We know that serious crime in the UK is trivially low, unless you’ve made the unfortunate career choices of drug dealer or sex worker (‘we’ here excludes paranoid Daily Mail-reading lunatics). Homicides are running at 700-900 a year, and the vast majority are domestic or drug-influenced.
Given this, it seems unfortunately anomalous that of the very few high-profile, ultra-horrible, ultra-dramatic murders to take place in rich areas recently, two have taken place extremely close to Yank expat blogger Jackie D. One next to her office, and one next to her boyfriend’s office. She views this as proof that England is more dangerous than the US. I’m sceptical of this view, given that – at least in terms of homicide – it very, very clearly isn’t.
Nonetheless, it’s a bizarre coincidence. My theory is that someone has become annoyed with Jackie’s incessant whining about how everyone in the UK is an antisemite, an evil statist, a cynic, a thug or a murderer, and has therefore decided to persuade her to flee back to the States by arranging a bizarre and extreme set of apparently coincidental crimes to terrify her.
(meanwhile, Yank expat in France Jason Stone has decided to stop being a Yank expat in France, because he can’t get a job, because he doesn’t speak French. While I have some sympathy for him personally, it’s a brilliant demonstration of Anglophone arrogance: I imagine his attitude to a non-English speaker who applied for high-powered corporate jobs in the US would be, err, different…)
Christ john, you shouldn’t link to samizdata – I’m actually starting to feel sorry for them, especially dear, frightened ernest.
E.L,
Not frightened – just saddened…
You obviously appreciate the situation, your very apt choice of pseudonym says it all…
John,
Did you actually read Jason Stone’s article? His problem was that he was applying for jobs with employers who told him in advance that his French was not a barrier to application, and who then refused to hire him because of his French. I don’t see how getting pissed off by that constitutes arrogance.
Why anyone would want to live in Paris, on the other hand, is beyond me.
You’re six times more likely to be mugged in London than New York, last I checked. And New York’s more dangerous than a lot of the US.
I’m particularly amused by the commenter who obsessivly blames Gramsci. Undead Marxists stalk the streets of London, killing all who oppose them!
Thank you. I think your pseudonym is quite apt, too.
Last time I was in Paris (I think there’s a song in there somewhere) I was appalled to overhear an American chap ranting at the bar in my hotel about how when, on his arrival, he had tried to pay his airport taxi-driver in dollars, the guy had refused to accept them and escorted him to a cashpoint to withdraw some euros. For some reason, the chap thought that this was unreasonable.
Squander Two – New York is, these days, the safest big city in America by some margin. See here.
In a toilet in a stayion in Brussels I overheard a bloke rush in, address the attendant by shouting in English and demand to pay in Sterling. If he’d made the slightest effort to explain in French that he had no Euros, I’m sure she’d have let him in, but no… I think he wet himself. I know I (metaphorically) did.
It may be the safest big city, but it’s still more dangerous than most rural areas. And there’s a hell of a lot more rural area than city.
er..it’s where people live that matters.
Ah, how silly of me to forget that no-one lives in rural areas. My sincere apologies.
80.5% of Americans live in urban areas.