What on earth does that mean, you <ahem> strange person?

careful, immichealcaine got a 10 day ban for that kind of thing.

did he. ?

He was a compulsive crap txt'er though. Mine is just a spelling mistake.

That one always amazes me.

We had some work done a couple of years ago. The contractors would just leave their tools in the driveway when they went for lunch. There were so many different people coming and going on that job that I would not have thought anything amiss if a guy had turned up in a truck and taken stuff away.

8 houses in completely different areas of the UK, Gloucester, London, Lincolnshire etc., Gloucester is my hometown and has always been rough.

I forgot to mention when I worked at nights in the estate agents round the corner from my home. We were plagued by the hoodies sitting on our window plinth, smoking, drinking, swearing, spitting every night.

One night when it was raining one hoodie stood in the doorway of the shop shouting down a phone. I was dealing with a client and politely told him "err excuse me could you leave I'm trying to run a business here" to which he replied "f**k off so am I!!"

Another night I got a coke can rammed in my face by a hoodie on a bike when I asked him to leave. Thankfully the Police were doing surveillance on the shop next door and ran after him after I put a 999 call in. I prosecuted that little sh*t and he got off with a suspended sentence.

My hubby and I also ran a petition locally and had meetings with the local police and councillor for the area but was basically told they had no power to move on these kids or prosecute them.

Our local pub (family pub!) has had 2 fatal stabbings in less than 4 years. The average price of a home there is 200,000 GB pounds so this isn't some ghetto.

So although you find it hard to believe, I was living through this daily. It was never the pull of Canada why we ended up here it was definitely the push of the UK!

Granted your personal experience is different to mine but that doesn't make mine less valid it adds a balance to the discussion. I lived only 3 miles from Painswick Village the heart of the Cotswolds, not a prettier place could you find but because people in the UK don't get penalised for having one or more properties the housing market was priced way out of our reach!!

I have not been affected by crime here or in England. I don't know anyone who has been affected by crime in Canada or England either.

I have learnt alot since living here though. I must admit that before I moved here I thought it was Utopia

People who say that there is mostly gang related crime here and most people are not affected...well who do you think are in these gangs? It may be your child who gets lured in and starts selling drugs, buying drugs, mugging people, shooting people, etc... It may be your child who gets shot!

People who say their kids stay younger for longer...well I have a 16 year old and since we moved here 4 years ago, her best friend has got pregnant, had a termination, and totally gone off the rails, 3 of her friends (that I know of) have got caught drinking or taking drugs and have been grounded indefinately, plus I have seen a few other pregnant girls walking out of high school....

There may not be youths hanging around drinking on street corners like they do in the UK, but they get drink and sneek into eachothers basements with it and get pissed. There are alot of drugs here also. My daughter tells me most of her friends smoke or do drugs.

No youth mindless crime?...at our local elementary school recently, a couple of teenage boys walked into the playground and sprayed mace into a boys face for no reason, cos they had been expelled from school and were bored.
Also, downtown recently there was a group of mindless thugs who went round beating up lone walkers and mugging them, in broad daylight.

And this is Nova Scotia

anyways if it helps at all in Ottawa (the capital with just under 1 million habitants) there were 10 murders last year.

In the UK I had a motorbike stolen. That was when I was living in Norwich. We also had an attempted theft of a vehicle when I was in Bedfordshire.

We have had a car broken into here and vandalism to a car.

In both countries the Police have been involved in one of the crimes (motorbike in UK, peeps were prosecuted) and the vandalism here where the little shits were cuffed and made to pay for the repairs).

I also see, whenever I work downtown, hookers and drug dealers plying their trades, sometimes we see the violence that goes along with that. Just the other day a hooker was bashing another hooker with a bike helmet, they were yelling and chasing each other around.

There has been a murder recently. Other crimes locally include several murders over the 6 years we have lived here and a peado ring bust last year.

Strangely enough crime isn't restricted to the UK.

I made a new thread with a poll and then merged it with this one, I may be easier to keep score this way...

I do honour your personal opinion, especially if you choose to live in areas blighted by hoodlums. However, generalising the whole of a country as you did below takes away some of your validity. Your latest reply offers some balance but your reply to my original post really is not balanced at all with the sweeping statement.

sweeping statements without knowing any facts??

I wouldnt say that Norwich (for example, from my past) was a shithole by any means. I rather liked it in fact, but I certainly wouldnt leave my car unlocked there even in the more affluent bits..

Wherever you lived seemed to have lots of crime ergo to those of us who lived in crime free areas you must have lived in shit holes. Q.E.D.

I didn't choose to live in areas blighted by hoodlums, I lived in a very nice area that had 2 extremely rough Council House Estates on the doorstep and 10% of the development had "affordable housing" thats what blighted my life back there!

Well meaning liberals thinking that putting expensive housing estates in the middle of these areas would bring the area up! Sadly not!

Maybe if people like you buying numerous houses in the UK hadn't bumped up the house prices I could have afforded to live in Painswick or Cirencester and lived in the same bubble as you??

I'm not saying that crime is any worse here or less. I just haven't witnessed any crime here, my perception of crime is much lower and we choose to live in a semi rural, affluent area because we could afford to.

We chose Canada with probably quite low expectations. To our relief our quality of life is very much higher and we've been blessed that some of the decisions we made have paid dividends in respect of finance, future and careers.

That is the point of emigrating