Musings arguments and gig reports from your favourite Goth lesbian transsexual vegan recovering alcoholic and drug addict sceptic rationalist atheist comedian chameleon and caricature.

Monday 7 October 2013

Don't touch me I'm a real live wire.

1,200 MURDERED IN THE LAST 10 YEARS BY MENTAL PATIENTS!

Shit the bed!  That's fucking terrifying.  Really? Wow.  how the fuck are we not walking down the street being randomly attacked as we walk?  "Well I just popped out for a paper and some nutter murdered me. Pow, just like that, shot through the heart (and you're to blame, you give mental health policy a bad name).  5th time this week you know?  I just keep on going out there and getting murdered."  Surely that should be a thing we're hearing from our friends on a daily basis?

But we're not, because when you wait a few minutes and have a look at that figure and go "Okay, there's 62 million people in the UK, even if that's the majority of the murder rate that's still a very very rare occurrence.

There were an estimated 6,800 Murders in the UK in the last 10 years.  One in four people, including myself suffers with a mental health condition.  So realistically, homicides by "mental patients" should be around 1,700, but they're not, whereas the 75% of you who aren't loonies are responsible for 82% of the murders.

This is before we even consider the fact that 95% of all murders are committed by men.

I know, I know, you're freaking out now going "Sanctions need to be put in place to save us!  Why aren't we locking up all the men?"  and to that I say we don't need to.  Just 95% of them at the very most.



However if you're looking properly you need to take in to account the murder rate.  In the UK it's 1.2 per 100,000 which is low compared to the US with their 4.7 and their ongoing gungasm, where the only time you don't have the right to be killed is whilst you're still in the womb, to the point that the obvious solution to please both sides in the US is to ban abortion but have a choice of delivery suites that are situated in shooting ranges.

It's high though if you compare it with Iceland the country, which, it would appear likely has a lower homicide rate than Iceland the discount food shop, with a murder rate of just 0.3.  Iceland has a population of 300,000 which would help explain it, one person murdered, and everyone went "Ah that was Björn Murdererson!"  and that was that.

Still, 1,200 people murdered in the UK is 1,200 too many, 6,800 is 6,800 too many. I suspect that no one's disputing that, maybe Rose West is sat there in her cell going, "There should be more! Let me out there's so much more I could do!"

The hypocrisy of The Sun is well known, and this article is no different, they "Proudly support our boys!"  when they're in the forces, they support Help For Heroes, and yet when they come back from being turned into soldiers, sailors, airmen and women, have fought or been put into some of the most hostile environments on this planet and have come home and have mental health problems running at almost double that of the non-military population The Sun feels okay in vilifying them for not falling into the right group?

1,200 murders in 10 years.  That's a lot of lives ruined, and not just the ones ended, the ones that tie into those.  That's how many people died on the roads between January and September last year.  No one knows the figure for how many of those were caused by mental patients.  I drive around 45,000 miles per year and killed no one in that time so my conscience is clear.

It's also known that you're more likely to be killed by a cow than by a shark,  I am, I don't swim in the ocean, there's dangerous shit in there, both literal and metaphorical.  20 people in the US are killed by cows every year.

Why mention that?  You're right it does sound daft to go and add that to the end of a piece about how The Sun has been perpetuating mental health stigma, but it is pertinent. 150.4 million cattle are slaughtered in the USA every year.  So whilst the ratio is much greater, just like mental health patients, Cows are far more likely to be the victims of homicide than the perpetrators.

1 comment:

TT said...

antiDiscYou are a genius.....why are we still having to defend ourselves from discrimination for having an illness?? Mention cancer and wave a few shrouds, and people empty their bank accounts to give money for research.
People like me...(Nutter, Grade 1)are much more than a diagnosis of mental illness. Lots of components make up who I am. Bollocks to the Sun, and everyone who believes in it.