How screwed up is the UK?

Well, even a Knight can't have a sword over there.

Yeah...

Sir Terry Pratchett and a friend made a very impressive sword (scroll down) and now he has to hide it.

Pratchett has stored the sword, which he completed last year, in a secret location, apparently concerned about the authorities taking an interest in it.

He said: "It annoys me that knights aren’t allowed to carry their swords. That would be knife crime."

That's because you're a subject Mr Pratchett. They don't trust you.

But I think he gets that from the second link:

I recognise their tone of voice; it is the headmaster enraged because the fifth form are being cheeky. There is no shame because they know they are right even if, in some cases, they are on the right. Jeers, sneers and smears and, of course, repeatedly, adhominom arguments are all, therefore, fair enough.

In every case there was a chorus that forecast, more or less the end of the world. Well, here we are and if the world is ending it would appear to be for other reasons. People, you and me, are not trusted. The right doesn't like us because we don't do what we're told by our betters, and the left doesn't like us because it secretly thinks we would be on the right given half a chance and a lottery win. And both think we should not make our own decisions, because we might make the wrong ones.

Pratchett's talking about suicide here (something that preys on the mind of a man with a terminal degenerative illness) but it's striking how universal his words are. From a man that wants to be able to kill himself, to a man that wants to be able to defend himself, or have his own money or business.

It all comes down to the State telling you no, "you are not trusted". And thus we have the author who cannot own his own sword and in time (if he lives) will not be trusted with his own money.

Via the Ace of Spades Overnight Thread. Which has quite the British theme tonight.