Quote: Nigel Kelly @ April 22 2008, 11:32 AM BSTCurt, maybe Canadians aren't very good at shooting?
I really did laugh out loud at this one. Woops! The girlfriend is still sleeping in the other room!
Has anyone ever considered moving to America? Page 4
Sorry to resurrect this tired old thread, but I read this BBC report while I was visiting my girlfriend in Florida and meant to post it then. It confirms my assertion that violence in the U.S. is exaggerated to a great extent.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7359513.stm
Why is it then that so many Americans - and foreigners who come here - feel that the place is so, well, safe?
A British man I met in Colorado recently told me he used to live in Kent but he moved to the American state of New Jersey and will not go home because it is, as he put it, "a gentler environment for bringing the kids up."
This is New Jersey. Home of the Sopranos.
Brits arriving in New York, hoping to avoid being slaughtered on day one of their shopping mission to Manhattan are, by day two, beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. By day three they have had had the scales lifted from their eyes.
I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns.
"It seems so nice here," they quaver.
Well, it is!
Ten or 20 years ago, it was a different story, but things have changed.
And this is Manhattan.
Wait till you get to London Texas, or Glasgow Montana, or Oxford Mississippi or Virgin Utah, for that matter, where every household is required by local ordinance to possess a gun.
Folks will have guns in all of these places and if you break into their homes they will probably kill you.
They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London.
It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquillity and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream.
What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.
Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken.
One reason - perhaps the overriding reason - is that there is no public drunkenness in polite America, simply none.
I have never seen a group of drunk young people in the entire six years I have lived here. I travel a lot and not always to the better parts of town.
It is an odd fact that a nation we associate - quite properly - with violence is also so serene, so unscarred by petty crime, so innocent of brawling.
Quote: DaButt @ May 4 2008, 2:24 PM BSTSorry to resurrect this tired old thread, but I read this BBC report while I was visiting my girlfriend in Florida and meant to post it then. It confirms my assertion that violence in the U.S. is exaggerated to a great extent.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7359513.stm
Why is it then that so many Americans - and foreigners who come here - feel that the place is so, well, safe?
A British man I met in Colorado recently told me he used to live in Kent but he moved to the American state of New Jersey and will not go home because it is, as he put it, "a gentler environment for bringing the kids up."
This is New Jersey. Home of the Sopranos.
Brits arriving in New York, hoping to avoid being slaughtered on day one of their shopping mission to Manhattan are, by day two, beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. By day three they have had had the scales lifted from their eyes.
I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns.
"It seems so nice here," they quaver.
Well, it is!
Ten or 20 years ago, it was a different story, but things have changed.
And this is Manhattan.
Wait till you get to London Texas, or Glasgow Montana, or Oxford Mississippi or Virgin Utah, for that matter, where every household is required by local ordinance to possess a gun.
Folks will have guns in all of these places and if you break into their homes they will probably kill you.
They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London.
It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquillity and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream.
What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.
Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken.
One reason - perhaps the overriding reason - is that there is no public drunkenness in polite America, simply none.
I have never seen a group of drunk young people in the entire six years I have lived here. I travel a lot and not always to the better parts of town.
It is an odd fact that a nation we associate - quite properly - with violence is also so serene, so unscarred by petty crime, so innocent of brawling.
It's a nice post and a nice article and I hope for your sake's it's true, but the stats do tell a different story.
Most of the gun crime is confined to the areas where street gangs are most prevalent.
DaButt couldn't agree more with that post. It's generally always "Worst case scenerio" type stuff.
I've been to New York and it's beautiful, I fell in love with the place and intend to live there one day for about 6 months - a year.
And I walked around New York at 1am and felt perfectly safe.
Granted it was around the busy areas but I wasn't concerned for my safety for a second.
Manhattan has been going through a massive gentrification process, for the last 10 years. It's even happening uptown, in Harlem. They say this was down to Rudolph Giuliani tidying the place up, when he was Mayor, but my theory is that it was caused by thousands of rich white people, wanting to emulate the lives of the characters on Friends. A lot of people claim the character has now gone, out of the borough, and Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, is now considered to be the new cool place, for all the creative types. It's like their version of Camden.
O Gloria America!
Oh thank you, Uncle Sam!
How joyful now I am.
I love it all - no joke -
McCulture, Friends and Coke.
Unwanted plastic goods
And nice, fenced neighbourhoods.
Unending hype and glitz -
The use of all but wits.
Their country, 'tis of thee -
The land of EXTRA! FREE!
And while I've spent this breath -
Five people shot to death.
Another of their charms -
The 'freedom' to bear arms.
Gunned down, in liberty
From sea to shining sea!
Old Glory leads, so brave,
In foreign lands to wave.
The banner, true, aloft:
Budweiser, Microsoft.
Oh, how we find divine
That acid, nasal whine -
An accent to enthral,
That lovely, darling drawl.
A hundred TV soaps,
All junk and aimed at dopes -
This diet I have prized;
Result: lobotomised!
I'd like my language BACK,
With spellings back on track.
And as for apple pie,
It's ENGLISH, by the bye.
Yes, thank you, U.S.A.,
And DO have a nice day!
Take your chicken, fried and yucky;
Kindly stick it in Kentucky...
Camden. 'Cool'. *snigger*
i would love to live in new york, i really like the place.just something about the people and the atmosphere..
the only place in usa where I have felt wary was in downtown LA.
If there was ever a news story that demonstrated a reason NOT to move to America, it's this one.
BURN THE WITCH! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDPd3hM5Qtc
Aaron, just out of interest - why isn't Camden 'cool'?
also, living and working in LA would be top banana.
Quote: Perry Nium @ May 7 2008, 5:44 PM BSTIf there was ever a news story that demonstrated a reason NOT to move to America, it's this one.
BURN THE WITCH! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDPd3hM5Qtc
Oh my goodness 
! Only in...anyway.
Was a cool trick though until you see it slowed down then you can see how lame it is. A very poor standard of wizardry.
No!
Quote: Aaron @ May 6 2008, 7:32 PM BSTCamden. 'Cool'. *snigger*
Camden, Hoxton, Shoreditch, whatever.
I'm sure Camden used to be cool. In the 60s.
If Austin Powers is to be believed.