verystormy mentioned glassings in another thread, and it started me thinking.

When I was a kid it was unheard of. A fight in a bar was a fight. No knives, no slipping home to get your mates and a few guns.

Is it still like that in the UK, or is its like here, where the first thing you do is note which hand chummy holds his glass with? They you worry that he will be back with his cousins and a few Gloks to make his point.

And for that matter, do they have the same "knocked down and died" problem?

Every few weeks it seems here that some half drunk guy gets hit, falls over backwards and dies of head injuries.

I put the above to more of the overly protective influence at school, with no schoolyard fights, no boxing in schools etc. they simply don't know how to take a blow ( or stand correctly so that they don't fall over when they get one.....)

Unfortunately so,here in London anyway,you've got to stay sharp and on top of the game.

I would say the majority of towns and cities in the UK suffer from some kind of drink related violence in certain areas. Nottingham certainly has a problem in certain parts of the city and police presence is always high on a Friday and Saturday night. A few years ago gun crime was quite prevalent with a turf war going on between The Meadows and St Anns, but this has dropped drastically, however knife crime is still prevalent. A fellow was knifed and died just a couple of streets from where I used to live.

Even Boston, in Lincolnshire, in recent years has become troublesome, with a riot there a few years ago. I spent much of my teens and early twenties going out in Boston and to see more than a couple of police cars on a weekend night was a rarity. The last time I went out in Boston, about 10 years ago, I was shocked to see 2 riot vans out.

I very often feel uncomfortable going out in they City now, not least because everyone looks so YOUNG

Sounds like Brisbane then

I remember a guy getting glassed in a nightclub when I was about 18, which would be 1980. He made the mistake of chatting to somebody's girlfriend, which obviously justified ending up with a face full of stitches and almost losing an eye. Sleepy little seaside town, too.

Of course it happened back then, and before that. Of course there were knives. Of course people ganged up. Your memory is failing, old chap.

Mods and Rockers? They used to make our little seaside town a whole lot less sleepy on a bank holiday when I was a kid.

Happy days

Good job we're not going there then

My brother was glassed in the face in a fight in Geelong going back 30 odd years. It has always happened as there has always been cowards around but it far more common now.

I would prefer Nottingham right now

You and me both I haven't felt so sick in years.

Nope it's always happened. Statistics would probably show Glasgow with 600k has more violence than Brisbane with 1.5million, but I've never felt scared in either, despite being robbed at knifepoint once and an attempted robbery at knifepoint once.

raser Wasn't uncommon where I grew up.All sorts of weapons used.No Gloks but some people would turn up with a very effective length of lead pipe or an axe"usually premeditated payback" Oh!nearly forgot the old cut throat razor.Oh! Oh! a steel comb.I could go on forever
My uncle had his face shredded.His fingers used to have chunks out of them from where he held his hands up to protect himself.He told me he could still see the guys face standing back from the blood splatter with his eyes half closed as he chopped away at arms length.These were men in their 30s around 1976.Maybe you were just fortunate to have been raised in a nice place and there's nothing wrong with that.

Boston saw a massive influx of Poles that flooded over to work on the fertile fen lands. What was a sleepy little market town suddenly didn't know what had hit it. The Poles brought their own mafioso style organised crime with them in the form of cigarette/alcohol smuggling & illegal vodka stills. Suddenly that sleepy little town that probably saw a scrap on the odd Friday night, when two young farmers fancied each others sheep, became the crime capital of Lincolnshire.
Machete attacks, shootings, & stills being burned out has left most original Boston inhabitants sitting in their kitchens eating pies.
Bostons new claim to fame is that it has the highest number of immigrants per capita of any town in Britain (an estimated 1/4 of the population are immigrants)
It also holds the fattest town award, in a recent survey the people of Boston were labelled as being the fattest in the country.

A striking resemblance to Brisbane

In more ways than one