Yeah it's a fugly knife, but still really usable. I've had one for a year or more and recently got the newer model. They do make good urban tools and do feel really secure in the hand. And despite how they 'look' they are just as safe and lawful to stuff in your pocket as a little key chain sak!
On the note of 'not sheeple' friendly, well.. produce any knife in a public place and you'll get fingered by evil eyes and all sorts of bullcrap legal 'professionals' regurgitating inaccurate laws to you.
Do you think a little "Hello Kitty" knife in pink or yellow might be seen as safe by the public
might be worth a try.
Like the OP I live ruraly, I'm older though. I too try to be fairly innocuous and blend into the background. But things can happen, we had the G8 along the road a few years back and something like a 1000 officers drafted into the area. This meant I did get stopped - (though only after making myself known to the officers hiding in the undergrowth as they hadn't been aware of me and one of my credo's is not scaring the bejesus out of armed officers by suddenly appearing next to them). They had to go through the routine and I offered up the fact early on in the conversation that I had a legal EDK in my pocket. They were quite interested in it in a friendly way as one of them was a knife buff.
Anyway I'm wandering off topic, the crux of it is don't expect that it'll never happen to you. I've carried a knife pretty much every day for 40 odd years. I'm sensible and leave it behind if I'm going somewhere restricted and on the occasions I've been stopped my demeanour has seen me right.
But back in the G8 days a few locals had some "odd" meetings with the law. Mainly due to the fact that officers were drawn from all over the UK and were in a new environment. As one said to me "...back home they're chucking bricks at my head, up here I'm guarding a gate in the middle of nowhere and old ladies appear with trays of tea and biscuits."
Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.