Anti-knife chicken and chips campaign

Sara125

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Undoubtedly people who have lived through it understand a lot more than the average person who hasn't lived through it. And people who have been exposed to it as community activitists or academics or police on the ground will understand it better than people who haven't been exposed to it at all. But they all misunderstand it, to varying degrees. Living through something doesn't mean you instantly have the answer to complex problems. My family lived through the Troubles, some of them right in the thick of it, and they have a better understanding of what caused it than I do, but they don't for a minute think they'll know how to prevent it if it happens again. The world's much more complicated than that.

Believing that because you are / have been involved in it means you have the answers is a very dangerous thing. But of course the opposite is true too - people who haven't seen the problem in any real sense thinking they know the answers is dangerous. And there are examples of governments doing that over the years.

It's only your interpretation that targeted messages in chicken shops means they misunderstand the vast resource needs elsewhere - one doesn't naturally lead to the other. It's entirely possible that they think targeted messages in chicken shops might have a small, positive impact while also thinking that poverty, social deprivation and a lack of purpose are much bigger problems to solve, to tackle crime on a wider scale over the longer term. Personally I think it's entirely likely they think that.

We can disagree with them on what the best approach to tackle poverty and those other things are, and there's plenty of reason to suggest they've made those things worse in part because they misunderstand the issues and in part because they have other priorities. But you have to make a lot of big leaps to say this one campaign illustrates their entire understanding of the problem and how to solve it. And I think you can challenge some of those leaps. For example I think if you had a discussion with one of the political members involved in the campaign, it wouldn't take long before you came to the conclusion that they don't in fact think only young black men go to chicken shops. But it's easy to put it out there on the internet with all of its social bubbles, the point goes unchallenged, and then it becomes normalised as a piece of evidence of how out of touch they are. When in reality you've done nothing to verify that.

I'm not saying your overall interpretation is wrong but it is wrong to think that's the only reasonable interpretation, if you agree on the same basic set of facts. I agree with you on the same basic set of facts and agree with villian on the best broad approaches, but I also disagree with your conclusions about what this campaign represents. Your conclusions are not the logical conclusions but one of many. And like everyone else's, they are flawed.
Again, no one is saying that they have all the answers but it’s clear that this doesn’t work based on evidence that simplistic campaigns such as this never have. And actually I can say that they misunderstand the vast resources needed elsewhere because they spend it on stupid campaigns such as this and other redundant things like putting more police in certain areas to increase stop and search instead of investing into communities- in fact, they’ve actually cut spending in this regard.

Anyway I feel like we are going round in circles so at this point it’s fair to say we should just agree to disagree.
 

Brwned

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Again, no one is saying that they have all the answers but it’s clear that this doesn’t work based on evidence that simplistic campaigns such as this never have. And actually I can say that they misunderstand the vast resources needed elsewhere because they spend it on stupid campaigns such as this and other redundant things like putting more police in certain areas to increase stop and search instead of investing into communities- in fact, they’ve actually cut spending in this regard.

Anyway I feel like we are going round in circles so at this point it’s fair to say we should just agree to disagree.
I think it's worth recognising that some of the same people that ridiculed the army's "simplistic, tone-deaf" millenials recruitment advert similarly believed the evidence was pretty clear it wouldn't work. And then seemingly it did, in a small way, despite the immediate backlash. Lots of things that seem silly work in the limited way they're intended to. That doesn't mean this will work but the idea that you know it doesn't work...yes, circles.