I blame bordom. Not parents, the kids we know have great parents. Honest.

Peer pressure is a major factor too I expect. Its not like there is a lack of stuff for kids to do in the UK, its just that kids maybe dont see that stuff as cool to do, whereas here its OK to do hockey or band or whatever. Its tough on parents too if both have to work to make ends meet, and there is no time or money to ferry kids about to expensive extra curricular activities. That goes for Canada AND the UK, but maybe its not quite as bad in Canada.

I blame the pope

Boredom is no excuse, surely. The parents are enabling them, no?

Hmm, I dunno. I was a good kid and I was also a little shit-disturber.

I was involved in lots of different things (sports, clubs, volunteer stuff), got good grades, etc... yet my friends and I also loved getting up to no good. I never felt pressured into it. To me it was exciting and fun as hell.

I see kids doing the same stuff that I did as a kid and I just think, 'oh god, I bet they're having a blast' instead of getting all uptight about 'today's youths gone bad.'

I think that a lot of adults have a memory lapses... or were you all Goody Goody Two Shoes as kids?

I blame the peers. Bloody aristocracy, smashing up bus shelters and breaking off car mirrors and stuff.

Class war!

youve just hit the nail on the head ...... Respect .... Thats the problem in the UK , there isnt any Respect for anyone anymore. The yobs show no Respect for themselves so they are certainly not going to show Respect for you or me. If you confront a group of yobs you get told to f off , how many times have we heard in England of people standing up to gangs only to get beaten half to death or even killed. Another poster said about building police houses , or community policing , i remember the estate i grew up on in Essex , which was quite rough , had a community police station with 2 houses , 2 beat coppers walking the estate. If you were caught being naughty (which of course i never was lol ) you were so sacred that the copper would tell your dad that you stopped. so maybe we should in back to the old ways and start showing people more Respect and start teaching our kids some family values , oh well Thats my moan for the day

I've got no baseline for comparison having only lived in the UK and only visited Canada for holidays but I'm well aware that even living in a 'good' area of Surrey, there's still a lot of crime going on. We have a serious burglary problem and we have a lot of violent crime.

For us, without a doubt the direct impact of crime on us is much less. It doesn`t really affect our day to day living. We have been here 3.5 years and the only victim of crime I know is me. I had my trainers stolen from the YMCA ; I also had someone bash my car (I think only with a truck wing mirror but it did nearly 4K worth of damage) whilst it was parked in an airport car-park in a private plane facility (your typical white collar crime). None of our friends or either of our work colleagues have been victims of any crime in this time. Here, from time to time, we get community messages, about the latest crime wave, where people are stealing things from unlocked cars left in full view. that`s it. I have also left the gargage doors open, by mistake we didn`t realise our cleaner had left a key in our flyer`s box for 4 months etc. By habit we always lock our car and leave nothing other than mess on view. here people leave their strollers on the front porch! Although where I work did have a crime issue overnight (getting in and stealing lap tops) when we first moved in. This has been enitely stopped by a lock system

In the UK we lived in West Yorkshire in a lovely georgian village near Wetherby. We had our locked shed broken into (locks aren`t much good when they can take an axe to the wood) and mountain bikes stolen, we had cars broken into numerous times including one time, breaking the whole steering column (with nothing to steal on show). My OH was victim of an identity theft, which cleared out our account and took months of work to sort out. A second time, our card was used when we were out of the country. We knew loads of people who had had their cards skimmed. Everyone we knew had been vicitms of car crime and all my colleagues who lived in Leeds had been victims of more serious crime. You couldn`t leave bikes unlocked for even 1 second etc. We knew people who had had their garden stuff stolen, eg pots with trees etc, railings etc. hell in Wetherby once I remember people stealing some paving stones (these were not piled up they actually stole them from the pavements). When my dad had his new heart valve the guy opposite had been stabbed (grazing the heart) completely randomly as part of a gang intiation rite for the stabber. I had a high risk preganancy and had to go to St James every fortnight. it was always a relief that my car was still there when I got back from the appointment. Leeds as a city is the same size prettty much as Calgary, but the low level crime is far lower. At work in Leeds we used to have to keep our office doors locked even when we popped to the loo and our lab had some pricey scales, which were always in demand. We even had ground installations stolen for the metal content (metal pipes sticking 1m out of the ground) in teh middle of nowhere.

We did notice when we went to VI last summer the car crime on the coast between Victoria and Port Renfrew was appauling. Glass and broken windows everywhere in the car parks- clearly a big issue when the volunteers weren`t there doing `car park watch`. Arriving back at the car to find cars surrounding you broken into was chilling and all the glass reminded us of how it used to be.

Has anyone notice the north/south divide evident in the posts about crime in the UK?

Is everything north of the Watford Gap shite?

of course

But I'm in the south and there's plenty of crime!

Ha ha, soft suthern fairies.

Norf is good pal. Be told. Period.

You what, you what, you what you what you what...?????

Just like everything south of the Bow is shite?

Should just say the guy who had been stabbed grazing his heart. That was in Kings, London, which is the South