can understand it when talking about products such as food fertilizers that can be used to create hugely destructive explosives, but this reflexive desire to control literally everything seems pathological.

@zichi

I have never heard of it being used in Jamaica.

Does 'heard' include 'read'? How often do you read the Jamaica nespapers? Jamaica is said to have one of the highest proportions of acid attacks.

I suspect one of the reasons it's common in developing nations is that it is cheap, easy and readily available.

As in, if they had and could use guns, they'd be using guns instead but they don't and it's equally devasting.

The recent problems in London, along with vast increases in knife crimes that is leading to a new law where no one can actually buy a knife by mail order any more, is primarily due to the effect of Jamaican community/youth street gangs.

The bigger problem is where a more evolved society, one that has reached a degree of relevative stability, lawfulness and civility, opens its doors to too many lesser evolved societies or members of more lawless and incivility societies.

In England, there is no escaping that this is a cost of its immigration policies.

the buyer must provide full ID including signing a register

Define 'full ID'.

Clearly it is language used by a victim rights group to highlight their issue

Which victims? What issue?

I don't think we should compare this spree of seemingly random acid attacks to attacks meant to disfigure a specific victim known to the perpetrator. They are hardly comparable in my opinion. It's a bit like comparing a random mass shooting to a bank robbery simply because the same weapon was used in both cases. It's too early to say what motivated Mustafa Ahmed but a general hatred and contempt for everything in mainstream society is not out of the question (laws, customs, social norms, employment etc). Unfortunately, these attitudes do fester in a few of Britain's deprived communities (including some immigrant communities, whether we want to admit it or not).

Zichi - look at the map. It is anything but a worldwide problem.

Clearly it is language used by a victim rights group to highlight their issue

The acid attacks on moped riders of recent weeks has nothing to do with race or religion... this story concerns the rise in acid attacks...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40559973

Id like to know what "relatively rare" means

Not so many of 'em compared to other kinds of attack (e.g. knife attacks, fist punch-ups, etc.) (yet)

are we to take some sort of consolation that men are the favoured victims in many cases?

Consolation?? Hell no. I was just pointing out (obviously far too subtlely) that the claim that '*people with an especially patriarchal mindset, in societies where women are particularly dependent on their marital status' was inappropriate as a description of the problem in London/the UK, where people do not have an especially patriarchal mindset, where women are not particularly dependent on their marital status* and where the majority of the victims are male, not female. Your own link to the Guardian (hint; don't provide links to the daily mail or the mirror if you want people to take you seriously) points out that in the UK 6 out of 10 victims are male, 71% of whom describe themselves as white British. Globally some 80% of the victims of acid attacks are female, another hint that things are a bit different in the UK.

there is a fairly large probability that a high percentage of the incidents are male on male attacks and most likely to be gang related.

Zichi - all very useful info, but it doesn't back your claim they happen all over the world.

If you want it to stop, just do the same back to the perpetrators.

Is that the answer to all violence? Eye for an eye?

And it's not a cultural or traditional thing. It's opportunistic criminal behaviour, simple as.

Zichi - acid attacks do not occur "all over the world" let alone with the frequency as of those in the U.K.

@zichi

Read what I wrote more closely. It is essentially a traditional crime in Pakistani and Jamaican culture imported by those communities (it is also traditional in India but it has not blighted British Indians to the same degree), and spread by them, in the same way that the current wave of knife crimes are with the latter.

In both cases, acid attacks very often to do with jealousy, e.g. the deliberate scarring of women due to rejection of a male or, in Jamaica, of women by other women, e.g. jealousy while fighting over a man.

More recently, it's just being used in muggings. You can go to prison for carrying a knife but not a bottle of drain cleaner.

(I read the UK is going to bring in new laws to disallow knife purchases over the internet).

If you want it to stop, just do the same back to the perpetrators.

@clamenza

It's not 1830, but "cheap and unregulated" still applies.

Ban the general sale of acids and other corrosive liquids.

That would mean banning many everyday items. I can't see how ID checks are possible anyway, how can Sainsbury's check the ID of someone buying a bottle of drain unblocker? How can they check who I say I am? How does that mean I won't go out and chuck it in someone's face?

@clamenza

what the heck is going on over there!?

It's traditional with the two communities within the UK who are carrying out the majority of the attacks;

Pakistan and Jamaica/West Indes.

I think it's also a case of a 'deviance amplification spiral', the more the media reports it, the more it happens.

Luca - with all due respect, this isn't 1830.

Acid attacks were so common in 1830s Glasgow, that one newspaper called them a "stain on the Scottish character."

Cheap and unregulated, there's your problem....

And Cleo, are we to take some sort of consolation that men are the favoured victims in many cases?

can you imagine the outrage if I said something similar about women being the victims?

actually Cleo I read all the way to the bottom this time even though it took me till mid morning and my lips were moving.

Id like to know what "relatively rare" means

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4462016/amp/Two-acid-attacks-Britain-DAY-figures-show.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/acid-attack-capital-britain-revealed-10008792.amp

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/30/acid-attack-hospital-admissions-have-almost-doubled-in-last-10-years

compared to downtown Islamabad?

Well then yeah, I guess...

acid attacks left right and centre??

I know it's sometimes difficult to read all the way to the end of a long and complex article, but do try to concentrate:

*the number of acid attacks appeared to have risen in the capital, though they remained *relatively rare

this is another reason to ban all religions in every country ....... they are a favored weapon by people with an especially patriarchal mindset, in societies where women are particularly dependent on their marital status

Except that *Metropolitan Police figures obtained by the BBC show men are twice as likely to be victims of acid attacks in London than women.*

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40559973

I read recently that Britain has become one of the main acid attack centres of the world.

How could that be? Quaint countrysides with pubs, fish n chips, bobbies, and mates out for a pint on a Saturday night.

And now acid attacks left right and centre??

what the heck is going on over there!?