Peacefull Britain

[jake-the-peg]

So Britain has become a more peaceful place in the last 10 years

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22275280
http://news.sky.com/story/1082202/uk-peace-index-shows-fall-in-violent-crime

And it's an international study -not government statistics.

Murder rates have halved

How does this square with the story of violent Britain certain newspapers would tell us?

[anotheoldgit]

Ah, nice peaceful Britain, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Whoops I must have dropped off for a minute, only to find it's all just a dream

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2313659/Petty-criminal-Ayanle-Adan-addicted-chewing-khat-jailed-26-years-decapitating-friend.html

[emmie]

sure that Doreen Lawrence wouldn't necessarily agree, nor indeed any of the families of those killed in recent days. More black on black crime, and much of it in the capital. You don't have to be poor either to be a criminal or a victim, this idea that poverty goes hand in hand with criminality is wrong.
Drugs play a part in the violence in our city, dealing and making loads of money off it, and that infernal nonsense we seemed to have imported from the US, respect, disrespect, where someone loses their life because you looked at the person in a way they didn't like.
Perhaps the murder and serious crime has gone down, it doesn't feel like it though.

[anotheoldgit]

Kromovaracun

Read the report.

/// It is not as though the Labour government did not know what was going on. Week after week, the Mail warned that immigration was running out of control — warnings which were ignored or even met with disgraceful imputations of racism. ///

/// It was not Labour alone that was guilty. The BBC and significant parts of the Press refused to admit there was a problem. It was not until 2010 that Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, admitted that the Corporation had often side-stepped the issue. ///

/// The following year he went further, writing in the New Statesman magazine that ‘there were some years when the BBC, like the rest of the UK media, was very reticent about talking about immigration’. ///

/// Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the MigrationWatch think-tank, was sometimes portrayed by the BBC as an extremist with racist leanings, and his views were described by the Guardian as ‘worrying’. In fact, his organisation was, and is, vigorously analytical, and free of any taint of racism. ///

[modeller]

I don't believe it, there has been an increase in crime in my area but on the three occasions that I was the victim of minor crimes I was asked 'did I want to prefer charges as only then would it be recorded .' They said they would give them a quiet verbal warning and nothing would be written down or recorded . I was told by a local policeman that was the normal practice now because and I quote " The HR brigade and the f*** defence
lawyers can get most of them off anyway, so what's the point of trying. "

[emmie]

Brenden, i couldn't have put that better myself.

[emmie]

so massage the stats and make it look as thought it's all sweet and lovely, not if you are here i am afraid, some just don't live in the real world at all.

[Kromovaracun]

AOG

I don't see any evidence of censorship or of a curtailing of free speech. The Mail published its views in the public domain, and other people criticised them in the public domain. One party was free, and so was the other.

I've called you on this numerous times before, but you have the strange impression that people criticising your views is the same as preventing them from being expressed. I maintain that you have no idea whatsoever of what it means to have freedom of speech curtailed.

Incidentally, your links about violent crimes do not discredit the evidence saying that Britain is getting less violent. The reason is that the evidence does not suggest violence at all - and neither do your reports - but it does suggest an overall decline, which isn't something that your links discredit, because they are a small number of cases.

[Zeuhl]

/How can that possibly be, these crimes must have happened to be reported by the media, unless you are saying that they make them up?/

Don't be obtuse aog

or are you really that ingenuous?

the issue is not whether particular events took place or not, but obviously, if certain events are given disproportionate prominence relative to other things then the actuality is distorted.

/Look at the March and April killings in London alone. /

Examination of the statistics for March and April and the past 10 years support jake's assertion in the OP

Your perceptions, notions and prejudices have one major stumbling block - they are not supported by the FACTS

sorry...

[askyourgran]

It was reported on BBC News at 6pm, right after the news report of a gang of lads stabbing a young man in London. Britain is more violent IMO.

[jim360]

More violent than when, ayg? Than ten years ago, no. Than 50 years ago, very possibly. Than about 150 years ago, probably not.

[FredPuli43]

There's another element in this. It explains why one dog savages a child and then suddenly there is someone being bitten badly by a dog every day. There aren't more savage dogs, but when one case hits the headlines the editors and stringers are looking for others, which they wouldn't otherwise give any national prominence to.

Stabbings and s18 woundings are common. Very few make national, or even, in some big cities, local papers. But when one is in particular circumstances, such on a bus, then every bus -related wounding gets publicity too. It makes for an apparent theme and pleases editors who can run "Are we safe on our buses?" headlines, which enlivens the papers.

[Zeuhl]

/Britain is more violent IMO. /

askyourgran

show us the numbers!

as an old (American) CEO of mine was fond of saying at Board Meetings;

'In God we trust - everyone else has to bring facts'

[ludwig]

The massive rise in peacefulness is probably because they've finally managed to lock up one specific family of British chavs that have been skewing the whole of the nation's crime figures for the past 20 years.

[jim360]

An interesting article about this in the Telegraph. And that's a sentence I don't normally find myself saying.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100213772/we-may-not-feel-it-but-weve-never-been-safer/

I actually think that Mr. Chivers is as wrong as AOG and others who go the other way, but even so there are a couple of points worth considering. One of which is that, far from highlighting a more dangerous society, the recent glut of reports on murder shows a safer society. Reason being that it's only news if it's rare.

A case in point for the other direction would be the incidence of copper wire theft in South Africa. Apparently it has been such a problem that several thieves have also managed to kill themselves during it -- but "such cases rarely make the news". Doesn't mean it isn't happening. Quite the reverse, it's happening to the point that no-one is surprised any more.

[elllie]

I do not believe these figures at all

[jim360]

I've never really understood people's determination to live in a world where everything is far worse than it actually is.