At the time of writing it has just been reported that the 18th teenager has been knifed to death in our capital this year, but should we be surprised at the rise in gun and knife crime in the UK?

I don't think so.  We've been marketing it in the media for the last 50 years and we're getting better at it all the time.

Don't get me wrong, I've never been a big advocate of censorship, however I've always felt that, particularly in the UK, we've always been much more hung up about sexual content than we have been about graphic violence. Instinctively that feels all wrong to me.

I like my action movies just as much as the next guy but how can we possibly believe in the power of marketing and yet argue that violence in movies, on TV and in computer games does not have an influence on the young and impressionable. They are two sides of the same coin. If we can influence kids in to buying our brand of consumer goods we can also play our part in turning them toward a life of knife carrying and violence.

We are bombarded with violent imagery day after day in the news we read, the films we watch and the music we listen to. It's everywhere. Is it at all realistic to think that we are not influenced by an ultra-violent TV show but we suddenly become impressionable during the commercial break? No, we reap what we sow. We are influenced by what we see and what we see is an image of a violent society. It should come as no suprise that it is reflected back at us.